A specialist recruitment platform with a knack for finding hard-to-reach candidates on social media is enjoying blistering growth as companies look to go the extra mile to hunt the best people in a tight labour market.
Socially Recruited has just enjoyed its most successful year to date, with turnover surging 150%, its number of client campaigns rising by 170% and annual revenue jumping 171% in the latest quarter.
The company, which launched in 2017, uses AI-enabled technology to pinpoint would-be recruits through their online behaviour and then deliver them suitable job ads. These are calibrated to their schedules by machine learning, and will appear across a range of media channels from Google and Facebook to Instagram, TikTok and even Tinder.
AI is at the forefront of recruitment technology and companies are increasingly seeking advanced solutions in a UK labour market where the number of jobseekers is dwarfed by the amount of vacancies. With its tailored approach, Socially Recruited helps to quickly target valuable passive candidates — people with desirable skill sets who are not actively looking for roles — and remove unconscious bias while building a talent pool for a new position.
The company has won a number of high-profile global and UK clients, including Amazon, Barclays, Tesco, KFC, Superdrug and Morrisons. In 2022 it saw its proportion of multinational clients nearly double from 35% to 65%. And with business booming, Socially Recruited has also expanded its team, with staff numbers trebling (188%) in the last 12 months.
“Socially Recruited is at the forefront of a new era of smart AI-driven recruitment, and we are delighted to see it grow as it rises to meet the challenges of the sector,” said founder Ben Keighley.
“These have grown exponentially in recent years, with the pandemic bringing seismic change to the labour market, coupled with a legacy that has thrown aside many preconceptions about what jobseekers want.
“When it comes to hiring for new roles it’s now far more important for companies to cast their nets more smartly than more widely. This means better and faster targeting that can help nudge your next great hire into applying, even if they are not actively looking for a job.
“Our research shows that 86% of candidates are open to being approached about new opportunities through social media. In this tight labour market, and with many workers putting job-hunting plans on pause amid talk of recession, it’s the perfect time for companies to adopt a more proactive strategy to reach them.”