Introduction
Welcome to Hire We Go!, the show where we get to the heart of what’s happening in talent acquisition. We’re diving into the strategies and solutions that are transforming how companies find, attract, and engage with top talent. In this episode of Hire We Go!, we sat down with Toby Rice, Founder of SocialJobs, to discuss recruitment marketing, the power of social media for sourcing, and what quality over quantity really means in talent acquisition today.
Ashlie Collins:
Hello and welcome to Hire We Go!, where we’re chatting all things talent acquisition transformation. Whether you’re an HR vet or someone who’s simply fascinated by how to find, attract, and engage talent, you are in the right place. I’m your host and Director of Solutions here at Joveo, Ashlie Collins, and joining us today is Toby Rice of SocialJobs.
Thank you so much for joining us today, Toby. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and SocialJobs?
Toby Rice:
Yeah, thanks, Ashlie, and great to be here with you. Really appreciate the invite! So like a lot of people, I kind of fell into this industry almost 20 years ago now. And I started at a job board back at a time when job boards were kind of the way to go. And almost 8 years ago, I transitioned into social media and started SocialJobs.
So, SocialJobs is a recruitment marketing company focused 100% on social media. Really, the opportunity that I saw was job boards are great, up and to a point. You can put a job. If you have the right applicants coming in, super easy, super cost effective, and great for maybe 80%, 90% of roles. But the challenge is if you have a job that’s not getting a lot of traction, maybe it’s a difficult job, difficult location. There’s very little that job boards can really do to kind of reach out to candidates and kind of get extra exposure for that job. And early on, I started experimenting with social media. I mean, everyone’s on social media. So that’s a great place to kind of go and reach out to people. And that’s really what we’re all about.
So we’re a sort of a white glove service. We work with clients. We take their jobs, and we turn them into social media campaigns that get in front of the right candidates. And what’s really unique is we’ve really turned this into a product. So for that employment team that doesn’t have the time or the resources or the marketing support or the experience to go through this whole steep learning curve of using social media, running paid campaigns. We sell it as a product that’s just as easy as putting a job on Indeed. You just need a job description. You can send that to us. And within 48 hours, we’ll have a campaign up and running that’s delivering candidates back to you. So it’s all about that – super easy, low-friction user experience that makes it very easy for candidates.
Ashlie Collins:
I love that. And I’ll tell you, I mean, we see this in my daily life. I’m coming across like, what’s the right channel for this job in this location? And particularly when you’re discussing hard-to-fill positions. And I think you’re spot on. I think people get intimidated by the concept of deploying socials. It’s like, I’m not a marketer. Where do I even start with this?
So I love that you’re making that super simple, super easy. Just give me the job. Don’t worry about it. We got you. And I guess that leads me to really kind of thinking about… from your perspective, like what’s the hidden opportunity in social media that employers just might not be aware of?
Toby Rice:
Yeah, so that’s a great question. I think that the thing that people might not realize is really the value of candidates that, what I call “opt in” to jobs. You have this kind of spectrum where if you’re an internal talent acquisition team and you have a role that you’ve been given, you can do some research to find your ideal candidate, do some outreach to them.
That’s very time intensive, but usually very effective, very high quality. And at the other end of that spectrum, you have all of the job search sites now, which are just pushing quick-apply, where candidates are just applying to masses of jobs with very little thought, very little consideration about fit for the job. It’s just super easy. So you can go the quality route, which takes a huge amount of time or you can deal with this massive volume of candidates that are just applying in droves.
With social media, there’s a nice sweet spot in the middle where you can build an audience, predefine who you want to see your jobs, push those jobs out to them, and then these kind of passive or semi-passive candidates then opt themselves in. So they still have to respond, they still have to apply, but it’s not a quick-apply where they’re just going down a list of 100 jobs and applying to every one. Something has to have caught their attention, resonated with them, and then it could be the brand. Maybe they think this is an exciting company to work for, or this is really the experience that kind of matches with the candidate’s skill set. If you’re on Instagram and you’re browsing, doing your thing and something catches your attention, there’s a reason behind that, something that the candidate really relates to.
The way that…the really cool way, and this is a little unexpected, I’ve got to be honest, but the thing that kind of… how this applies to the end user, which is a client, see employees, is they see things like lower turnover.
And I wasn’t fully expecting this early on, but from like Facebook for high volume roles that are generally high turnover roles, we’ve had multiple clients report lower turnover because the quality of the match is… something appealed to the candidate. So it makes a real difference in the quality of the people that are coming through.
Ashlie Collins:
That makes a lot of sense actually, because if you think about it, you’re engaging with somebody not in a direct job-related activity, and whatever you said or presented was compelling enough to interrupt what they were doing and bring them in. And if I put my candidate hat on for a second, I would much rather be interrupted with a job that could change my life than yet another item that I am spending money I shouldn’t be spending on to procure.
So I’ll take that any day of the week. And my last question for you, Toby, if you had a magic wand, what would you change about talent sourcing in 2025?
Toby Rice:
I think what I’d like to see is an emphasis on quality over quantity. And I think with AI, we’re getting further in the volume sort of direction. Mass supplies through AI tools. And it’s just flooding everyone’s days with just a lot of busy work. I’d like to see better matches.
We’ve tried to make some strides here. We started using two-factor authentication. So when candidates apply, now we send them a text message and they have to put in a code, which is a little bit of a barrier, but you know, it kind of… it just has a little bit of friction just to make sure that people are really interested, their mobile number is valid, they’re a real person. So I’d like to see more people developing tools that really focus on improving the quality of matches and not so much the volume. It’s way too much volume. Nobody needs more replies. They need better replies.
Ashlie Collins:
Better replies, 100%. If you’ve ever listened to any of the episodes, you’ll know I’m a big fan of positive frictions. Let’s keep it coming. Well, thank you so much, Toby, for sharing more about what you do, your insights, your knowledge and experience with us. Massively appreciate it. And thank you all for continuing to tune in. We’ll see you next time.
Toby Rice:
Yep, yep, love that.
Toby Rice:
My pleasure.
Conclusion
As we wrap up today’s conversation, one thing is clear: the future of talent acquisition is all about meaningful connections, quality candidates, and using smart tools to break through the noise. Thanks for joining us on Hire We Go! – until next time, keep hiring smarter.
