In today’s economy, it is important for companies to portray themselves as a good place to work. As the overlap between recruitment and marketing grows, companies are putting their best foot forward in becoming an employer of choice. The new domain called recruitment marketing approaches recruitment from a marketing perspective and uses the latest marketing techniques to attract the best candidates available.
While traditional recruitment strategies involve waiting for the right candidates to come to you, recruiters today are more proactive in sourcing candidates. From crafting a compelling employer brand to leveraging various marketing channels to engage potential candidates, companies have adapted their recruitment campaigns to fit changing market patterns and technological environments.
What is recruitment marketing?
There is a growing overlap between recruitment and marketing.
Recruitment marketing is a strategic approach organisations use to attract and engage potential candidates using marketing and branding techniques.
This helps to promote the organisation as an attractive employer and creates awareness and interest among prospective candidates.
This helps to build a pipeline of qualified talent for current and future job openings, making recruitment easier and less expensive. As a matter of fact, according to Glassdoor research, better employer branding helps reduce hiring costs by 10% per hire.
The use of various marketing channels and tactics to aid recruitment. The popular marketing tools used in this field are employer branding, content marketing, social media, job advertising, candidate relationship management (CRM), and data analytics. These tools are used in marketing to engage and interact with users and customers. However, in recruitment marketing, they help to effectively engage with candidates and convert them into applicants and hires.
Benefits of recruitment marketing
Although the primary goal of this kind of marketing is to improve the overall recruitment process and attract better-quality candidates, it has many other benefits that help companies gain a competitive advantage in the talent market. Take a look at some of the benefits of recruitment marketing here:
Increased candidate quality
This new approach to recruitment emphasises candidate engagement as the key to finding the right candidates. It allows organisations to not only engage with prospective candidates but also to create awareness about the employer brand and build relationships. This helps to attract high-quality candidates who truly identify with the organisation and are invested in its goals.
Better employer branding
Showing what you can offer your potential employees is just as important during the recruitment cycle as for candidates to demonstrate their skills. Recruitment marketing allows you to communicate your company’s unique selling points and differentiate yourself from competitors in the job market. Showcase your organisation’s unique employer value proposition (EVP), work culture, values, and benefits to prospective candidates to create an incentive for them to apply. This helps you attract candidates who align with the organisation’s values and culture. All of these efforts create a positive perception of your brand among job seekers and candidates, ultimately leading to a stronger employer brand.
Corporate alignment
In large and multinational corporations, getting everyone on the same page about recruitment policies and practices might be a challenge. Having a standardised strategy towards recruitment and using a marketing approach towards recruitment helps to bring consistency in recruitment. After all, companies nowadays are seeing the benefits of using employer branding as a human resource management strategy. Corporate alignment in the context of recruitment ensures that marketing strategies and messages align with the overall goals and values of the organisation. This enables companies to attract candidates who are a good fit for the company’s culture and values, resulting in higher job satisfaction and retention rates.
Extended talent pool
Marketing uses multiple communication channels such as social media, content marketing, and job advertising to increase reach. The same tactic, when used in recruitment, enables organisations to tap into a wider talent pool. This can also help in reaching passive candidates who may not be actively looking for a job but might be interested in the opportunities another company has to offer.
Cost-effective recruitment
Following an employer branding strategy has a significant impact on business results in the long term. In addition to hiring better talent, this type of marketing in recruitment could help keep your hiring costs down. As opposed to traditional recruitment methods, newer methods, like digital marketing channels, automation, and data analytics, can be a cost-effective approach towards recruitment. It enables organisations to target desired candidate groups and focus their recruitment efforts on them in place of a broad and generic campaign.
As recruitment becomes more and more like marketing, using marketing tactics in recruitment is a natural solution for making it more efficient and cost-effective. It helps achieve better ROI as it focuses your marketing efforts on:
a) targeting the right audience using data-driven strategies, and
b) the most effective channels to optimise the recruitment marketing budget.
Moreover, creating engaging and relevant content that showcases the company culture and values can also lead to a better ROI as it attracts more qualified and motivated candidates who are a better fit for the organisation.
Competitive advantage
In today’s competitive environment, where no idea is small, the talent pool plays a crucial role in brand differentiation. Ensuring you attract the best talent in your field instead of your competitors indirectly affects your long-term success. Effective marketing tactics in recruitment will position your organisation as an attractive employer by creating awareness and interest among prospective candidates. Gaining a competitive advantage in the talent market also helps build a talent pipeline for future hiring needs and, ultimately, stay ahead of the competition.
Quantifiable results
Another significant advantage of recruitment marketing is the high measurability of marketing techniques. Most of the tools you may use in this type of recruitment allow you to track your results and collect data. So you are able to change course or make adjustments based on performance if a particular strategy or channel is not bringing results. This also helps you analyse the results of your past recruitment campaigns and identify where you performed well and where you went wrong. Such insight can be valuable in creating better recruitment campaigns in the future.
