Despite turmoil at Twitter, social media isn’t going away anytime soon. Platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook can be powerful ways for HR professionals to recruit new talent and find candidates they wouldn’t have reached otherwise.

Using social media for recruitment is “a constant strategy around marketing the organization and what we stand for, not just the business value but the social and cultural impact that we have,” said Steven Kramer, CEO at Workjam, a digital front-line workforce platform.

While social media doesn’t replace traditional recruitment methods, recruiting on such apps and websites can enhance hiring methods — with some caveats, including treating social media as a way to funnel candidates into the hiring process, not a way to completely replace it.

Use social media to tell a story

Workjam’s approach to recruiting on social media goes far beyond just posting links to open jobs. The company primarily uses LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook to “tell our story,” said Kramer. It’s not just about paying to advertise open jobs on social media (which the company does), but using social media to market what it’s like to work at Workjam.

Workjam also makes it easy for employees to share these posts internally, and on their own social media networks with the ability to “personalize it based on what they want to say,” he said. The company has a referral program, which incentivizes employees to share posts and recruit someone from their own network.

The company continuously reevaluates which platforms it uses for recruitment and focuses on where potential employees are most likely to be. It doesn’t use Twitter that much, and it doesn’t use Snapchat, because that’s not “really our demographic we’re going after,” Kramer said.

Posting jobs on social media can also be used to create buzz around a company. In June 2022, Casper posted a job listing for professional sleepers. The idea stemmed from from TikTok, and the firm received thousands of applications. Those who got the job created social media campaigns for the mattress company. CPO Robert Lepere told HR Dive he aimed imbue his company’s work culture with thoughtfulness through this process.

Beware potential pitfalls

While social media is often treated like an informal communication platform, it shouldn’t be when used for recruitment, said Ayesha Whyte, employment attorney and chief people officer at Dixon Whyte.

“When you are speaking to someone through social media about a job, always tell them to apply formally,” she said. That ensures that every job candidate goes through the same hiring process. “Anything you say, even if it’s through social media, can come up later in an employment lawsuit,” she added.

She also advised that any photos or videos representing a company’s workforce be of actual employees, not stand-ins or models. “It would be horrible if a person of color or a person with disabilities saw a panoply of people in your ads about the workplace and then the workplace is homogenous,” she said. It may not lead to a lawsuit, but a company could lose that worker if they feel they were tricked.

On the flip side, employers should also take any social media presence of potential employees with a grain of salt. “That’s not giving the entire picture of who someone is,” she said. “That’s a filtered persona and you’re looking for an actual person who’s going to look at your job.”

While looking at someone’s social media presence isn’t a bad idea, it shouldn’t take the place of interviews, reference checks and background checks if that’s part of the regular recruitment process, she said. And relying too heavily on social media might mean missing candidates who aren’t social media savvy, she added; “You might be missing out on some wonderful candidates.”

Human resources professionals should also make sure they’re compliant with any pay transparency laws when posting job listings on social media. “If you are broadcasting on social media, that is going to be global. You have no idea where this candidate is looking from,” Whyte said. “If you’re advertising an actual job on LinkedIn or Instagram or anything, it should absolutely [include a] salary or salary range for that position.”

When a local government fellowship program asked more than 100 applicants about their interest in the job, they overwhelmingly cited the opportunity for “meaningful work.”

Applicants ranked mission above pay, location, professional development and more, according to the Jan. 12 results. And more than half said the coronavirus pandemic only increased their interest in public service employment.

In light of the results, the research firm analyzing the findings urged employers to emphasize mission over tasks. “With meaningful work and personal satisfaction so highly rated, a job advertisement that leans more heavily on the results that can be achieved may be more likely to net interested recruits than one that focuses more on formal roles and responsibilities,” it said in a report.

Other research suggests private and for-profit employers may want to take a note from this government playbook: Employees are seeking higher purpose from their work and choosing to work for employers that have purpose baked into their ethos, an Alight executive said in September, analyzing survey results.

