People want to work for companies that treat their employees – and all stakeholders, for that matter – with respect. How can you communicate this to potential hires? Here’s a quick guide to building your own recruitment marketing strategy.
Previously, recruitment marketing was seen as an outbound activity: Post a job and see what response comes in. Both agency and internal teams would pay lip service to ‘head-hunting’ passive candidates.
Only one problem with this now: candidates are consumers
They have access to an unprecedented amount of information on a company. From LinkedIn, to Seek reviews, Facebook to careers pages on corporate web sites … the list goes on.
And these candidates want to know what it is that makes your company unique. That certain something is summarised as a company’s employee value proposition (EVP). People want to know what your EVP is, so being able to communicate these points of difference effectively is crucial. Here’s how to do it.
3 steps to building a recruitment marketing strategy
1. Make sure that you are posting at the right time, because context is as important as content
To start with, you need a ‘content and context’ strategy. This strategy assists in positioning a company as employers of choice, and allows you to spread authentic messages about what it’s like to work for your company from an employee perspective and a brand perspective – the good and the fun, but also the hard work and the pressure. It must be open, honest, authentic and transparent.
2. Build talent communities
But even content that is authentic and honest is not always engaging. And engagement is the ultimate goal, because without engagement you will not be able to build another important aspect of recruitment marketing: talent communities.
Talent communities – where people are engaged with a company’s employer brand –are the pools from which companies will either hire directly or receive referrals. This hiring is best achieved using recruitment funnels, which gauge a community’s interest by drip-feeding relevant content.
3. Think about the user experience
When the hiring need is given the green light, then those who have expressed interest are invited to apply. This proactive recruitment strategy allows you to maintain another critical principal of recruitment marketing: the stakeholder user experience.
It is critical in the age of recruitment marketing to develop a charter of acceptable behaviours that set a standard of communication and response to everyone who is involved.
From applicants to referrals, candidates who are offered a position and candidates who are rejected, it is a goal of recruitment marketing to make sure all of the stakeholders become brand ambassadors – both employer brand and consumer brand.
The ROI of recruitment marketing
The benefits of recruitment marketing are there. Not only can it reduce time to hire, but it will reduce the cost per hire, and most importantly prolong the employee life cycle by keeping them more engaged and ultimately happier when at work. And as we know, happier staff members are easily the most productive.
Key takeaways:
- Recruitment is increasingly a marketing exercise.
- Candidates are consumers – treat them as such.
- Give them what they want by producing authentic content.
- Make sure that its posted at the right time. Context is as important as content.
- Become positioned as an employer of choice.
- Build Talent Communities.
- Hire directly, or get referrals.
- Reduce the time to hire and cost per hire – achieve an ROI.
- Prolong the employee life cycle –and have happier employees
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