Social recruiting: what it is, how it works, strategies
How many applications come in today from LinkedIn, Instagram, or other social media? And how many of these turn out to be truly relevant when the process gets underway?
In recent years, social recruiting has gone from being a "side" experiment to a structural lever for attracting talent. This has not happened simply because social media has suddenly become a recruitment channel, but because the way people discover companies, evaluate opportunities, and decide whether to apply has changed.
Before even reading a job posting, candidates observe how you communicate, what you say about daily work, what kind of people you give visibility to, and what values emerge from your content.
As you know if you work in HR, recruiting begins well before the application stage and increasingly depends on the ability to build relationships, credibility, and consistency on social media channels. At the same time, this also means dealing with new complexities, because attracting attention is one thing, but selecting real skills is another.
In this guide, we will explore what social recruiting truly is, how it functions within HR processes, and which strategies can assist you in making it an effective tool for attracting and selecting talent.
What is social recruiting?
Social recruiting is the strategic use of social media channels to attract, engage, and select talent, not just to post job offers but to build a consistent presence for the company in the minds of potential candidates and support the entire journey from initial contact to actual application.
The difference compared to traditional recruiting is precisely that of actively interacting with professionals wherever they are, giving visibility to the culture, team stories, projects, and corporate values, all factors that often determine a candidate's decision to apply.
Social recruiting is not synonymous with LinkedIn: although this platform remains central (with 72% of recruiters using it as their main channel for job ads, according to a Jobvite report), Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms also contribute to building awareness and engagement.
Consider that:
- Approximately 84% of organizations use social media to recruit new people.
- Over 79% of candidates actively use social media to search for job opportunities.
- Over 73% of job seekers between the ages of 18 and 34 found their last job through social media.
Right now, candidates expect to find you where they spend their digital time, and social media is no longer an "extra" but an integral part of talent strategy. In the selection process, social media influences the candidate journey from the very beginning, even before an application is submitted: candidates look at content on corporate culture, employee testimonials, messages about values (including Diversity & Inclusion), and form a first impression that can accelerate or hinder their involvement.
How social recruiting works: the main stages
To understand how social recruiting works, the first thing to do is to view it as a structured process. In fact, social media becomes an extension of HR processes: channels for attraction, relationship building, and conversion that accompany the candidate throughout the entire process, from initial contact to entry into the selection process.
Here are all the most important and strategic steps.
1. Monitoring social media channels
The first step is to choose which channels to focus on, based on the professional targets you want to reach.
LinkedIn remains central for corporate profiles, specialists, and managers, while Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook are increasingly relevant for junior, tech, retail, or high-turnover roles. The difference is not only demographic, but also in language and expectations: professional channels favor career- and skills-oriented content, while those
Generalists work best for showing context, atmosphere, and everyday working life.
2. Content creation
Content is at the heart of social recruiting. In this case, we need to distinguish between job advertisements and valuable content. The former serve to meet an immediate need, while the latter serve to build trust over time. Everything related to employer branding, storytelling about teams, project descriptions, company life, and organizational choices helps candidates understand whether the company is really the right place for them.
From an HR perspective, the goal is not to "sell" the company, but to highlight its criteria, culture, and way of working in order to attract more suitable candidates.
3. Interaction and relationship with candidates
Unlike job boards, social media are two-way channels. Comments, direct messages, reactions, and shares are part of the candidate experience, even if they are often not managed as such. Responding to a question under a post, clarifying a doubt in a DM, or simply acknowledging an interaction helps build an initial relationship.
4. Conversion: from social media to the selection process
The final stage is the most critical: turning interest into an application. Effective social recruiting minimizes the distance between content and action, guiding candidates toward a simple, consistent application that is integrated with ATS and HR processes.
If the conversion is well designed and targeted, social media will bring in more applications, but also better applications, from candidates who are already informed and motivated.
Overall, we can say that social recruiting works when social media is not treated as a separate channel, but as an integral part of the talent acquisition strategy, aligned with objectives, processes, and selection criteria.
Social recruiting strategies for HR
Now let's move on to the more practical aspect: how can you harness the full potential of social media to attract new talent? Here are some social recruiting strategies to try out.