Executives say they know this is true — especially younger workers — but a 2022 report from consulting firm Deloitte revealed that many fail to properly integrate it throughout a business.

Those efforts can start at a high level with executives infusing purpose into a business plan and a company’s core values. But purpose also should permeate the aspects of work with which employees interact every day. Managers can be trained to connect daily work to purpose, making clear how individual contributors have meaningful responsibilities and how they’re part of a company’s mission, whether that’s serving a client or advancing an ESG initiative.

Hilton’s CHRO, for example, said at a December event the company strives to connect its massive workforce and inspire them to do great things for their guests and in service of their communities.

Employers with a more obvious social mission may have a somewhat easier path. Those in green technologies, for example, previously told HR Dive they focus directly on candidates with a passion for sustainability. What those businesses lack in name recognition, they make up for in meaningful work, one VP shared.

These findings, however, don’t give employers license to neglect other offerings, the report analyzing the local government fellowship survey results cautioned.

The next generation of talent will demand meaningful work, and those employers that can offer purpose alongside competitive pay, benefits, flexibility and more will be well positioned in the competition for that talent.

The current high rate of consumer inflation may be an issue on most people’s minds right now, but another form of inflation — title inflation — is also making itself felt in the workplace, Shawn Cole, president and co-founder of national executive search firm Cowen Partners, told HR Dive. 

Cole started observing the trend around 2018 with bootstrapped startups, he said. “They weren’t necessarily able to compensate competitively, but they were handing out inflated titles. So that could be an exaggerated VP or even a C-suite title.” Cole even saw one startup use “director of first impressions” as the title for an office receptionist role. “[Startups] really kicked it all off for the rest of us,” he said. 

The trend became mainstream by 2020, Cole said, with mid-market and larger employers beginning to offer inflated titles as the war for talent ramped up. “Titles are having to be invented to accommodate those promotional opportunities, and that's [become] like a retention strategy,” he said. 

Part of the expectation is also generational, with younger employees seeing impressive titles among their peers and agitating more quickly for advancement. “Baby boomers would wait 10 years for promotion,” Cole said, while “the millennial wants one next year.”

Title inflation can be bad for both the candidate and potential recruiters. Without the proper responsibilities to “earn” their title, the candidate may find themselves in over their head when attempting to leverage their role into a future position elsewhere, Cole said. They also may find they need to settle for a lower-sounding title more commensurate with their experience, forcing them to have to explain the discrepancy in titles when they eventually move on in their career.

On the other side of the equation, recruiters who don’t do their due diligence must contend with a “buyer beware” scenario when a promising-looking candidate cannot actually fulfill the obligations expected of them. To make the right hiring decision, they also may need to dedicate more time to sifting through candidates to ensure those put forward are able to meet a role’s demands. 

Title inflation can even be bad for the company that engages in it, Cole said, due to a potential loss of morale among existing employees, who may be thinking, “‘Who is this person? How much are they paid? I’ve been here for five years.’” 

For HR professionals wary of hiring the wrong person, Cole suggested having a job description in hand and becoming familiar with the role responsibilities. Focusing on and comparing duties rather than titles can help identify which candidates are prepared.

But recruiters also can develop some shortcuts. For example, when evaluating candidates with “director” titles, which Cole said are often inflated, recruiters can ask, “Were you an individual contributor or a manager of teams?” Most often, properly assessed director roles require some level of management, Cole said. Recruiters can then begin to look at the management level, how many people the candidate managed and other, more meticulous factors.

For recruiters who have the delicate task of pitching a lower title to a candidate who thinks they may deserve a higher one, Cole emphasized the importance of contextualizing that decision. Explain the difference between the current and offered roles, including responsibilities, company sizes and other relevant factors, he said.

Companies are far better off not engaging in title inflation than attempting to fix it after it happens. “It’s nearly impossible to roll back a title on someone without them quitting,” Cole said. To prevent that, HR pros can talk to their hiring managers and “ask them clarifying questions about the titles they are choosing within their team organizational chart,” he said. “The HR professional can say, ‘Hey, tell me where this fits in and how it aligns to the greater structure of your team and … your future growth goals.’”