Digital recruitment marketing
The rise in popularity of digital channels has transformed the way many industries work. But this is especially true of advertising and marketing. Digital recruitment marketing is the use of digital channels and strategies to attract, engage, and convert potential candidates for open positions within an organisation. It leverages different digital platforms and techniques to create and air recruitment campaigns, allowing companies to target and engage candidates through online channels.
It may integrate traditional marketing tactics executed through online channels, as well as activities such as employer branding, social media marketing, search engine optimisation (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, email marketing, and content marketing. This innovative recruitment practice comes with many benefits, some of which are:
- Wider reach
- Cost-effective
- Better targeting and personalisation
- Increased engagement and interaction
- Data-driven decision-making
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Recruitment marketing strategy
It is important for organisations to have a recruitment strategy that aligns with their vision and culture. Having a marketing strategy for recruitment helps an organisation make thought-out recruitment decisions and build a cohesive workforce. The best recruitment strategies would contain comprehensive plans designed to attract, engage, and hire top talent for an organisation. It may also utilise marketing techniques and tactics to promote the employer brand and attract qualified candidates. Here are some key components of a good recruitment marketing strategy:
Identify your target audience
Identifying and understanding the target audience of potential candidates is essential in tailoring your marketing efforts to drive recruitment. Researching and analysing the characteristics, preferences, and behaviours of the target audience is a way to ensure the right messaging and channels are used to reach them effectively. You can then create campaigns based on these specifics. Polish your website, especially your career page, to make them interactive, easy to comprehend, and appealing to your target groups.
Utilise content marketing
Just like in consumer marketing, you can attract and engage potential candidates by creating and sharing relevant content, such as job postings, employee testimonials, blog posts, and social media posts related to your company. The strategy, known as inbound recruitment, is an innovative approach to attracting candidates by sharing relevant and useful content through various channels. Companies are embracing inbound recruitment as it is more cost-effective and efficient in contrast to actively seeking out candidates.
Content marketing is an important aspect of inbound recruitment as it involves creating and sharing content (such as blog posts, social media updates, and videos) that will interest and engage potential candidates. By using inbound recruitment and content marketing, companies can build relationships with potential candidates and establish their employer brand. Content marketing can also position the organisation as a thought leader in the industry and build candidate trust and a competitive edge.
Improve candidate engagement
The journey of recruitment marketing doesn’t end once you have enough viable candidates in the bag. Engaging with candidates throughout the recruitment process and after, using various channels such as social media, email campaigns, and career events, is crucial in building relationships and keeping candidates interested in your organisation. Personalised and timely communication can also help in nurturing and maintaining candidate relationships.
A recent survey suggests that 60% of job seekers report a poor candidate experience. In the digital age, where communication has been made ever so simple, this is unnecessary and avoidable. Providing a positive recruitment experience for all candidates may help enhance your employer brand and increase the chance of unsuccessful candidates reapplying in the future. Here are a few examples of the simple ways you can make the recruitment process smoother for candidates:
- Create a simple and comprehensive job description that clearly states job requirements and responsibilities.
- Provide clear communication throughout the recruitment process.
- Be transparent about the hiring process, including timelines and next steps.
- Provide prompt feedback after interviews and keep candidates informed throughout the process.
- Take a candidate-centric approach by putting the needs and experience of the candidate at the forefront of the process.
Use the most effective talent acquisition channels
Identifying and utilising the most effective talent acquisition channels to reach the target audience is key when devising a strategy. This may include job boards, social media platforms, career websites, professional networks, and other relevant channels where potential candidates are active.
Social recruiting, which involves using social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, to attract and recruit potential job candidates, allows companies to promote their employer brand and connect with passive job seekers who may not actively be looking for a job. Social recruiting can also help companies save time and money on traditional recruiting methods by allowing them to target specific audiences and advertise job openings more efficiently. In conclusion, upgrading your recruitment methods to more innovative and digital methods helps build better connections with potential candidates and establish your employer brand where it is most visible.
Recruitment outreach
Encouraging and leveraging employee advocacy in recruitment efforts can amplify the reach and impact of marketing efforts in recruitment. Remember, employees are the best brand ambassadors you can have. Therefore, sharing their positive experiences and promoting the organisation’s culture and opportunities to their networks is a clever employer branding strategy.
Planning your recruitment outreach process to reach out to potential job candidates outside of traditional recruitment methods can be an effective strategy in the hiring process. This can include methods such as networking events, social media outreach, and employee referral programs. As a marketing strategy, recruitment outreach is to expand the candidate pool and attract top talent who may not have otherwise considered or been aware of the job opportunity.
Analytics and continuous improvement
Monitoring and measuring the effectiveness of your campaigns is essential in optimising your strategies. Be sure to track and analyse metrics such as candidate engagement, website traffic, application rates, and conversion rates as they help to identify areas for improvement and make decisions that are driven by relevant data.
