Beyond chat: Why recruiters should join a Slack community
Even if you don’t have a dedicated hiring team, it’s important to get involved in the recruiting community and build strong relationships that could lead to your next hire. What better way to start making those connections than by joining a Slack community?
If you don’t already use Slack as a recruiter, there are a lot of good reasons why you should:
Get real-time advice from experts in the HR world. Ask questions, request feedback or bounce around ideas with people who’ve been there, done that.
Meet new friends and mentors. Network with like-minded hirers who have the same challenges and can share their solutions.
Discover and share useful resources. Make recommendations, share your experiences and discuss industry news and tips.
Find the talent you’re looking for. Post job listings, share candidates with other recruiters and connect with candidates where they hang out.
Streamline your hiring process. Collaborate on writing job descriptions, arranging interviews (and trading interview notes) and onboarding new employees.
More cat GIFs.
The best Slack communities for recruiter discussions
To get you started, we’ve rounded up some of the best Slack communities where you can meet others passionate about recruitment, learn about new tools your peers use and find the inspiration you need to make better hires.
1. Hacking HR
A global community of HR change-makers, Hacking HR is where you can chat with people who are passionate about the intersection of the future of work, technology, people and organizations. Its primary channels are #diversityandinclusion, #hrtech, #peopleanalytics and #resources.
Get instant access to the community.
2. HRtoHR
No need to attend an expensive recruiting conference in a faraway city. HRtoHR is where HR professionals learn from each other in real time by chatting about best practices, new tools, everyday challenges and more.
Get instant access to the community.
3. People Geeks
With over 8,500 members, People Geeks is a place to talk about workplace culture, learn about the latest in people analytics and share candidates, open roles, articles and advice. You’ll also find location-based channels for cities across the world so you can connect with those in your local area.
Get instant access to the community.
4. PeoplePeople
Join this community to meet talent industry experts from around the world, share ideas about the changing recruiting landscape and take part in AMAs with recruiting influencers. Channel topics run from #culture-tactics to #interestingarticles to #networking (which automatically matches you with someone else in the channel each month).
Get instant access to the community.
5. Resources for Humans
Join this Slack community of 10,000+ HR leaders to ask for and give advice and sync and network with like-minded HR professionals. Popular channels include #talent-acquisition, #performance-mgmt, #strategic-hr and #hr-tech.
Apply to join the community here.
6. Culture Corner
A free Slack community for people working in People Ops and human resources. A great place for HR professionals to connect, share advice and ask and answer questions.
Answer a few questions to get access to the community.
7. OneReq
A free Slack community where 1,000+ talent acquisition professionals from recruiters to program/ops managers and employer brand marketers come together to discuss HR trends, technology and the latest recruiting innovations. Topics of conversation range from diversity and inclusion to recruiting products to university recruiting.
Get instant access to the community.
You can use Slack communities to source candidates, too
Unlike other social platforms, Slack is pretty quiet when it comes to recruiter activity. That means your outreach will likely get more engagement than it does on more common sourcing channels. And since there are Slack communities for nearly every role and skill out there (with thousands of active members you can message directly), there’s no shortage of talent to tap into.
Use Slofile — a database of public Slack groups — to search for a Slack community centered around a role or skill. Not only will you learn more about these roles and skills, but you’ll also get to see how members talk about job hunting so you know how to approach potential candidates, as well as collect valuable insights for more personalized outreach.
If you’re looking for a graphic designer, for example, you could join a community like Designer Hangout. Need a salesperson? Check out WomeninSales.
Bonus: Create your own Slack channel to streamline the hiring process
Another way to take advantage of Slack as a recruiter is to create your own internal Slack channel to keep track of the hiring process. While it’s not quite the same concept as a Slack community, creating your own Slack channel can make the hiring process faster and more efficient.
Start a private channel for each role you need to fill (#hiring-[job title]) and invite everyone on your team who needs to be involved in the process. Pin the job listing at the top and include a plan for how you’ll go about filling the role. This might include setting deadlines, adding interview notes and feedback, sharing promising candidates and storing HR documents and candidate resumes.
Other ideas include encouraging employee referrals by creating a channel where you announce new job openings to a company-wide audience or creating an #onboarding channel to make sure new hires don’t feel lost or confused in their first days and weeks (and to boost retention).
There’s no question: Slack dominates the workplace. You’re probably already using it to chat to your team (and react to messages using your favorite memes)— but you can use it for much more than that.
Join a few Slack communities that pique your interest to network with (and learn from) other recruiters. What roles are you hiring for? Get involved in a group you think your ideal candidate might be part of — whether it’s based on role title, skills or location — and start to form connections.