Finally, HR pros should devote significant energy to finding candidates who believe in and align themselves with the company’s goals and values, Cole said. “If you have a candidate that is only interested in joining your company for title and money, there will be another opportunity that comes to them, you know, a year from now with more money and a cooler title, and you're just gonna lose that person,” he continued. “So you want them bought in on a shared value system — not the money and title.”

To thank veterans for their service and to recognize the honed skills service members bring to the workforce, many private employers have committed to hire and retain veterans.

Through military service, veterans gain in-demand skills for workplace success in the private sector, including mental fortitude, flexibility, leadership and management experience, teamwork and collaboration, professionalism and discipline. Private employers need those skills and realize the value of military service in sharpening those vital capabilities.

Recruiting approaches

As an initial step in attracting job-seeking veterans, many employers, regardless of size, have demonstrated a commitment to hire veterans by offering veteran-specific opportunities or outreach. Some companies have committed to hiring a specific number of veterans within a stated timeframe. Many companies have dedicated human-resource and talent-management teams, often lead by an executive, focusing on recruiting veterans.

Members of those teams are knowledgeable about military roles and duties. They are also trained on translating military experiences into private sector skills and identifying positions particularly suited for military experience. A dedicated office or team for recruiting military talent, however, may not make sense depending on company size and resources. In those circumstances, here are four practices companies can consider implementing to recruit veterans.  

Train HR on what to do

Companies should train HR representatives to understand how to translate military jobs and duties into private sector roles and responsibilities. The SHRM Foundation, in conjunction with its corporate partners, provides HR professionals a free certificate program offering critical insights for recruiting, onboarding and retaining veterans and military members.  

Have solid position descriptions

HR staff, along with hiring managers, should identify positions well-suited for military talent and tailor job descriptions accordingly. Where appropriate, job descriptions may be edited to state relevant military experience qualifies.

Create a veterans website

To attract veteran talent, companies can create a separate link on their corporate websites for job-seeking veterans. Webpages targeted to recruit veterans can highlight open positions that are well-suited for military talent, identify key HR professionals in the veteran space and describe internal company resources focused on developing and retaining veterans.  

Find military recruiting sources and job fairs

HR representatives should attend hiring fairs at military installations and Veterans Affairs facilities, and other veteran-focused employer hiring groups, like the Veterans Jobs Mission, to recruit military talent. Potentially, HR professionals may want to partner with veteran employees or local Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve representatives to brainstorm additional ways to attract veteran talent.  

Retention Initiatives

The transition from a military work environment to the civilian sector poses unique challenges to military members, including uncertainty about promotion processes and performance evaluations, communication-style differences and cultural changes. Companies that want to retain military talent frequently implement veteran-specific practices and programs to help veterans acclimate to corporate culture. While the size of a company and its resources may dictate the availability of veteran-specific retention tools, three retention initiatives and programs are highlighted below.

Provide promotion and career path transparency

In the military, service members receive clear guidance on requirements to achieve their next promotion, including the dates of upcoming promotion boards, their eligibility for promotion and steps they can take to increase their chances for promotion. The same transparency often does not exist in the private sector and the absence of clear career development guidance is a common reason veterans leave companies.  

To retain military talent, companies should provide career progression training throughout a veteran’s employment, and particularly, at milestones, like new-hire training and annual performance reviews. If possible, career path training should also identify resources and personnel available to discuss career paths, promotions and opportunities within the company.      

Establish mentorship programs

Many companies allow veterans to participate in mentorship programs to ease the transition from the military to the private sector. These programs pair new veteran hires with senior employees who can answer cultural assimilation questions, assist veterans in building their business networks outside the military, help them establish professional goals and steer their career progression.

Companies should formally advertise mentorship programs during new hire training and encourage new hires to participation at the onset of their employment to increase program participation and maximize retention. HR professionals should also highlight the existence of these programs on company websites and in recruiting materials to serve as a selling point to job-seeking military members.

