Your project manager has just given you his letter of resignation.  You need someone with some experience, but also someone who can be molded to fit your company culture and operating procedures.  This most likely means someone in the 25-35 years old range.  What is the best way to attract this ideal candidate?  Ads on monster.com or jobsearch.com?  You’ll likely want to shift your focus to using social media.  Social recruitment isn’t going to replace job postings on job search sites, but promoting jobs to your most engaged audience makes sense, and they are trolling social media.

In fact, a quarter of all job seekers use social media as their primary tool for job searching, and every year, a new wave of hyper-connected, digital natives enters the workforce. At the moment, seven out of ten 18-34 year olds report having found their previous jobs through social media, and, nearly half of all employee referrals come in through social media.

Employers naturally want to go where great candidates are, and nine out of ten companies use some form of social media to attract, source and engage qualified talent.  More than half of all recruiters rated candidates sourced from social media as “highest quality.”  That makes sense.  Tech savvy employees are more desirable, regardless of the position.  So companies must use technology to attract them.

The bottom line: A social media recruiting strategy drives results, is mainstream, and here to stay. The practitioners are becoming more advanced and so are the tools.  It’s a competitive atmosphere, so keep an eye on the following social recruitment trends now and you’ll be miles ahead of the late adopters in 2016.

Be less “antisocial”

Nine out of ten candidates are likely to apply to a job when it’s from an employer brand that’s actively maintained. What does that mean? It means that someone at the company is responsible for joining relevant conversations, responding to reviews, and giving candidates an attractive preview of the work environment, culture, and available opportunities via the company’s social media profiles. Highlighting company culture is one of the best ways to compete against other employers.  Those social feeds populated by an endless stream of robotic job alerts will be yesterday’s news.

Smarter sourcing

Social media offers unprecedented access to millions of high-quality candidates for free if you know how to find them. Social networks are the new Google. In 2015, sourcers (we used to call them “head hunters”) used LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to find more candidates and message them about openings than ever before, with a high level of success.

Move beyond “the big three”

Beyond the standard social sites (LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook), Instagram leads the pack of newcomers in the job search arena (31% of job seekers have reported finding a job through this social network), with Pinterest and Snapchat not far behind. In addition, specialist job listings on specialist networks are very effective. Several specialist job boards have been created on these networks as a means of attracting these candidates, and your current employees’ postings on these sites can garner high level leads.

“One-click apply”

Face facts. The epic novel-length job application form annoys job seekers. Hirers who want to get ahead and attract today’s heavily mobile audience should add the option of a “one-click apply” button. These have been around for a while, but they will start to proliferate. Some job boards, such as Indeed have this functionality, and Workable’s own forms enable job seekers to apply on mobile via LinkedIn with one click. So why should LinkedIn have all the fun? Job seekers on professional networks should be able to apply to jobs and import their work samples at the push of a button too.  You can add this function to your website for little investment with an odds-on higher return.

Adapted from an article by Christine Del Castillo for workable.co