The Ultimate Guide to Recruitment Marketing.
Because we’re all marketers now.
What the heck is recruitment marketing and how’dya do it?
I hear the desperation in your voice, I see the sweat marks building under your armpits and the frustration in your permanently furrowed brow.
It’s a tough candidate market out there! Whether you’re flooded by a sea of under-qualified, ill-fitting “I’ll take anything I can get” types, or you’re experience a major one in one hundred year skills drought.
What are you doing to attract more of the good ones and fewer poor fits?
If you’re not working your employer brand, you’ll lose out.
Consider that:
People want more meaningful employment, flexibility and career fulfilment. There’s been an increase in career changers, minternships, and employee turnover as more employees gain the courage to say “sayonara” to sucky day jobs.
Studies have proven that employees who have values alignment with their employer and role are more engaged and productive.
Covid showed us that life is short and nothing is certain. That flexible working can be done well and people want the choice for enhanced wellbeing.
Let’s face it. Work and workforces are changing. That’s why having a strong employer brand helps recruiters and employer attract more of the candidates who best fit with what you offer.
How to sell it?
Recruitment marketing.
Recruitment marketing helps savvy employers stand out in the market as an ‘employer of choice’. It’s the triple-shot caramel-drop latte that helps you connect with, attract and retain the right candidates for your roles.
In this post you’ll learn:
why you need a recruitment marketing strategy, and
7 steps to create one, so you can start finding talent who think you’re the nut to their bolt.
But first, what does recruitment marketing involve?
Recruitment marketing is the earliest stage of talent acquisition and applies modern marketing principles to promote [sell] your employer brand to bright talent. It’s how you grab the attention of your ideal candidates and encourage them to apply for your vacancies.
Recruitment marketing looks at all audience touchpoints; including primary marketing channels, like social media, email, job-boards and your careers site. It should be strategic, run in collaboration with your comms / marketing team to ensure brand consistency.
5 Ways recruitment marketing helps you find awesome employees
I see five main objectives for a recruitment marketing strategy:
Introduce your brand to top talent / bright talent / the right talent for you ~ Raising brand awareness
Promote your employer brand as an employer of choice ~ Brand awareness, interest and consideration
Encourage suitable talent to apply for your vacancies ~ Intent, evaluation, application
Enhance your candidate experience and start building foundations for employee engagement ~ Loyalty / brand ambassadors
Build a talent community and keep them engaged with your brand ~ Loyalty / brand ambassadors
There’s a reason why the traditional way (i.e. ‘just’ your crumby job ad) isn’t working…
Perhaps you’re sitting there smugly thinking you’re doing a bang-up job already with your job ads and occasional ‘exciting opportunity’ call-outs on LinkedIn. Perhaps it’s earning you a few good eggs each recruit.
But the reality is –
Most hiring managers are churning out the same boring ten-years-old job descriptions and packaging them as job “advertisements” when all they really are, are jargony, meaningless corporate waffle (and not the syrupy, crispy, breakfasty kind).
Would your job ad inspire you to apply? Is it attracting more winners or binners? 🤔
Unfortunately, most job “ads” only get to step one – they introduce the static role and the organisation to (all) talent. And that’s it.
Like, when you’re at a networking event and Business Card Bob slides his card into your hand, introduces himself with a wink, but departs before you have the chance to respond and ask, “So, what do you do, BCB?”
There’s no real connection. He’s just in it for the numbers.
Source: Giphy.
Also, us young folk loathe reading meaningless corp-speak…
We find it insufferable.
Cool kids and people with the kind of brains you most want working for you don’t enjoy reading meaningless nonsense, so they’ll ignore you.
Quality candidates are well-researched; they want honest and genuine information to make an informed decision about their employment. So, if their first interaction with you is a job ad or careers site, it better be bloody good.
It’s gotta make sense, it’s gotta interest them, it’s gotta connect with their values and priorities and it has to tell them what they want to know in seven seconds flat or they’ll go somewhere else.
Kind-of-like the way you screen resumes…
On the other hand, when you actually do a bang-up job...?
Effective recruitment marketing helps you build connection with your talent community, communicate your EVP, your offer and your culture, and helps your talent visualise you as their employer (or not).
You should see:
a higher pile of interview-worthy applicants
a reduced pile of unsuitable applications,
a growing, qualified talent community, and therefore
reduced time- and cost-to-fill, and later replace any poor hires.
Plus!
The one you do end up offering the role to will be so familiar with your brand they’re more likely to feel engaged and committed and loyal. Because they’ll feel like they’re #winning.
How I looked last time I landed a job I really really really wanted.
Source: Giphy
7 Steps to create a recruitment marketing strategy
An effective recruitment marketing strategy helps you clarify:
who you are,
who you’re talking to,
the message you want them to hear, and
how you’ll reach them.