Form affinity groups

Veteran-focused affinity groups and mentorship programs help military members transition to the private sector by introducing new hires to a network of peers with shared employment and life experiences. These groups also aid established veteran employees in maintaining a connection to the military and the sense of purpose that military service offered. Advertising these programs can also boost a company’s reputation as military-friendly, which may attract new business and help recruit military talent. 

The efforts and recommendations discussed above represent some of the many ways that employers can recruit and retain military talent in today’s challenging job market. Employers should partner with employment counsel to identify and discuss legal considerations in developing targeted efforts to recruit and retain veteran employees.   

Despite signs that employers are willing to prioritize skills over educational attainment when recruiting, candidates with nontraditional work backgrounds continue to be overlooked, according to panelists at a virtual event hosted by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.

A general trend over the past 20 years has seen businesses employ four-year degree requirements in their job descriptions, narrowing the field of potential candidates despite “hundreds of thousands of people” performing such jobs without a Bachelor’s degree, said Byron Auguste, CEO and co-founder of the nonprofit [email protected]

Auguste and other panelists spoke about the need for employers to engage job candidates who are skilled through alternative routes, or STARs. These candidates, Auguste said, often are hindered by their backgrounds in pursuing advancements or face other barriers in the recruitment process even as less qualified, traditional candidates are favored.

“People with advanced degrees are given much deeper roles that they may not be a fit for,” Auguste said. “This is a big problem for STARs, but it’s a bigger problem for [businesses] and employers.”

A complete rebuild

Resetting degree requirements for job posts is a strategy that predates the pandemic. A 2022 report by the Burning Glass Institute found that some 46% of middle-skill occupations and 31% of high-skill occupations saw degree requirements reset between 2017 and 2019. More recently, Maryland’s state government dropped four-year degree requirements for thousands of roles, and the push to hire for skills over degrees even received a shoutout at the 2022 State of the Union address.

But employers seeking to expand opportunities to STARs may need to consider making more fundamental changes to the way they hire. That could mean a full reset of all positions, from top to bottom.

That is the approach taken by one healthcare industry employer that partnered with OneTen, an executive coalition that focuses on closing opportunity gaps for Black talent in the U.S.

Panelist Maurice Jones, OneTen’s CEO, said the employer initially sought to fill only a segment of roles, but after a period of just a few months, the company rebuilt all of its positions using what Jones called a “skills-first perspective.” In all, the company redesigned nearly 3,000 jobs.

“That is what we’re looking for,” Jones said, noting the role that a central vision from leadership played in the effort. “It took the senior C-suite folks, hiring managers and people managers to say, ‘You know what? We should have been doing this years ago.’”

Organizations already may have internal STARs who could benefit from clearer paths to advancement, Auguste said. Some barriers may be ingrained into pay structures and other facets of HR aside from the initial sourcing stage. For example, Auguste noted he has seen cases in which an employment contract states that an employer will pay less for someone who does not hold a college degree.

“Companies are putting in a lot of barriers that they don’t need at all,” he said, adding that employers may want to create and expand internship and apprenticeship models for STARs.

Screening and sourcing

Employers can broaden their reach in new ways thanks to the increased adoption of flexible work. Jones gave the example of a company based in the western U.S. that sought to open more opportunities for Black talent. Seeing a lack of such talent locally, the company decided to transition more of its jobs to remote status, allowing it to recruit nationwide, he said.

For other organizations, the problem is not so much the availability of talent, but how that talent is screened. “You can’t see what you're missing,” Auguste said. “Once you remove those barriers, now you can start to see.”

Human recruiters may insert their biases into the process by defaulting to candidates with traditional credentials like a four-year degree. Even firms that have decided to eliminate four-year degree requirements can still fall into the trap of prioritizing candidates with those degrees, Jones said, citing another example of an employer OneTen worked with. “That was because of a bias, a mindset,” Jones said. “A four-year degree was the gold standard of telling them that this person can learn. It was a real, flawed mindset with respect to that particular credential.”