Ideally, your strategy should be dynamic and continuously improved based on feedback, data analysis, and market trends. Regularly evaluating and adjusting the strategy can help in maximising the effectiveness of your action plan.
Best recruitment marketing campaigns
From the Uncle Sam poster to Google’s mysterious Silicon Valley billboard puzzle, great recruitment ideas are always (famously) creative and original. We shortlisted a few to show you how innovative recruitment campaigns can drive amazing results.
“This is Belonging” by the British Army
Similar to ‘Take the Leap’ by Royal Air Force, this campaign was an attempt to highlight how exciting life can be in this field compared to conventional career paths. This recruitment campaign featured a series of videos, social media posts, and webpages which aimed to emphasise the sense of belonging and camaraderie offered by the British Army. The digital posts gave the spotlight to diverse backgrounds, stories, and experiences of soldiers, showcasing the strong sense of community and belonging within the Army.
Why we love it
- Increased recruitment: By highlighting the sense of belonging within the British Army, potential recruits who value community and a strong support system are attracted to joining the Army, thus increasing the recruitment pool.
- Improved industry perception: The campaign emphasises the diverse backgrounds, stories, and experiences of soldiers, portraying the Army as an inclusive and welcoming environment. This helps improve the perception of the British Army, potentially attracting individuals who may not have previously considered a career in the Army.
- Enhanced retention: By showcasing the strong sense of community and belonging within the Army, the campaign aims to instill a sense of loyalty and commitment among current soldiers. This emphasis on belonging can contribute to higher levels of job satisfaction and increased retention rates, reducing the turnover of experienced personnel and saving recruitment and training costs for the company.
- Brand building: The campaign created a distinct brand identity for the British Army, emphasising the unique benefits and experiences it offers. It helps differentiate the Army from other career options and competitors.
“Mechanics Wanted” by Volkswagen
Volkswagen’s campaign, which has to be the most unusual and adventurous on this list, was a strategy to reach the desired target group of talent directly. Volkswagen intentionally distributed faulty cars with the message hidden underneath to service centres across Germany in anticipation of attracting experienced employees. Not only was the campaign a resounding success, but Volkswagen also managed to place itself as creative and audacious as a brand in the process.
Why we love it
- Targeted recruitment: The campaign allowed Volkswagen to directly reach its desired target group of talent, increasing the chances of finding suitable candidates for the company’s mechanic positions.
- Brand image enhancement: The unusual and adventurous nature of the campaign helped Volkswagen stand out from its competitors and positioned the brand as creative and forward-thinking.
- Increased brand awareness: The campaign garnered significant attention and generated buzz in the media and among the public. This increased exposure resulted in heightened brand awareness for Volkswagen. This increased visibility allowed the business to reach a broader audience, contributing to overall talent acquisition efforts.
“Assemble Your Future” by IKEA
IKEA’s unique approach to recruitment revolves around its core business: furniture. The Swedish retailer manages to find innovative ways to integrate the fundamental parts of its business model into its recruitment process, be it asking candidates to assemble an IKEA chair during the interview or sending customers home with a recruitment leaflet designed like the typical IKEA assembly instruction guides.
IKEA hid these leaflets in every flat-pack product box sold, essentially targeting customers who liked the brand and encouraging them to apply. The career instructions campaign helped IKEA fill positions in new Australian stores with little effort and expense on advertising.
Why we love it
- Cost-effective recruitment: IKEA was able to reach a large pool of potential candidates without incurring significant advertising costs. The campaign leveraged the existing customer base, targeting individuals who were already interested in the brand and its products. This approach helped the company fill positions in new Australian stores with minimal expense on additional advertising efforts.
- Enhanced brand loyalty: The campaign strengthened the bond between IKEA and its customers by involving them in the recruitment process. Customers who discovered the recruitment leaflet may have felt a sense of exclusivity and engagement with the brand. This unique approach fostered brand loyalty and increased the likelihood of these customers becoming advocates for the brand.
- Quality recruitment: The campaign’s interactive elements, such as asking candidates to assemble an IKEA chair during the interview, allowed IKEA to assess candidates’ practical skills and problem-solving abilities in a relevant and engaging way. By incorporating the core business model into the recruitment process, the company could identify candidates who possess the necessary skills and ensure a better fit between candidates and available positions.
- Creativity and innovation: The career instructions campaign showcased IKEA’s innovative and creative approach to recruitment, helping to differentiate the company from competitors.
As you can see, mastering recruitment marketing is crucial for organisations aiming to attract top-quality candidates. By blending marketing strategies with recruitment practices, companies can build a strong employer brand, engage with prospective candidates, and tap into a wider talent pool. This not only improves the overall recruitment process but also provides a competitive advantage, reduces hiring costs, and fosters corporate alignment. With the power of digital channels, data-driven decision-making, and continuous improvement, recruitment marketing offers quantifiable results and ensures long-term success in acquiring the best talent for sustainable growth.
