Best recruitment marketing practices to attract candidates

What is recruitment marketing?  

Recruitment marketing is the use of marketing tactics in the hiring process. Its main goal is to portray the company image, engage with passive candidates, and stand out in the competitive job market. This approach goes beyond traditional methods, focusing on enticing potential candidates to apply for a company. 

Before developing a recruitment marketing strategy, defining the company’s hiring targets and timelines is necessary. This understanding guides the creation of the strategy. Additionally, it is essential to establish clear recruitment goals. Establishing clear goals means having specific targets that the recruitment process aims to achieve. These goals would provide a clear direction for the strategy to work out. 

Another essential step is to interact with relevant managers to define job requirements. This ensures that the messages sent to potential candidates accurately reflect the needs of the positions. Finally, it’s important to assess the resources required for the recruitment marketing efforts. Allocating resources both financial and human labor effectively will contribute to a successful recruitment strategy. 

Best practices for recruitment marketing

To appeal to the best candidates, the organizations need to use proper recruitment marketing practices. Here are some of the marketing tactics  

Creating a company career page  

Having a career page to mention job openings is vital in recruitment marketing. It ensures an engaging experience for visitors seeking job opportunities and insights into your company’s work culture. This separate career section provides a clear and organized platform for potential candidates to explore available job roles and learn about the company’s values and working environment. 

This page should also clearly guide visitors on what action they should take. This means mentioning instructions on how to submit their resumes or if there aren’t any current vacancies, providing a way to send their contact information to inform them when job opportunities arise. The goal of this is to make it easy for visitors to understand how to proceed if they’re interested in working for the company. 

The careers page should be designed in a way that it can be easily viewed and accessed on mobile devices too such as smartphones and tablets. The people who access the page through mobile devices must have good user experience and they must be able to navigate the page easily without encountering issues like unresponsive buttons, or difficult-to-use forms. 

Use social media platforms 

Social media allows for advertising for targeted people. This enables recruiters to reach specific individuals with the necessary skills. It also facilitates continuous relationship-building, which is considered crucial for building a talent pipeline and enhancing the overall recruitment marketing strategy. Through social media, organizations can reach a wide audience, get more traffic and engage with passive candidates 

A knowledge hub is a resource center where the company shares valuable information, insights, or resources related to its industry, work culture, or services. This can be important for companies looking for interested candidates. 

Interacting with future employees 

Ensuring that candidates’ queries are answered on time is another aspect of recruitment marketing. Any candidate expects the employer to be responsive. In this context, chatbots can be used to provide immediate responses. They can be used to answer candidate queries related to job requirements and current job openings. To add, having a FAQs page on the company website can provide answers to common questions asked by potential candidates. Through this way, organizations can maintain continuous interactions with potential candidates, especially when handling high volumes of questions. Having a proper query management system implies that the organization is concerned about candidates’ time and can help turn job seekers into future employees. 

Writing correct job descriptions 

Writing accurate job descriptions in a way that entices the right candidates to apply is crucial. A well-written job description not only describes the responsibilities and qualifications expected by the employer but also describes the company’s culture and values. It serves as a marketing tactic to bring out the unique opportunities and benefits offered by the organization. Make sure that all necessary details are given to candidates like working hours, work flexibility (onsite or remote), salary details. Additionally, clear job descriptions improve the candidate’s experience by correctly mentioning the duties and responsibilities, leading to more qualified applicants. Properly written job descriptions can reduce applications from irrelevant candidates. 

Referring to candidate records 

Managing a talent pool database is a part of recruitment marketing. Search for past applicants who had applied for positions in the company. Utilizing an applicant tracking system software can facilitate storing candidate information. Recruiters can get an insight into past applicants who may still be interested in working for the company. Once you get the details of past applicants, you can send emails to keep them updated about company events, new job openings, or any success stories of clients. By continuously interacting with the potential candidates in this way, the organizations can enhance the chance of attracting the right candidates for the team. 

Building brand awareness 

Produce content in the form of webinars, blog articles and videos. Use content that not only speaks about the brand but that also gives employees useful information regarding the industry that they are interested in. 

Through videos, companies can portray their company culture, work environment, employee achievements, and any other useful information which can help candidates understand your organization. 91 % of businesses say that they use videos as a marketing tactic. It is because videos are more appealing than written content. They offer candidates a more interesting experience. This could help potential candidates visualize themselves as part of your team.  

Listing the business on third party websites 

When it comes to marketing in recruitment, listing a business on other websites is a strategic practice aimed at expanding the reach of the business. These websites often have a wider audience, allowing your brand to reach more people who may not have come across your company through other channels. These websites cater to specific industries or geographic locations. When the business is listed, correct details of the business should be provided, such as contact information and a description of the business. Business listings are normally done to make clients aware of the products and services of a company. However, the potential candidates can use this information to get information about job openings. 