1. Lock down your employer brand
A poor employer brand can be a deal breaker for could-be candidates. You’ll also find it difficult to convince Rockstar talent to work with you if you can’t articulate what makes working with you so great.
So, who are you and why should anyone care?
This brings us to your Employer Value Proposition and, if relevant, your Graduate Value Proposition. An EVP is a simple give/get statement linked to your brand values — what benefits an employee can expect in return for the skills and attributes they’ll bring.
Nail this, because brand forms your key messages and communication style.
Examples, anyone?
“Sometimes the chance comes up to be part of something really special. Canva is making design amazingly simple for everyone, and the potential is limitless. We’re empowering people to design anything, and publish anywhere.”
“We have great ambitions: to show the world that you can build a successful business that cares about more than just profit, and to leave things better than we find them. We’re proud to call ourselves Europe’s favourite little healthy drinks company, but we’re still growing. And that means we need more brilliant people who share our ambition, to join in with the next, most exciting, part of our story.”
“We're building a culture at HubSpot where amazing people (like you) can do their best work. If you're ready to grow your career and help millions of organizations grow better, you've come to the right place.”
Sign me up, guys!
Just to be clear: Your employer brand and EVP provide the foundation for how you’ll show up and share your story online #itsnotjustacopypastejob
2. Consider your campaign objectives
Crucial to every marketing activity is understanding purpose. What are you hoping to achieve from your recruitment marketing campaign?
Perhaps you want to reduce the number of under-qualified, ill-suited applicants by 25% first recruit?
Perhaps you want to increase the number of regional or diversity applicants by 50% within 12 months?
Perhaps you want to increase brand visibility and recognition by...?
Every objective needs a measurable so you know if it worked 😉
3. Create candidate avatars
Your messages won’t connect if you aren’t speaking the right language to the right people on the right platform.
So, just like your sales team uses customer avatars, you’ll want to create a few candidate avatars too. No, moany Martha, this is not discrimination. This is not to say you will only hire people that fit a specific mould.
Candidate avatars help you share targeted marketing messages in the right places.
< Shout at everyone and appeal to no one. >
Your avatar forces you to look beyond the skills and towards values, interests, education, background, contribution, location. You’ll better understand where your ideal candidates hang out online, where they access news, how they look for jobs, whether they’re active or passive, whether they have families and if work-life balance is a key decision-making factor.
Are they young or return-to-work mums and generally speaking, looking for greater flexibility and autonomy which is something your remote workplace offers?
Are you trying to reach candidates who are NESB or ATSI for an identified role or simply just to ensure you’re accessing the most qualified talent in the market? We all have vastly different job hunting habits, values and motivators.
Are they only looking for jobs in the Saturday paper but you’re bein’ all bad ass on TikTok?
When you can understand who your candidate is likely to be, what they want, what motivates them, and where you can find them — you can craft an effective recruitment marketing plan.
The best analogy I can think of for this is when graduate applicants spray out 20+ generic applications without thought or care for fit, values, and connection, and send ‘thoughts and prayers’ that one sticks. You can tell they’ve made no effort and sometimes even address you by your competitor’s name.
*Not effective marketing.*
And yet, this is what you do with generic job ads you only post on one job board.
Side note: How to candidate avatar?
Use your data.
Your applicant tracking system may tell you, you never attract applications from a specific gender, physical location, or age group generally or for specific roles (e.g. women in STEM).
Google Analytics can tell you about who is visiting your careers site, where they are coming from (online; Facebook, Google search etc), how they navigate your site and interact with your content. Or,
It might be an organisational objective to increase the number of applications from specific diversity groups.
Once you’ve collated your data, you can create a few different candidate avatars / personas that describe the key people who are likely to be interested in and suitable for your opportunities, as well as specific audiences you’d like to target. Don’t go overboard — nail the essentials.
4. Show (don’t tell) your story
What’s your story? What is it you want people to know about your brand and workplace culture? What is it people most want to know about you?
What you do?
What it’s like working with you?
Your attitude towards development and progression?
Whether you’re socially responsible?
Are there any negative conceptions you need to combat?
Your story and key messages should complement your EVP. But it’s not just about stating matter-of-factly – “We’re awesome and we drink beer on Friday while playing Ping-Pong.”
Consider the way you can show your story with things like, employee interviews, role profiling, and virtual workplace tours using video, images and blogs.
5. Plot job seeker touch-points and marketing channels
First thing’s first — plot on paper all of the places where potential candidates connect with your brand; face-to-face in your office, as consumers, online, via social media.
Think of your social media channels, readers of your blogs and business newsletters, loyal customers, job boards, website, Google search, employee word-of-mouth.
How can you include relevant touch points in your recruitment marketing plan?
Now, choose your marketing channels. Examples could be:
Careers website:
Your career site is the most effective talent branding tool and source of information for candidates.
