You may already know of people who you think would be suitable candidates and you can of course invite them to apply, but it is very important that preferential treatment is not given to them and each council job is advertised so that our processes are transparent and fair.
The vacancy control process will have determined how and where the job should be advertised. Approval may have been given to recruit only from internal candidates or from both internal and external candidates.
If external applications are invited, you may also have approval to advertise using not only our website but also external media such as local or national press and related websites or social media for example Twitter, Facebook, Indeed and LinkedIn.
The Recruitment Team will be able to provide information on the success rates of previous similar adverts, as the majority of people search for jobs online and external adverts for many jobs will be most effective if they appear on job websites.
Using social media in recruitment
There has been a huge growth in online recruitment through websites, including our own jobs site. In addition, the use of social media is now so widespread that it could help you attract more quality applicants for your job than a ‘passive’ advert on a website alone, which may only be seen by people actively looking for a job.
Social media can be used to:
- broadcast a vacancy to increase the number of people who see it through Twitter, Facebook, Indeed, TotalJobs or LinkedIn.
- target relevant groups of people/communities through paid for advertising on Indeed LinkedIn, Facebook or Google.
Promoting vacancies on our accounts at no cost
The council has its own Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. There is no charge for doing this. For more information, please contact the Recruitment Team.
Paying to target groups of people
Facebook campaigns have been used within the council, to recruit adult care workers, social workers and apprentices, with good results.
Facebook is useful for reaching people who may not be actively looking for a job, as the opportunity is targeted to relevant Facebook members and widely ‘shared’ through the Facebook community.
The cost of advertising on Facebook varies according to how much active marketing is included but seek advice from the Recruitment team on how much is recommended on your post.
LinkedIn advertising enables a job to be targeted to relevant LinkedIn members, according to their professional interests or location, and has been used within the council for advertising professional and senior management posts.
We also get good responses for Social Workers, so seek the Recruitment Team for advice on this.
Indeed - Sponsored Indeed advert costs are based on a ‘pay per click’ model and is billed based on the number of clicks the ad receives, you pay only for the click-throughs to our website. The Indeed ad will create a daily budget to adhere to, dependent upon the overall budget available. If the daily budget is £10 and the average CPC is 10p then the maximum daily clicks the ad can receive is 100.
Once the budget is met, the ad is removed from the spot on the site and will re-appear the following day with the next daily budget. Depending on the popularity of the job, the full budget may not be spent.
Google AdWords is an excellent tool for targeting people who are actively searching for a role you are trying to fill. These are people who may not think to come to our website for a job and their first port of call will be a search in Google.
If the words people use to google match your key words, the advert can appear above the search results. This is most useful for jobs which are regularly advertised such as social workers or care workers. We can target locations and keywords to ensure our job advert appears at the top and you only pay when a person looking for specified keywords clicks through to our website.
The cost of advertising varies according to how much active marketing is included but a minimum of £800-£1,000 is recommended, inclusive of set up costs and ongoing management of the campaign.
For more information about paid for social media advertising contact the the Recruitment Team
Any advertising on social media must run parallel with an advert on the council’s jobs website and should appear for the same length of time. Applicants viewing the advert on social media must be directed to the council’s job website for more information and to apply online. The description of the job, and details about the council should also be consistent with any information for applicants provided elsewhere on the council’s website, so that wherever an applicant sees the job, the information they can access about it is the same.