Setting up employee referral programs 

A referral program encourages current employees to recommend potential candidates whom they know for job openings. This saves time and cuts down on costs associated with external advertising. With recruitment management software, the process of tracking employee referrals can be automated. It can capture the details of the referred candidates, the employees who made the recommendations. Overall, recruitment software can streamline the process of employee referrals, making it easier for the current employees to take part in the program. 

Reaching individuals who are not frequent users of online platforms. 

Design engaging posters that can bring in your company culture and available positions, then distribute them at career fairs, community events, or other locations frequented by job seekers. Consider sponsoring conferences and workshops as well and use these opportunities to advertise your company’s career opportunities. This approach can help you establish a favorable reputation in the community and draw in local talent. Incorporating print content into your marketing efforts enables you to connect with candidates who aren’t actively looking for jobs online, effectively reaching passive job seekers. 

Why is marketing in recruitment important for employers? 

In an environment where acquiring talent is a top priority, using marketing in recruitment serves as a powerful way to engage with potential candidates and showcase how an organization differs from one another. The following are the benefits of marketing tactics to an organization. 

Quick hiring 

It’s essential for organizations to be desirable in the job market. To achieve this, organizations need to focus on their recruitment marketing efforts. By continuously building relationships with potential candidates over time, organizations can quickly fill roles because once they already have contacts with suitable individuals, they have a set of candidates who would be interested in available job opportunities. 

Improves candidate journey 

The initial impression that a candidate has about a company is crucial because it influences whether they will apply for a job. To improve the candidate journey, recruitment marketing is necessary. Through recruitment marketing efforts, organizations can tailor the content in a way that is appealing to candidates. For example, when a person visits a company’s career site, the company can display relevant vacancies or videos based on the visitor’s interests. This entices candidates to begin interacting with the organization. 

Secondly, recruitment management software should be used to ensure the smooth operation of the process. This involves streamlining the stages right from screening applicants up to the point of welcoming new employees. 

Differentiates from its competitors 

A good recruitment marketing strategy helps companies stand out from their competitors. It allows them to highlight what makes them special and why someone should work for them instead of somewhere else. This can be especially important in competitive job markets where companies are running after top talent. 

Consider two firms operated. One company has an informative careers page and uses social media to reach its audience whereas the other organization has a limited social media presence and has few information on the careers page. In such a situation, the first company has the potential to draw candidates since their recruitment marketing strategy is more attractive to the potential candidates. 

Building up the company reputation 

The way that you market your company image is important. This means building a strong impression among potential candidates as a desirable employer. When a company has a good employer brand, it becomes more attractive to job seekers. They are more likely to apply for jobs and, if hired, to stay with the company for longer. To do this, a proper recruitment marketing strategy is essential. 

Reduces unnecessary expenses 

If an organization has the right marketing practices, it can save unnecessary hiring costs and time. Imagine a company which comes to know that the company career page is generating the most qualified applicants. They can allocate more money to promoting and improving the page. With the right marketing tactics in place, they can attract the right talent. Therefore, once a proper recruitment marketing strategy is created, you can know which efforts are bringing in qualified candidates. 

Recruitment software can reduce recruitment costs by an average of 25%. This software helps reach more candidates, identify successful marketing channels, and reduce the need for consulting external advertising agencies. 

Increases quality of hire 

A recruitment strategy helps define the specific skills, experience, and qualities you’re looking for in candidates. It helps focus on finding candidates that thoroughly match the job requirements. 

Quality of hire is assessed after a certain period, usually following the arrival of new hires. It entails evaluating various factors, including retention rates, performance reviews, time to productivity, and promotions. By considering these factors, organizations can come to know whether new hires are meeting the organization’s expectations and contributing well. 

This targeted way ensures that you attract candidates who are a good fit for the roles that you’re trying to fill and reduces time spent on reviewing irrelevant applications. This increases the likelihood of finding high-quality candidates.  

Reaching passive candidates 

Also, there can be passive candidates who are well suitable for job roles. These candidates are not ready to apply for job roles. However, it is the organizations that should convert these individuals to applicants. This is where recruitment marketing is needed. By staying in touch with them through targeted communication, such as email newsletters or updates about the company, organizations can keep these candidates engaged and eventually entice them to apply for job roles. 

Increases diversity 

Ethnically diverse teams are 36 % more likely to outperform. Recruitment marketing strategy can contribute to increased diversity in an organization. Bringing out different employee stories, showcasing workplace environment, and promoting diversity in marketing materials can signal to potential candidates that your organization is committed to diversity. 

Summary

To sum up, marketing in recruitment is necessary to find the best working people in the tough job market. By using smart strategies like showing off what makes the company special, creating strong content that appeals to potential hires, and connecting with them through different ways, can help the company find great people for the team.