According to researchers, the connection between social media activity (e.g., someone liking something you post) and follow-on profit-generating outcomes is not very strong.
For traditional marketers, the profitable behaviors are actions, such as, getting a prospect to buy something or recommending a product to a friend.
For recruiting, the profitable behaviors are similar. A hire is the end goal but getting a prospect to refer you to someone else in their network is also helpful.
After five separate experiments involving thousands of subjects and prominent brands, researchers concluded:
By itself, the act of liking a [post in a social media venue]—requiring mere seconds of attention, and, by design, one click of a button—may simply induce too weak a signal to modify behavior.
This doesn’t mean social media engagement is useless, but it was shown to be helpful only when it was followed-up by additional, actionable steps.
The actionable steps for a hiring manager can initially be small things like getting permission to follow-up later via email or agreeing to a scheduled callback in a few weeks.
Eventually, live conversations (via phone, email, and text) and face-to-face meetings need to ensue to convert any social media goodwill into hire-producing activities.
The lead measure of recruiting will always be face-to-face appointments.
Your social media activities will only prove helpful if they’re supporting this objective.