Employer branding as a foundation
Every effective social recruiting strategy starts withemployer branding. Social media amplifies what the company really is: its values, management style, way of working, and opportunities for growth. If the message is inconsistent with the internal reality, the risk is not only attracting the wrong people, but also increasing turnover and quiet quitting after hiring.
By the way, if you are interested in the topic of turnover, we have prepared a white paper that discusses the causes of this phenomenon and how to reduce it in companies. You can download it for free by clicking here.
In this sense, employees play a very important role: when they become credible ambassadors, the message is much more authentic than any institutional communication.
WHAT CAN AN HR DEPARTMENT ACTUALLY DO?
- align social media content with the values and behaviors that the company truly rewards, avoiding superficial narratives;
- involve teams and key people in telling the story of company life, leaving room for different voices and not just the corporate channel;
- support employees who want to share their experience by preparing clear but not rigid guidelines;
- Verify that what is communicated on social media is reflected in internal processes (selection, onboarding, development) to avoid perceived inconsistencies by candidates.
Content that really works
In social recruiting, content makes the difference between visibility and real attraction. The posts that perform best are not the "most polished" ones, but those that help people understand how the company really works.
If it is true that readers (i.e., potential candidates) are not only evaluating a role but also want to understand what lies behind the company, it is equally true that they can do so more easily if they can imagine themselves in that context.
That's why talking about teams, projects, growth opportunities, and organizational culture on social media is a much more effective lever than job descriptions themselves.
WHAT CAN AN HR DEPARTMENT ACTUALLY DO?
- describe the work using concrete examples: ongoing projects, challenges faced by teams, results achieved, and skills developed;
- valuing people, not just roles, giving space to spontaneous testimonials about growth, learning, and everyday work life;
- experiment with short videos (even informal ones) to show environments, team dynamics, and real moments at work;
- Create recognizable and repeatable formats (e.g., "a typical day," "how we work on...," "what we learned from..."), to build expectation and continuity.
Sponsored ads and targeting
In social recruiting, advertising is not used to "generate volume," but to reach the right people at the right time. It makes sense to invest in sponsored ads when the target audience is difficult to reach through organic reach alone, when the role requires specific skills, or when you want to speed up the hiring process without sacrificing quality.
The real value lies in targeting. Social platforms allow you to segment by role, seniority, skills, industry, professional interests, and behaviors, enabling much more targeted communication than traditional channels. By doing so, you can reduce waste, improve the quality of applications, and make the investment more sustainable even for small or medium-sized HR teams.
WHAT CAN AN HR DEPARTMENT ACTUALLY DO?
- Activate sponsored ads only for critical or hard-to-fill roles, avoiding indiscriminate promotion of all open positions.
- segment campaigns based on role, level of experience, and key skills, adapting the message and language to each target audience;
- differentiate sponsored content by seniority (e.g., different messages for junior vs. senior profiles);
- Test multiple creative concepts and calls to action to understand what generates quality applications, not just clicks.
- Link campaigns to landing pages or simple application flows so as not to lose interest during the conversion phase.
Involvement of recruiters and managers
In social recruiting, people matter as much (and often more) than the brand. Candidates trust those who talk about the job from the inside, not just corporate channels. This is why the direct involvement of recruiters and hiring managers is a strategic lever: it makes communication more credible, shortens the distance with candidates, and improves the quality of interactions even before the application.
We must bear in mind that recruiters are often the first face of the company that candidates come into contact with. When recruiters communicate in a consistent, professional, and authentic manner on social media, they contribute directly to employer branding and trust in the selection process.
WHAT CAN AN HR DEPARTMENT ACTUALLY DO?
- support recruiters in building a consistent social media presence (tone, themes, professional boundaries);
- encourage the sharing of content related to everyday work: open positions, insights into the selection process, advice for candidates;
- prepare clear guidelines on what to communicate and what to avoid, to maintain consistency with the company's positioning;
- value recruiters as market and skills experts, not just as "advertisers";
- measure the impact of recruiters' activities in terms of engagement and the quality of applications generated.
