Recruiting

Can You Use Pinterest for Recruiting?

In a world where more and more people have digital personas and social media is used by millions, is it any surprise that nearly every social media platform – including Pinterest – has a recruiting angle?

Gone are the days of spending massive advertising budgets to advertise job postings to thousands of people. Today the same can be accomplished with smaller budgets – or even free – with the help of online options. While LinkedIn is commonly thought of as the go-to resource for mixing business and social media, the other social media sites have recruiting applications as well, and Pinterest is no exception.

“This is the new, fun site to be branding yourself as an employer of choice, yourself as a recruiter or HR representative, or even just . . . having some play time and finding ways to engage your employees and your future employees online.” Kelly Dingee told us in a recent BLR webinar. “Pinterest is on everyone’s radar. It’s on job-seekers’ radar, and it’s also on employers’ radar.”

How to Use Pinterest for Recruiting

The ability to find applicants and promote your company may not be obvious at first, as Pinterest does not outwardly appear to be geared toward businesses.

“There’s no business category . . . there’s no ‘get a job’ category, there’s no ‘job seekers’ or ‘careers’ or anything like that.” Dingee pointed out. However, employers need to work within the existing parameters to be findable and appealing to potential new hires. There are two perspectives to consider: finding potential candidates and showcasing your organization for people to find.

Finding potential applicants on Pinterest. On Pinterest, you can use keywords to search, and also to tag your own content so that it is found when others search. When doing so, think carefully about what keywords to use and where to put them.

Everything on Pinterest is a picture—so what you’re finding in search is what someone has typed about a picture, as a caption or summary. As such, when you add pictures, what you type about it will determine how easily someone can find it. Think about what others will be searching for when you want them to find you.

The content you find is user-generated. But many people on Pinterest are not focused on using it to get a job, and treat it as a very personal site instead. As such, if you are trying to recruit people with particular skills or experience, think about creating boards dedicated to that topic. This will allow you to be found by individuals who are interested in that topic. Soon you will have people following those boards who already have an interest in that topic and possibly experience—these people are potential job candidates.

Showcasing your organization on Pinterest.Separately, you can use Pinterest as a recruiting tool by showcasing what it’s like to work at your organization and even how to apply and open jobs. For example, you could create Pinterest boards about:

  • Joining your team (how to apply)
  • What perks there are to working for your company
  • Job search tips, such as how to network or how to prepare for an interview
  • Your company’s departments
  • Your employees’ LinkedIn pages—complete with links to those pages (if you’re comfortable with that)
  • The company blog
  • Current events or news about your organization
  • Job listings

As you can see, there’s no shortage of ways to utilize Pinterest for recruiting purposes if you think it through. Perhaps it’s time to add Pinterest to your recruiting toolbox.

For more information on using Pinterest as a recruiting tool, order the webinar recording of “Pinterest for Business: Engage Your Audience, Promote Events, and Reinforce Your Brand.” To register for a future webinar, visit http://store.blr.com/events/webinars.

Kelly Dingee is a strategic recruiting manager and leads the research team at Staffing Advisors. She is also a regularly featured writer on the talent management blog “Fistful of Talent.”

1 thought on “Can You Use Pinterest for Recruiting?”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *