Recruitment Marketing for HR Managers

Keeping up with competitors and consumer demand is the constant challenge that businesses face. Companies must optimize the customer experience, excel in research and development, refine the various processes and systems—the list goes on and on.

In order to achieve any of this, they must employ the right people. It is for this reason that recruitment is paramount. You need to attract the top talent and the most effective way of accomplishing that is through recruitment marketing.

What Is Recruitment Marketing?

Recruitment marketing is a strategy for building a strong workforce. Its main purpose is to build up a business’ brand. This process is especially essential for acquiring employees that have niche or in-demand skills.

While building a business’ brand is often part of every marketing effort, it is handled differently with recruitment marketing. It tends to be more personalized, due to the fact that the target audience is often only a handful of people. To accomplish this, companies will utilize a number of strategies, such as creating employment videos, advertising positions on social media, and using SEO tactics on career sites.

Top of the Funnel Marketing

It is, however, essential to note that recruitment marketing is not a replacement for recruiting. Instead, this form of marketing is an augmentation for recruitment. In the hiring process, it is at the top of the funnel.

So while the function of the bottom of the funnel is to convince the candidate to apply and hire them, the top of the funnel works to:

1. Create awareness for specific prospective candidates.
2. Develop an interest in working for the company in those candidates.
3. Generate excitement about a specific organizational position in said candidates.

Another reason why recruitment marketing is at the top of the recruitment funnel is that it is not necessarily targeted at active talent—or talent that is currently looking for employment. Instead, it is often targeted at passive talent—talent that is gainfully employed.

Its goal is to identify this talent and start nurturing it. This allows an organization to be first in line when top-of-the-field professionals are ready to make a career move.

In short, recruitment marketing changes how recruiters think about prospective employees. Due to the difficulty of finding the best talent, recruiters must stop looking at individuals as candidates and instead view them as customers.

Recruitment marketing helps to create this transition. It prioritizes developing knowledge of, belief in, and engagement with a brand.

Benefits Of Recruitment Marketing

Recruitment marketing is no small task. It is an entirely new process for a business to take on. It requires resources, such as new software, expertise, and time. But for the companies that do properly integrate it into their systems, there are measurable benefits.

1. A More Measurable Recruitment Process

In a world where big data is king and every piece of a business must be picked apart and optimized, companies need to look for ways to measure their business processes. Traditionally, recruitment has been a difficult area to measure. It is often very qualitative and subjective, with the objective numbers providing little insight. Recruitment marketing changes this.

Infusing marketing into recruiting allows companies to calculate the return on the resources they invest into obtaining employees. They can analyze every recruitment marketing campaign, enabling them to clearly identify what works and what does not. This type of bird’s-eye view of recruitment has never been possible before. In other words, companies can now continuously optimize their recruitment funnel, which will only enhance their workforce over the long-term.

2. Stronger Workforce

As previously stated, while many other areas of business have started to rely on technology, data, and artificial intelligence, recruitment has lagged behind. Instead, it has been forced to use human intuition, which too often leads to human error. Companies can end up with employees that fill vacant spots but do not push the organization forward.

Recruitment marketing helps to lower the possibility of these errors. It is powered by artificial intelligence and is big data-enabled. This advancement allows companies to both cast a wider net for prospective employees and more effectively target the right standard of employee. This ability transforms the recruiting funnel, allowing only the best candidates to go through the interview and hiring process.

3. Efficient Recruitment Process

While much of recruitment marketing involves building the organizational brand, which is an ongoing process, the use of software enables increased efficiency.

• The first way this software quickens the process is by empowering organizations to find the best candidates faster than ever before.
• The second way is through analytics. The insights provided allow companies to optimize their recruitment marketing campaigns, attracting potential candidates to the company with greater speed.
• The third reason for enhanced efficiency is the automation that it brings. The software can automate much of the process, freeing up recruiters to pursue higher value tasks.

