Is Twitter – sorry X – relevant to recruiters again?
Posted on 25th August 2023 by Phil Brown
Once upon a time, recruitment consultants and internal recruiter would load their latest job into the ATS, and off it would go to the company website or job boards. Then, posting the job to social media became an option for many systems. Granted, you would always enjoy better responses from the job boards and LinkedIn, but extra exposure on social media got better as sites like Facebook opened up to more users.
One platform that became a recruiter favourite was Twitter. With it’s low word count, ability to add links and images easily, and the ability to interact immediately via comments, made Twitter another recruitment tool in the arsenal.
But, it all went wrong.
A steady decline
Twitter’s relevance saw a slow decline as the platform reshaped itself into an outlet for comedians, politicians, the far left and right, and of course the meme fanatics. Job ad postings on Twitter suddenly lost their value.
Although not everyone gave up, the focus went back to the job boards, and more importantly, LinkedIn, as it really cemented its status as the world’s social network for work. For a long time, Twitter has been the black sheep of the social media world, struggling against the meteoric rise of Facebook and Instagram, and eventually TikTok. Recruiters’ approaches changed too, with more visible campaigns and practices like employer branding working a lot better on visual platforms like those mentioned.
Now, Twitter has had a rocket firmly fired into its core. Multi-billionaire businessman / PR expert / NASA competitor Elon Musk is busy ripping the brand into pieces and attempting to make Twitter relevant again. After he’d fired a huge chunk of the workforce, sometimes via WhatsApp or even napkin, he told someone to chisel the blue bird off the side of Twitter’s HQ and replace it with a gigantic X.
So, now we have to call Twi- sorry X, X.
What’s the impact for recruiters?
Right now, it’s sort of BAU at X. New features are being rolled out, like making it easier for accounts to get verified, but the real sweeping changes and features remain at the brand level. The big change, however, is hoped to be around usership. Musk has repeatedly bemoaned the presence of bots on X, and the aim of the game now is to get the database back to committed, quality users who share their life stories, news updates, and of course things like job posts.
One thing recruiters could benefit from is the ability to pay $8 per month to become verified. This means your organic tweets- sorry posts – are more likely to be seen, and of course standard users will see your brand as ‘trusted’ if they see the tick. If your organisation’s X account is verified, then you could see a small uplift in applications, as more people should see your posts.
The other thing X hopes to get better at is user data and analytics. Facebook practically wrote the book on data capture, with users able to add all sorts of personal details, but this has alluded X. If X can suddenly offer better targeting, then recruiters may want to think twice about coming back to Twitter and paying for ads.
As it stands, it’s probably wise to maintain that X presence, but in all honesty, X isn’t going to give you that huge uplift in applications. Like other social media channels, it’s a bonus if you do hire from X, and as usual, the focus should still be on Linkedin and the job boards!
If you want to reduce your spend on either of these channels, then please get in touch with Artfully Media and we’ll pass on our job board and LinkedIn savings to you!