But most companies don’t have a plan for exclusion, Auguste said. They may use hiring technology platforms that screen out non-traditional candidates by default. Such hurdles may require employers to check with their providers or otherwise perform additional analysis of screened candidates on the back end, said Emily Dickens, chief of staff, head of government affairs and corporate secretary for the Society for Human Resource Management.

On the candidate side, Auguste said underrepresented groups of candidates “are more likely to read your job descriptions and say, ‘I don’t have that,’” which, he noted, is another reason why employers should “take the job description aspect of this seriously.”

HR also may need to address hesitancy on the part of organizations to hire STARs. “If someone comes with 12 different reasons [not to hire STARs], there’s frankly something wrong,” Auguste said. As employers welcome more non-traditional candidates into their workforces and set them up to succeed, that risk aversion decreases over time, he added; “the successes pile up.”

‘These are all the things businesses say they need’

The pandemic has seen a number of employees making career changes from front-line roles in sectors such as the care economy and call centers to those in information technology, cybersecurity and other high-demand areas, Auguste said. That movement, he noted, is a testament to the resiliency and curiosity of these workers.

“When you look at what essential workers have done in the pandemic … believe your eyes,” Auguste said. “That’s skills. That’s resourcefulness. These are all the things that businesses say they need.”

However, panelists emphasized the need for alignment between HR executives, people managers and the C-suite. “It has to come from the top,” Dickens said. “The CEO has to direct and say to their partner in HR that every job description should not have [a degree] requirement.”

Such an initiative also requires a commitment to building a skills-first culture, Jones said, which will take some time for organizations to build.

“This is not a 10-month or a one-year journey,” he said. “This is something that you need to commit to for a decade at least.”

Employers working to address retention may be overlooking a key driver of turnover: employees’ desire to be part of a more inclusive culture. Nearly 40% of 1,000 employees surveyed nationally said they would switch jobs to be part of a more inclusive culture; 45% of Black workers and 54% of managers said they would do so, according to the QuestionPro and EQ Community survey results, released Jan. 17.

Nine out of 10 workers reported having a positive experience working with and learning from colleagues of different backgrounds and perspectives, the survey revealed. But 43% felt their employer should be doing more to foster inclusivity, including having more diverse leadership and discussing the importance of diversity more frequently.

Although each organization has its own culture and is in a different stage of its DEI journey, executives should focus DEI efforts on a few common areas, such as: preparing a strong onboarding experience with frequent check-ins; trying different initiatives tied to the organization’s goals; really understanding why employees leave, for example by including a question about inclusivity in their exit interviews; and leading by example, the report recommended.

During times of economic uncertainty, DEI efforts are often the first to be cut, according to recent research by multiple HR consulting firms. They predict DEI positions will be at risk in 2023 as the U.S. totters on the edge of a recession.

But there’s an important caveat, cautioning employers against acting too quickly: “More than ever,” workers expect to learn about a potential employer’s DEI efforts, about 40% of recruiters told Monster, according to its January 2023 future of work report. Similarly, Workhuman’s 2023 Human Workplace Index advised that prioritizing inclusion and belonging can set employers apart in the recruitment process.

Just under half (49%) of employees were more likely to report feeling undervalued; about 48% of women felt undervalued, the Workhuman index found. The QuestionPro results back up these findings: Half of Black and African-American worker respondents expressed dissatisfaction with how inclusive their organization is; 45% of women and 42% of Latino workers said the same. The fact that so many employees are ready to act on their dissatisfaction “should give pause,” QuestionPro noted in its report.

Dissatisfaction is strongly tied to employee engagement, the report suggested. That is, an inclusive workplace doesn’t just come about because of organization-wide initiatives or culture projects driven by HR, it explained. Rather, employee engagement can be traced to managers, providing them with a great opportunity to impact how inclusive their teams are and, in turn, how inclusive the organization is as a whole, the report said.

Lack of connection and mentorship, as well as ongoing experiences of bias in the workplace, can lead to disengagement, a chief DEI officer pointed out in a November op-ed to HR Dive. To prevent this from happening, organizations should help managers support their teams and recognize that managers face unique challenges in the workplace, she recommended. They can learn where more support is needed by taking a hard look at attrition, retention and leadership pipelines, she added.