Social media:
Choose the right channels for your purposes. Targeting Gen Alphas? Instagram, TikTok or Snapchat might be your go-to. Females under 35? Instagram. Gen Ys and Boomers? Facebook. Targeting business and professional services types? LinkedIn.
Company blog:
According to Express Writers, featuring a blog as a key part of your website increases your chance of better search engine rankings by 434%. But blogs are also one of the best ways to establish topical authority, thought leadership and naturally, share company news and events.
Email marketing:
Emails are said to have the highest ROI on all marketing spend. Consider how you can use business e-newsletters, customer emails, candidate emails, client emails, employee emails and/or subscriber emails to maintain connection with your talent community.
Job ads on job boards:
How can you jazz up your job ad copy to better communicate your values and opportunity so it actually aligns with your brand and EVP? Does it focus on what you have to offer more than what skills you’re seeking?
Google search:
How are you being found? According to Gallup, 55% of job seekers use a general web search when looking for jobs. E.g. “accounting jobs in Sydney”. Check how you’re showing up online in a simple Google search and optimise your meta data (SEO) for a more favourable result!
Advertising (Google ads & Facebook ads):
Are sponsored posts and google ads part of your attraction strategy? Should they be? Hey, don’t look at me, I’m just asking questions.
*Note: While Facebook no longer allows you to advertise roles on its platform, you can still use ads to promote your employer brand generally.
Employee referral program:
Here’s a tantalising statistic – referrals are 5x more effective than all other sources of hiring, and are hired 55% faster than those hired through a career site. Does your referral program and marketing need some love?
*This isn’t an exhaustive list – there's obviously more out there and will depend on your business and your reach where potential talent are connecting with you.
What you need to make sure is that you’re presenting a consistent employer brand, messaging and experience with each.
6. Create a recruitment marketing plan and calendar
Once you have your EVP, key messages, audiences and channels, you can pull it all together to create your recruitment marketing plan. This can be the same template you use for other marketing activities – you’re just adapting it to promote your workplace and individual job opportunities instead of a project.
Consider key recruitment fairs (like university or industry specific career fairs), major industry events, your CSR partner events, or seasonal recruitment drives (like grads & Christmas casuals) and log them into your marketing calendar, so you can prepare your recruitment comms in advance of needs.
Then consider what valuable info you can share at each point.
7. Introduce shareable candidate experiences
AKA – how to make candidates love you forever.
While technically recruitment marketing is the early brand awareness stage enticing job seekers to apply, I like to think marketing continues during shortlisting.
The candidate experience can begin even before you post your job ad, and is the collective result of all interactions candidates have with your brand during your marketing and hiring process; social media, career site, job ads, emails, interviews and feedback.
Even though you may only be hiring one employee, ensuring you provide a delightful, some may say share-worthy experience for all candidates will:
increase their relationship with your brand (employer and consumer),
increase the likelihood they’ll reapply for other roles and/or refer a friend in future, and
increase the likelihood of a positive review or sentiment online (or at the very least negate the likelihood of many unhappy candidates leaving negative reviews!).
An outstanding candidate experience is great for business and your talent pool.
The best way to provide an outstanding candidate experience is to provide outstanding candidate communication. Think timely, clear, consistent, personalised emails and phone calls, and personable social media updates, and everything delivered with up-front honesty and genuine candidate care.
Don’t forget to snatch the missed opportunities.
Sometimes when you’re hiring for one role, you interview a few highly suitable candidates that were either just pipped by an ounce more brilliance, or were the super culture-aligned fan favourite but not quite the person for that role… and then you let them go.
Thanks but no thanks, cya.
That’s a missed opportunity.
You’ve already determined they’re bright talent and a good fit - keep them engaged with a relationship-focused email nurture campaign. You’re literally telling them, ‘We think you’re rad and a great fit for future roles. We’re gonna keep sending you some love so you know we mean it.’
This is like drip marketing; ‘funnelling’ in regular marketing speak, it keeps candidates warm and gooey-eyed for you so when you are ready to recruit a relevant role, you won’t need to do much convincing.
We’re all marketers now.
Recruitment is no longer about simply filling a role and is instead about finding alignment between the candidate’s values, motivators and needs, and their employer’s.
As workplaces become more generationally diverse than ever and employees more educated, demanding more of their employers and workplace (work-life integration anyone?), recruiters need to get better at marketing their opportunities to the right people.
You can’t keep relying on your CMS to do the heavy lifting for you, because that’s trusting you’re getting enough of the right people applying in the first place.
Start earlier.
You want your organisation to be that aspirational first employer of choice. You want your role opportunities to be so enticing that awesome people send you cupcakes and miniature cacti to woo you.
You cannot achieve this without an effective recruitment marketing strategy.
So, create one.
Lovin’ this in theory but lacking the time and interest to DIY? Flick me an email!
This is my jam. I love it like I love jam and cheese sandwiches. Which is a lot. In case you wondered.