According to researchers, the connection between social media activity (ex. someone liking something you post) and follow-on profit-generating outcomes is not very strong.
 
For traditional marketers, the profitable behaviors are actions such as getting a prospect to buy something or recommending a product to a friend.
 
For recruiting, the profitable behaviors are similar. A hire is the end goal, but getting a prospect to refer you to someone else in their network is also helpful.
 
After five separate experiments involving thousands of subjects and prominent brands, researchers concluded:
 
“By itself, the act of liking a [post in a social media venue]—requiring mere seconds of attention and, by design, one click of a button—may simply induce too weak a signal to modify behavior.”
 
This doesn’t mean social media engagement is useless, but it was shown to be helpful only when it was followed-up by additional, actionable steps. 
 
The actionable steps for a hiring manager can initially be small things like getting permission to follow-up later via email or agreeing to a scheduled call-back in a few weeks. 
 
Eventually, live conversations (via phone, email, and text) and face-to-face meetings need to ensue to convert any social media good will into profit generating activities.
 
The lead measure of recruiting will always be face-to-face appointments. Your social media activities will only prove helpful if they’re supporting this objective.