As businesses shift their focus to mitigating risks to revenue growth and profitability, it’s important for them to do so with an equitable lens — to ensure they don’t compromise their efforts to attract, retain and grow a more diverse employee base, a global DEI head previously told HR Dive. Data shows that workers are more likely to join and remain at companies where DEI goals, including mental health, are openly discussed, prioritized and embedded into company operations, she said.

About half of job seekers (45%) wouldn’t accept a job that didn’t offer accommodating hours, according to Randstad’s 2023 Workmonitor report. Additionally, about half of workers (48%) said they’d quit a job if it “prevented them from enjoying their life.”

These findings and more are unpacked in the research firm’s report, which paints a picture of worker priorities in markets across the North and South Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia: Employees want stability in their career overall, but flexibility in their day-to-day lives.

Sufficient income is top of mind

The rising cost of living has notably influenced the way people are approaching work. Across the globe, about 1 in 4 workers are seeking more hours to help with their rising living expenses. A similar number of workers worldwide are shouldering a second job — or are seeking one — to address their increased cost of living. Notably, 32% of workers in Eastern Europe and 34% of Latin Americans talent told Randstad they’re working or plan to work a side hustle. 

Likewise, employees are worried about the impact of economic instability on their job security. “A possible global recession is weighing on the minds of people around the world, and this may have repercussions on employers,” Randstad researchers said, noting the increased appetite for work.

Workers want to get a life

At the same time, employees say they would be inclined to leave a job if it prevented them from enjoying life. Diving further into Randstad’s findings, it appears that work-life imbalance will come back to bite employers in the end. “Employee engagement is also impacted as dissatisfaction with work has led to 31% having ‘quiet quit,’ a recent phenomenon in which workers perform only the bare minimum in their jobs,” researchers said. Notably, millennials and Gen Zers were most likely to report quitting and the inclination to quit a job that prevented them from enjoying life.

An integral part of life enjoyment, recruiters and people operations professionals are finding, is flexibility. Accommodating hours are a priority for talent globally, with workers in Latin America and Southern Europe expressing particular interest. More than when they work, people want flexibility in where they work. Again, workers in Latin America and Southern Europe expressed the greatest interest in geographic flexibility. These markets were also more likely to report more rigidity in job hours and working location.

Employers involved in the recruiting process are focused on onboarding, candidate experience and DEI in 2023, according to new research from Talent Board, a research organization focused on candidate experience. 

Time will tell if those efforts help decrease resentment among candidates and new hires. The Jan. 11 Talent Board 2022 North American Candidate Experience Benchmark Research Report found that job seekers had negative experiences globally for the second consecutive year. In North America, the only region where candidate resentment didn’t climb in 2022, candidates still reported a historically high resentment rate of 12%, the report said. 

"Although candidate resentment lessened during and immediately following the COVID-19 pandemic, it's higher than ever globally," Talent Board President Kevin W. Grossman said in a news release. "Employers need to keep in mind that resentment has major repercussions to their brands and the bottom lines such as whether or not candidates will apply to their jobs again, whether they'll refer colleagues and friends, whether they’ll be brand advocates and whether they’ll buy a company’s products and services.”

Ron Machamer, Talent Board director of global programs, said it is “very telling” that onboarding is the top priority for talent acquisition teams in 2023. 

"Too many employers lost new hires in 2022 before they even started or shortly after day one; that’s how competitive the talent market has gotten, and that’s how important it is to get onboarding right,” Machamer said. 

The report, which analyzed anonymous feedback from more than 150 companies and nearly 200,000 candidates, found that 34% of candidates had to wait at least one to two months after submitting an application to find out about next steps in the hiring process. That was 48% higher than in 2021. 

To try to improve the recruiting process, talent acquisition teams are turning to AI tech, the report found: 79% intend to purchase tech that removes bias from the application and screening processes; 72% want to buy tech that predicts employee job-changing behavior; and 57% plan to buy tech that predicts job performance.