Keep Up with the Times: The 10 Best Social Recruiting Tools

If you and your company aren’t taking advantage of the omnipotent realm of social media, it is time to crawl out of the dark ages and modernize—social recruiting has quickly turned into a go-to for recruiters and applicants alike.

Social recruiting is the use of social media and another internet/online platforms to attract potential applicants to a company. And, no surprise, as the prevalence of social media has escalated in the past ten-or-so years, so too has the practice of social recruiting.

In Jobvite’s 2014 Social Recruiting Survey, 93% of recruiters reported that they use social media/online recruiting websites when searching for talent. And, while the widespread popularity of the practice may seem impressive now, 69% of recruiters forecast that social recruitment will become more utilized in coming years, and will be assuming a more multifarious identity, as 51% of companies also plan to start using apps and mobile venues to snag the workforce’s best, young talent.

Needless to say, having an online and social media presence is a must in 2015. Here are the 10 latest-and-greatest tools that can help get you on your way to becoming a savvy social recruiter.

1. Linked In. Linked In is the king of the world of social recruiting. It is an entire social network for the very purpose of job-networking, and it does so quite well. Jobvite reports that 94% of enterprises that engage in social recruiting search Linked In when looking to hire. And, it seems as if Linked In has no intention of leaving their spot as the number one social recruiting network, as they are already experimenting with mobile apps that will facilitate on-the-go recruiting. This should serve as your company/firm’s first visit to any recruitment mission.
2. Interview Stream. This interview-focused program is wonderful for staffing companies and other organizations that seek to conduct a massive amount of interviews. It is used by reputable institutions such as Sodexo and Wharton School of Business according to The Undercover Recruiter because it offers an efficient way for recruiters and applicants to meet via webcam. Anymore, it is not always practical to hold in-person interviews with every potential hire. In the fast-paced economy, you have to be able to conduct fast-paced interviews.
3. Hire Vue. A competitor of Interview Stream, Hire View offers a few features that its rivals do not. The interview platform incorporates features to rate and share candidates across the job market, and is more congenial to multi-person interview sessions.
4. About.me. This is essentially a Google specifically designed to look up job candidates. Essentially, recruiters would use this search engine to search for workers based on their desired skills or qualifications, and about.me. will produce links to databases that have the applicant’s information on hand. This is a great middle-man in the world of social recruitment, and even better yet, it’s free.
5. TweetMyJobs. This organization helps recruiters capitalize on the limitless networking capabilities that lie within the mainstream social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In. TweetMyJobs provides a forum for you to post descriptions and advertisements on the busiest stages in the digital world.
6. Google+. While this social network is surprisingly unsuccessful, considering that it is a branch of the all-powerful techno-giant Google, it is a popular venue for those who are trained in STEM fields. While it has, thus far, failed to compete with the likes of Facebook or Linked In, it does have a fairly prominent, faithful following, and is prone to boom any day. It is never safe to sleep on an apparatus of Google—it is not unlikely that they will contrive a way to monopolize the world of social media in the coming years.
7. BranchOut. Similar to about.me., BranchOut is a free-of-charge recruiting search engine. What separates it from the pack, however, is that it can tap into a recruiter’s Facebook friend network and begin searching for talent from there. Starting from such a source can mitigate the struggles that come with starting from scratch.
8. Glassdoor. This is a Customer Relationship Management tool that allows you to upload information on your company, set up interviews, and gather the demographics on your pool of candidates.
9. Jobvite. While it has become somewhat antiquated by its competitors, it is still a giant in the world of recruiting databases. Companies and applicants from all over try their luck on Jobvite, and it can never hurt to maintain a presence with this locale.
10. Snapchat. Okay, hear us out—it may seem unconventional right now, but if you take a second to think of the marketing potential that exists with this social media giant, Snapchat recruiting will seem like a great idea. It is one of the hottest apps on the planet, with more than 100 million monthly users, 400 million snaps sent daily, and a gigantic population of Generation Y users (they make up 71% of Snapchat’s patrons), according to Recruiting Blogs. Making a company Snapchat could put you ahead of the game, and posting stories that advertise job openings in a creative way will absolutely appeal to the Gen Y demographic.