Social media recruiting is like dating.

The candidate can’t just be good at what they do, they have to be “the one”: the right fit for you and your company. In the case of social media recruiting, candidates need to believe in the brand of their organization and what it stands for. If marketer and job applicant don’t see eye to eye on how to work together to emulate this brand in the digital space…well, there goes that relationship.

In the Future of Social report, we asked digital marketers if they felt it was difficult to find qualified candidates for social media marketing roles during the hiring process: Social Media recruiting Difficulty       80 percent of respondents feel that finding a qualified social media recruitment candidate is hard. This seems surprising considering the ubiquity of social media in today’s culture, especially among millennials.

Social media recruiting
Rachel Sacks-Hoppenfeld of Anheuser-Busch Inbev

“There is a perception that social media managers are easy to find and that any millennial/recent grad would be great at it, but that is not the case,” says Rachel Sacks-Hoppenfeld of Anheuser-Busch Inbev. “It is very difficult to find someone with the right mix of strategy and execution who also understands your brand’s aesthetic and voice.”

Sacks-Hoppenfeld understands the 1:4 ratio in social media recruiting that our results have produced. For every one marketer that does not find it difficult to find qualified candidates in social media employment, there are four that do. It takes more than just knowing the platforms to rise above the mass amount of so-called “marketing experts” applying for jobs. But with the increasing implementation of social media in digital strategies, it is time for marketers to learn how to find that needle in the haystack of job applicants in order to find that perfect candidate and beat the 1:4 ratio.

To read the entire Future of Social report in partnership with Social Fresh and Simply Measured, click here.