Recruiters know that some of the best hires come from reaching out to passive candidates — highly qualified or experienced individuals who may seem happy in their current roles. With the right motivation, these candidates could be tempted to apply for a job with another organization, perhaps if the pay was better, the benefits more attractive, or simply because the company markets itself as a better place to work.
Marketing is the key here. Recruiters need to figure out how to leverage marketing techniques to fill roles that will otherwise remain empty because the talent is already gainfully employed. By moving to a digital marketing mindset, recruiters can build relationships with potential hires and create a talent pipeline for future openings.
Conventional Recruitment Vs. Traditional Marketing
The days have long passed where recruiters could post a job description and a contact number and hope for the best. Advancements in technology have changed the hiring process across all industries. From digital job markets to postings via professional platforms like LinkedIn, there are now numerous ways to reach potential candidates.
Similarly, marketing has evolved in line with technological improvements. Rather than all being focused on ads and branding, data-driven marketing is at the core of most successful campaigns. Marketers leverage dozens of digital channels, from search engines to social media, and use AI-powered business intelligence (BI) tools to sift the resulting performance data. The insights they gain from that data help them tweak campaigns and target their audience better.
Can recruiters learn from this? Absolutely. If you’re able to target a particular group of experienced, motivated people, you could gain the right connections to help you build an incredible workforce for your organization.
SEO and Content Marketing for Recruiting
The first technique recruiters can tap into is SEO-focused content marketing. SEO stands for search engine optimization and means the ability to launch content online that’s likely to be high up on search engine results pages (SERPs). This is critical for getting noticed as most people — 75% — never look beyond the first page of Google or Bing.
For recruiting specialists trying to approach passive candidates, effective SEO is about tapping into what your ideal audience wants to read about online. You know they’re not job-seeking, so focusing on keywords like “high-paid jobs” or “best management positions” isn’t likely to get you many hits. Instead, do some research and discover the topics your ideal candidates are interested in. If you recruit in the manufacturing industry, write about advancements in manufacturing tech. If you’re in healthcare, approach top topics in this sector from a thought leadership perspective.
By creating meaningful blogs, articles, and web content, you can coax readers to the places where your jobs are on offer. Your audience learns that your organization is an expert on many topics, which builds trust and engages interest.
Social Media Recruitment Strategies
Content marketing also extends to social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and even TikTok. With the average American spending over two hours a day on social media, there’s a key opportunity to reach potential candidates who may not be actively job-seeking. The first step here is to figure out which platforms your audience is likely to be using. Or, if you have the budget available, consider recruiting marketing techniques across multiple platforms.
Many recruiters utilize social media to build the brand of their organization and portray it as a great place to work. Videos of employees enjoying their roles, company events, or community outreach can all impress viewers and make them want to know more. Creating a consistent “buzz” around your firm and its employment practices can ensure that candidates who could be tempted from their current roles are likely to consider you first.
Combining winning content with paid ads and a dedicated Facebook page with regular posts helps keep engagement high.
Email Campaigns for Talent Engagement
That engagement is the key to gaining the interest of passive candidates. When they interact with your brand regularly, you remain top of mind, so when roles become available, you’ve already got an interested and excited audience.
Another excellent engagement tool is email. Recruiters who create and segment a mailing list can build campaigns that target different audiences — newsletters for existing employees, job listings for active job seekers, and information on company values or industry-related topics for passive candidates, for example.
Top email marketing tips for recruiting include:
- Focus on personalization
- Make sure all emails work on mobile devices
- Forget sales-like content — focus on engagement and content that adds value
- Use software to monitor the responses to your emails and tweak campaigns accordingly
Just remember that data privacy laws prevent you from “cold” emailing potential applicants even if you already have their contact details. You must gain their consent for communications.
Measuring ROI of Recruitment Marketing Efforts
As noted above, you need ways to monitor the effectiveness of your recruiting marketing efforts. Otherwise, you could be pumping money into something that’s providing no meaningful return on investment (ROI). With conventional digital marketing, ROI is measured in dollars. For recruiters, you may need to consider other metrics of success. Consider if your recruitment marketing campaigns:
- Increase the quality of your hires
- Reduce the time-to-hire
- Reduce the cost-per-hire
- Raise your offer acceptance rate
Work with your finance teams to understand if the investment you’re making is paying off, but stay focused on the recruitment metrics. You might make a loss in the short term but end up with game-changing talent on board who increase your long-term profits exponentially.
Marketing Techniques Help Recruiters Reach More Qualified Talent
Recruitment marketing isn’t necessarily about filling roles right now. It helps you gradually nurture an engaged and excited talent pool that, when the time comes, you can dip into and fill the roles you need with qualified, experienced employees.
If you need a trusted partner to help you navigate the nuances of digital marketing for recruiters, connect with MRINetwork for more information.