How to Use Social Media for Legal Recruiting

Professionals, employers, and recruiters are increasingly leveraging social media platforms to find work or to recruit inside and outside Illinois. Using social media for legal recruiting is cost-effective, expands your reach, allows you to learn more about prospective hires, and facilitates networking. It also increases the likelihood of hiring people who are already familiar with your brand and are a good fit for your firm’s culture.

The strategies for effectively using social media to recruit legal talent include choosing the right platform, updating well-thought-out content, and incorporating legal recruiting into your overall social media strategy. You should also regularly monitor and evaluate your social media recruitment to determine its effectiveness and areas that require polishing.

At Astor Professional Search, we explore all options, including social media, to send you candidates that perfectly match your hiring needs. Call us at (312) 781-9000 whenever you need to hire new candidates.

Can Social Media Be Used for Recruitment Advertising?

Social media has undoubtedly become an integral part of business operations, from branding to selling to customer experience. Hiring is no different. That said, HR teams, especially in fields like law, are not particularly trained nor incentivized to use social media tools for hiring. At most, some will post job openings on hiring sites like LinkedIn and Indeed, with no further promotion on social media.

Heading into the future, law firms and legal recruiters must pay more attention to social media as a recruitment platform. Using social media for recruitment advertising and hiring has the following benefits:

It’s Faster and More Affordable

Fast and affordable are two words bound to get a recruiter’s attention. A newspaper ad will cost you, and so will using an online recruitment site. Posting jobs on your social media platforms won’t cost you anything. Sites like Facebook and Instagram can bill you per click for advertising, but the fees are a fraction of what you would pay for newspaper space.

Additionally, social media can deliver enough traction to bring in candidates with desired qualities in hours. This fast-tracks the recruitment process for lawyers, allowing you to get a healthy pool of qualified candidates quickly.

Recruiters Can Learn More About Prospective Candidates

Traditional job applications don’t allow for much interaction between candidates and recruiters. The online space has immense real estate, and the recruitment process can allow for a much broader information exchange.

One trend towards this is recruiters asking for more outside of academic and professional qualifications. By allowing candidates to share hobbies, interests, and volunteer experiences, recruiters get a more comprehensive look into a candidate’s identity. More professional and personal information makes it easier for recruiters to find hires who will excel at the role and fit into an organization’s culture.

Similarly, recruiters have the chance to look at applicants’ social media activity and profile to learn more about candidates. This is one way to conduct online vetting, as long as their social media is an authentic representation of who they are.

It Increases Your Reach

Social media recruiting will attract both passive and active jobseekers. Passive jobseekers are unlikely to see job ads in the newspaper job ad section. They also are unlikely to log into job sites. However, if they are social media users, they will see advertised roles on social media. They will take the necessary steps should an ad pick their interest. This broader reach of candidates is always a plus for recruiters.

It Facilitates Networking

Social media allows recruiters and HR professionals to connect and network. With time, effective networking for legal professionals becomes an invaluable channel for referring qualified candidates, discussing hiring trends, and sharing industry news.

You Get Applications from Better Suited Candidates

Social media recruitment allows candidates to look into a company. This includes its culture, values, available benefits, and so on. This is useful in attracting hires, particularly younger jobseekers and well-matched candidates.

By placing job ads on social media, answering questions online, and showing who you are as a firm, you increase your chances of getting a wider group of qualified, interested candidates, already familiar with your brand. This means you have applications from people who know who you are and are keen on joining your team.

You Communicate Better

Traditional job adverts are restrictive in terms of how much you can communicate. For example, a newspaper ad will highlight the job description, but say nothing about a company’s culture.

Social media doesn’t have these restrictions. As such, your recruitment communications can include white papers on LinkedIn, videos on YouTube, and infographics on Instagram and Facebook. This allows your firm to tell candidates as much as you need them to know. For example, you can have your job description and include a video to show your CSR activities or photos to show your office space and work culture. Sometimes, it’s these details that push candidates in your direction, as opposed to applying for a job with your competitor.

Choosing the Right Social Media Platforms

Once you decide to take the plunge and get into social media recruitment, among the key things to decide on are platforms. The following considerations will help you identify the best social media platform for your legal recruitment strategy.

Target Audience

The main social media platforms are LinkedIn, X, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

LinkedIn remains king when it comes to recruitment matters across the board. According to the American Bar Association, 83% of law firms are on LinkedIn. This makes it a fertile ground for legal professionals to conduct job searches. Facebook and X follow closely.

This is not to say you should steer clear of the other platforms. You can use Instagram and even TikTok to show your firm’s personality, within reason. The primary consideration is to understand your targeted candidate. If you are looking for seasoned attorneys or partners, LinkedIn should be your go-to. However, for entry-level attorneys and pupils, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are worth considering alongside LinkedIn.

Resources and Budget

Budget and expertise are paramount when thinking about how to recruit legal executives on social media. The platform you use might require some financing. Similarly, all platforms will require some expertise.

So, ask yourself who will be handling the recruitment account or posts. Do you have a social media person, or is it someone from IT or the HR team? If there is not much expertise within the firm, then keep things as simple as possible with simpler platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook.

Similarly, some platforms like Facebook and Instagram will charge you a small fee for advertising. Familiarize yourself with these fees and whether they are within your recruitment budget.

Best Practices for Recruitment Using Social Media

Just like other tools employed in business, social media hiring must be done properly for it to be effective.

Pay Attention to Content

While you might want to appeal to a younger crop of employees, your content must match who you are as a firm. Showing company culture is important, but your social media posts should be a reflection of your firm and should agree with the content on your website and online profiles.

Similarly, be keen to address jobseekers’ main concerns. The primary ones are typically salary packages, work-life balance, job security, growth prospects, and inclusivity. Whenever your chosen platform doesn’t allow you to give complete information, use hashtags and links to route interested applicants to your website or a platform that gives enough room to communicate.

Include Social Media Hiring in Your Online Strategy

Social media for legal recruiting should be part of your overall social media strategy. This is important on three fronts.

One is that it avoids the pitfall of only making a social media post when vacancies fall open. The second is that it works towards your overall branding and marketing strategy. The third is that it helps keep your audience engaged. You want your audience to keep returning to your page and sharing your content. As such, you have more eyes on job adverts when you post.

Measure and Track

Collect and analyze metrics for shares, likes, comments, questions, and applications from social media. Doing that will give you insights into the effectiveness of your social media recruitment and how to streamline your online hiring processes.

If you have questions on recruitment or need help finding good hires, we are the people to contact. Busy law firms don’t need to sift through hundreds of ill-fitting candidates. Our job is to do the vetting and send you a few names for consideration: quality over quantity. Contact us at Astor Professional Search for more information.