Social-media and university relationships

What according to you is the need of a university to be active on social media? How does it impact the recruitment scenario of university?

Social Media has become an essential part of every business nowadays and universities have also begun to implement social media presence across platforms. Universities are fortunate to already have such a specific and dedicated audience. This audience is made up of students (prospective, current, former), faculty, educators, and more — all of whom are directly connected with or interested in the university.

Being active on social media can help universities in reaching out to its vast number of stakeholders. Universities can also use these platforms to build an active community, which would involve sharing relevant and interesting content and inviting the online community to participate in the events. An active, engaged community is a sign of a thriving relationship as the connection and interaction need two-way communication. Social Media can also help the universities in keeping their audiences informed and updated, monitor reputation and measure the success of a campaign.

What kind of content (direct ad/student success stories/event plans/knowledge based write-ups) does your university prefer sharing on social network to boost recruiter’s interest?

While the bulk of our posts are direct representations of our university online, we are careful not to be doing the same types of posts all the time. While the primary goal is about attracting new students as also the recruiters via social media, same type of posts get stale quickly and people will simply stop paying attention. Instead, we vary our posts and create interest in many different areas, like:- News, Research Published, Student activity Highlights, Sports Updates, Campus Events etc

What platform or websites do you prefer to seek a recruiter for campus hiring?

For campus hiring the best social media platform is Linkedin, as it keeps all engagements professional and it’s easy to connect with companies.

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Fake recruiters usually spell ‘jobs’ as ‘j0bs’, or they use a picture with text ‘jobs’, in order to circumnavigate the filters

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What’s the response rate of recruiters once you send a campus drive proposal over social media? Do they take it serious?

For our categories of recruiters, the response rate is very high. We do not however do specific drives but find other creative ways of engaging with them.

Do you see any major difference in the way Indian Universities and Foreign Universities handle their social media handles?

Indian universities have just begun to use social media and so their approach is still in its infancy. Their content is still week, devoid of interesting stories or active contents like podcasts and live streaming. They have not started using analytics. Nor have they started involving their own students as part of the strategy.

How do you differentiate between a genuine versus fake recruiters on social media? What strategies do you apply?

There have been an increasing number of instances recently, relayed by the members of various career forum groups on LinkedIn, of fake recruiters trying to obtain LinkedIn users’ sensitive information by sending out bogus job offers. These fraudsters are by no means restricted to LinkedIn – they can also be found across Twitter and Facebook. These fake recruiters usually displayed very similar characteristics, such as; they bill themselves as recruiters for fake firms or are supposedly self employed, they copy text from profiles of real professionals and paste it into their own, they primarily use photos of women pulled from stock image sites or of real professionals.

There are however many obvious, tell-tale indicators of a fake recruiter’s page – If the recruiter’s LinkedIn profile has few connections or doesn’t have complete information, be on your guard. Copy the recruiter’s photo and text from their LinkedIn profile, then paste it into Google and perform a search. Scammers often steal information from legitimate listings to create their fake profile. Verify that his email address matches the genuine company’s site email address. Google the person’s name plus the word “scam” to see if anyone else has posted any complaints. Such people usually spell ‘jobs’ as ‘j0bs’ on their profile, or they use a picture with the text ‘jobs’, so they’re able to circumnavigate the LinkedIn filter and many other such pointers.

Does your university appoint any social media manager to handle the web presence? If yes, how does it help?

Our social media is handled by a group of faculty and not by a manager as it keep the posts real and authentic and ‘true to character’.