Social Media Recruitment – 9 Instagram Tips for Hiring Chefs

When it comes to social media recruitment, Instagram is important. Why? Because more than 500 million users go on to the platform everyday, spending an average of 53 minutes scrolling, liking, watching and commenting on posts.

During that 53 minutes around half of all users will check out at least one business profile.

This makes it a powerful platform to promote business focused content, but also a great tool for businesses to use as part of their social media recruiting strategy.

Here’s our 9 top tips for social media recruitment using Instagram.

1. Social media recruitment – Think like a head-hunter

Use Instagram’s search function to find chefs across your region who may match your hiring requirements. Request to follow them and for those who accept, send them a direct message giving them more information about your opportunity and a link to apply.

2. Use hashtags#

Did you know that posts on Instagram with at least one hashtag have a 12.6% higher engagement?

Hashtags are a quick way for users to find relevant content based on their preferences. By adding relevant hashtags to your post, you are making it easier for your target audience to find and engage with your content. What you might be less aware of is how word placement in your hashtag is important too.

Say you’re posting a chef job, one of your hashtags might be #hiringnow or could be #nowhiring. But research the traction of each of those and the latter #nowhiring has an additional 1 million posts associated with it. A huge difference. The same applies to using generalist versus niche hashtags.

So it pays to research how your preferred hashtag choices play out on the platform. It’s not all about volume, you want to attract quality applicants, but similarly you need a large enough pool to start out with ahead of a candidate sift.

A good starting point is doing a simple hashtag search on Instagram for #chefjobs to see what other hashtags people looking to hire are using.

3. Make your job post call to action clear

One of the rare things missing from Instagram is the option to share your links in posts. For virtually all of us, adding a live hyperlinked URL to an Instagram post is not possible – however, a simple workaround would be to edit your Instagram bio and insert a link there, making it clear in your job post that’s where interested chefs should click to apply.

To do this, go to your Instagram account and tap ‘Edit Profile’, paste your desired link into the website field and save your changes.

If you have multiple links that you need to share from your Instagram page, consider signing up for a Linktr.ee account. This will let you have one URL link in your bio but from this you can add in multiple links to different web pages etc.

However, If you just want to share a link to your full job ad or application page within your Instagram post you may want to shorten it first with a tool like Bitly. This will make it easier for a user to re-type or copy and paste it in into their browser to view.

You can also share links on your Instagram story. Instagram now allows links to be added to stories for ALL users, not just users with 10,000+ followers. By way of adding a link sticker. Search ‘Instagram + link sticker’ for detail and direction around doing this.

If you have an Instagram business profile, you can also pay to sponsor your post which will give you the option to add a call-to-action link/button at the bottom of it. Sponsored posts also enable you to set your target audience to ensure maximum (relevant) exposure.

Lastly, you can also share links via your Instagram account (if it’s a business not personal account) via action buttons. These are displayed next to your Contact and Message tabs. You can select various calls to actions like Call, Text and Email buttons, which you could use for your job ad call to action.

4. Social media recruitment – Make sure you add location and salary to your job post

Instagram posts that use geolocation have an almost 80% increase in engagement compared to those that don’t. Tagging your location on an Instagram post increases visibility among your target audience on the ‘explore’ page and location-based stories. 

Also remember to add a salary to your job ad post – without one your opportunity is likely to be overlooked by more than 80% of candidates.

5. Showcase your authenticity

Instagram is all about telling stories through images. That’s why it’s great for creating strong brand awareness across your potential candidate audience. When companies showcase their company culture and employer branding, it focuses on the things that a potential candidate may want in an employer.

Users should see your content as authentic – yes, even when it’s a job ad campaign. They tend to be more responsive to visuals that have the faces of real people in since it humanises the company and makes it more relatable.

6. Post an Instagram story

Did you know that 62% of users are more interested in a company brand after seeing it in an Instagram story? Instagram stories are videos or images that are only available on the Instagram platform for 24 hours. They show up on the top of the screen and play automatically one video after the other. It’s a highly-engaging feature for the millions of people that check out story content daily.

With Instagram stories you can select which ones you want to feature on your profile. They’re also a quick and easy way to segregate content into different highlights. For example, company life, events, job roles, testimonials. Once a story is added to a highlight it remains their unless you delete it. This approach makes it easier for your audience to select which highlights are of interest to them and view content.

7. Social media recruitment – Utilise videos and Instagram reels

Instagram videos have twice the engagement compared to static images. Instagram reels is a feature that allows users to record and edit “TikTok-esque” 90-second multi-clip videos with a bunch of creative effects and tools.

These features are a great way to share your company with your audience, and great insight for potential hires who want to find out more about who you are, what you do, how you do it and what it’s like to work as part of your team.

8. Research and schedule your posts

Current platform-wide research suggests that Instagram users are most active on Wednesdays and Thursdays. But don’t forget you can check out the Insights tab on your Instagram account for valuable intel specific to your followers

However, also think about when chefs have time off – Monday – Tuesday? Would this be a good time to post about a new chef job..? Each business is different and your target audiences will differ depending on the level of chef role you’re recruiting for, so research and testing will be needed to find out what specifics work best for your recruitment activity.

If you have a business Instagram account, once you’ve uploaded a job post you could choose to pay to boost it to a target audience of your choosing. However, if you want more detailed targeting options than those offered by the ‘boost’ functionality you may want to investigate running your Instagram post ads via Facebook’s Ads Manager.

9. Social media recruitment – Get employees sharing!

Get employees to share the recruitment content you post on their Instagram accounts.

Send your video stories to them so they can add to their profiles and ask them to like and comment on the posts you make on your account.

Everyone on social media has a network and influence that may just help you secure that next chef hire.

And finally..

The industry has changed, but has your approach to hiring chefs?

A smaller chef talent pool and much more competition means it’s vital for every employer regardless of size to utilise the most effective recruitment tools in the market to engage the talent they need.

Save yourself precious time and money by using Only Chefs – The UK’s leading chef-only direct hire platform. Plus, sign up today and get 6 weeks free access to the platform and a chance to win 12 months free access worth £3,000 (T&Cs apply, click link for more).

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