If it seems like recruiting at your company is getting more and more challenging, you’re not alone. A January 2024 survey found that 77% of HR professionals reported difficulty recruiting in the prior 12 months. Whether it’s navigating a talent shortage or landing great candidates with multiple job offers, most companies could use a recruiting advantage. If that includes your business, it’s time to consider a new approach: recruitment marketing.
By adopting proven and time-tested strategies from sales and marketing, recruitment marketing can give you a competitive advantage in the talent marketplace. If you’re an HR professional but don’t feel like a marketing expert, here’s what you need to know.
What is Recruitment Marketing?
Recruitment marketing is a strategic approach that incorporates marketing practices into talent acquisition. This includes developing an employer brand, creating targeted messaging, engaging with passive candidates, and nurturing relationships with potential hires. Like other marketing practices today, data and analytics are essential components of recruitment marketing.
The concept is relatively new. Over the past decade, as the challenges of recruiting have become more apparent, employers and their HR teams began to look for ways to gain an advantage when competing for top talent. Noticing the success of approaches like content marketing, recruiting leaders adopted similar practices, giving rise to recruitment marketing.
Understanding the Candidate Journey
The primary goal of recruitment marketing is to attract and engage candidates more effectively than traditional recruiting. The first step toward mastering this new approach is understanding the candidate journey. By seeing recruiting from the candidate’s perspective, you gain insight into what attracts their attention—and what can make your business stand out.
The candidate journey has six primary phases:
- Awareness: The moment candidates become aware of your company and its job openings.
- Interest: Next, candidates research your company and the job opportunities that appeal to them.
- Consideration: Candidates then consider the merits of your company against other employers.
- Application: This covers the process of candidates submitting their resumes and applications.
- Interview: Selected candidates then participate in one or more interviews.
- Offer: The best candidates receive a job offer and make a decision.
Once you understand the different phases of the candidate journey, you can start crafting a recruitment marketing strategy that promotes your company at each step.
Developing a Recruitment Marketing Strategy
The core of any marketing strategy is branding. An effective employer brand is also the foundation of recruitment marketing. Think of each step of the candidate journey and craft the image you want to present at each phase. It could be that your company is innovative, that you value employee growth, or that you have an excellent corporate culture. Your brand is the advantage you offer over companies competing for top talent.
Draft a value proposition to help develop your employer brand. This should clearly articulate the benefits your company offers. Think of all the positive aspects of your company—from culture to location and fringe benefits—and incorporate them into your value proposition. Let it guide the rest of your recruitment marketing efforts.
Utilizing Content Marketing and Storytelling in Job Postings
Content marketing involves creating engaging content, whether on social media, in blogs on your website, or in other forms like whitepapers. Promoting your content in job postings is an excellent way to promote your brand since each piece of content reinforces your value proposition.
An effective method for promoting your brand in your content is storytelling. Share your company’s history and give candidates an idea of the culture they could work in. This is the perfect opportunity to connect with potential candidates on an emotional level, which is something traditional recruiting could never do.
Personalizing the Candidate Experience
To better connect with individual applicants, personalize the candidate experience wherever possible. For example, send personalized messages to candidates throughout their journey rather than generic communications. Customize the candidate portal in your applicant tracking system by allowing them to track their progress and access all relevant information easily.
Respond promptly to all candidate communications, especially when they have questions. This is another opportunity to promote your company brand while demonstrating professionalism and interest in individual candidates.
Leveraging Data and Analytics to Optimize Recruitment Campaigns
Data and analytics help you measure the effectiveness of your recruitment marketing efforts. They also help drive data-driven decisions so that you can optimize these campaigns where needed.
For instance, if key metrics like time-to-hire and candidate satisfaction show room for improvement, work on those areas until the numbers improve. You can also use analytics to understand candidate behavior and further tailor their journey to better match your brand and attract the talent your company needs.
Recruitment Marketing Helps Attract Top Talent
Your employer brand is what sets your company apart. There’s no better way to spread that message than recruitment marketing. Following the success of content marketing and similar strategies, recruitment marketing reshapes the candidate journey into something more personalized and attractive to the top talent. While it’s still a relatively new concept, it seems like it will be the future of recruiting. To stay up-to-date with the latest trends in recruiting across a range of industries, follow MRINetwork.