4. Increased Candidate Interest

If a company is not well known, or worse if they are not highly regarded, there is only so much a recruiter can do to bring in top talent. Businesses will either have to settle for an average workforce or they will have to substantially increase their budget for salaries, which will only do so much good.

Recruitment marketing addresses the source of the issue by:

• Increasing awareness about the company so that there is name recognition when a potential candidate sees a job opening.
• Developing trust, allowing prospects to feel confident about applying for a position with the organization.
• Illustrating the business’ value, which ignites excitement in the top talent.
• Showcasing company culture to help make you more attractive to prospects.

Recruitment Marketing Metrics

As stated above, one of the advantages that recruitment marketing brings to recruitment is the ability to analyze, monitor, and optimize with in-depth metrics. The following are some of the most valuable metrics companies should be utilizing with this new process:

1. Engagement

Recruitment marketing is about the long game. Many of the prospective candidates will not become actual candidates for years, yet it is still essential to nurture a relationship with them. It is just as essential to track this relationship (i.e. engagement). Doing so will allow companies to prioritize the right candidates, optimize the engagement process, and more.

2. Conversion Statistics

These metrics will often take years to become reliable. This is because it takes years to fully convert prospective candidates into employees and it takes years to measure their performance and lifespan with the organization. However, building these statistics will transform the entire recruitment process.

3. Pipeline Generation

These metrics will identify how many candidates are captured by each campaign, how many candidates are added to the pipeline in each quarter, and which recruitment marketing method is the most successful. By looking at these numbers, organizations can more effectively and precisely invest in their recruitment marketing efforts.

A Strategy For Recruitment Marketing

Just as with recruiting, just as with marketing, and just as with every other business process, this process requires a strong strategy. Organizations need to lay out what their goal is and how they plan to get there. Here are a few tips for creating a well-rounded strategy.

1. Identify The Target

This is the starting place for any recruitment marketing campaign—as well as the entire process, in general. A company needs to identify exactly who they are looking to hire. This includes what generation they are in, what their background is, where they have worked, any special skills they should have—the more specific the target description is, the more effective the campaign will be at connecting with the right people.

2. Craft A Message

Next, a business should develop the message that they want to share.  Design this message to resonate with the target candidates. The message will shape how these individuals view the brand. It will help differentiate the company from its competitors. It should create clarity, ignite interest, and produce passion.

3. Spread The Message

Once the target audience is created and the message is developed, it needs to be shared. Businesses should think about how they want to share this message (i.e. job boards, social media, website, partnerships, etc). The most effective way to automate these campaigns is by using technology. Various software is available that not only automates, but also monitors, analyzes, and provides feedback. These are discussed below.

Recruitment Marketing Software

There are a lot of steps that are involved in a successful recruitment marketing campaign.  You have two main options to leverage to reduce your overhead in getting them done.

You can outsource all or part of it to an RPO company like Mogel or you can attempt to do it yourself by using software that automates some of the steps.  If you want to try the software route, here are the 5 top rated recruitment marketing platforms available right now.

1. LinkedIn Talent
2. Zoho Recruit
3. SmartRecruiters
4. Newton ATS
5. BreezyHR

Keep in mind that if you’re using a software platform, you are still responsible for developing the strategy that goes into your campaigns.  The software just automates some of the tasks.

However, if you go with an RPO company like Mogel, then you have a partner that will help you come up with the strategy and work with you to make it successful.

They can help you do things like:

1. Track the performance of your campaigns across all of your marketing channels.
2. Enhance organizational branding on testimonial websites, job portals, and career websites.
3. Utilize social recruiting and workforce referrals.
4. Manage the placement of job openings, as well as the marketing campaigns associated with them.
5. Monitor and organize candidates with a CRM.

While all of your options share some similar characteristics, they work in unique ways.

Next Steps

Recruitment marketing and the software that comes along with it can be complex to navigate. Therefore, in order to gain the most out of the technology and to build a strong recruitment marketing process, it can be best to work with a recruitment process outsourcing firm. To find out more, please contact us, email us at Sales@Mogelrpo.com, or request a quote.