Recruitment marketing is the earliest and most persistent aspect of talent acquisition, and is therefore essential to sourcing and hiring quality candidates, and keeping your talent pool engaged. But, how do you get talented people to know about your brand, your job openings, and inspire them to apply to your open positions? We’ve identified five tactics to help drive an optimal recruitment marketing strategy.
Employer Branding + Positioning
The reality is, the lines between your consumer brand and your employer brand are blurred. In the same way that you position and promote the unique value propositions of your product offerings to attract and engage customers, you must highlight your unique employee value propositions to attract and engage the best applicants.
Building a positive reputation as a good company to work for is essential – especially in today’s candidate-driven market. Do you have formal diversity and inclusion programs or policies? Have you been taking a proactive approach to keeping employees healthy and safe through the COVID pandemic? Do you offer training programs and opportunities for advancement? Do you offer flexible work schedules? These are all things that are top of mind for today’s applicant – especially within the service industry.
Make sure to weave these important details into your career site, job postings, and social media channels. Candidates like to know what measures companies are taking to create the best possible environment for employees. Take it a step further and get creative with your postings and campaigns – try using videos to inform applicants of your brand, what they can expect, and any initiatives you’re focusing on that set you up as the employer of choice.
Talent Community
Building a robust talent community will help your company conquer the applicant flow challenges we’re all seeing in the market. Keeping candidates interested in you as an employer, and updating them on new policies and procedures (COVID safety, diversity, training, etc.) is important to having a pool of applicants at the ready. This could include email updates, SMS messaging, and mobile experiences to send job updates and make it easy for people to apply.
Broadening Your Reach
Be sure to expand your reach and deliver your job openings and your brand messaging out to all of the channels where your applicants are spending their time, including:
- Search engine optimization (SEO) – if you’re among the first employers or if your job postings are among the top to appear in a Google search, you’re more likely to net an increased amount of applications
- General job boards such as Indeed and Google Jobs
- Specialty job boards such as diversity sites and state and local job boards
- Social media sites
- Programmatic job advertising
- Employee Referrals
Data + Analytics
Casting a wide net may seem like the best approach, but be sure to track where quality and quantity of applicants are coming from. Knowing where you’re getting the most return on investment will allow you to double down your efforts on the channel that’s performing the best. Innovative talent management systems can track where you’re spending the most, and where you’re getting the best results.
Content + Candidate Relationship Management
Leveraging branded content and digital media to attract and audience and inform candidates can make or break your recruitment marketing strategy. Beyond that, being able to update your brand content, imagery, videos, and more can make a huge difference in interesting candidates with fresh, timely messages that appeal to them.
A good tech stack will be your friend here. Look for a talent management system that combines a strong Content Management System (CMS) with a Candidate Relationship Management System (CRM) that allows corporate recruiters and field hiring managers to update content and syndicate through the best possible channels.
Building a positive reputation as an employer of choice that provides updated, branded content and digital media will enable you to nab the best candidates and build a large talent community that you can communicate new opportunities to. And, having innovative talent management tech will allow you to track which hiring channel you’re getting the most ROI, so you can keep applications flowing in.