It can be daunting to attract the right talent for your organization–especially right now as the market is extraordinarily competitive. Your team might be reaching out blindly on LinkedIn, tapping into your existing employees for referrals, and attending career fair after career fair–both virtual and in-person.
With recruitment marketing, the process can be a little easier–if you know how to create the right strategy.
In this post, we’ll cover:
- What recruitment marketing is.
- 10 effective recruitment marketing strategies to consider.
- How a recruitment marketing partner can help.
Let’s get started!
What is recruitment marketing?
Not to be confused with recruiting, recruitment marketing is about bringing the talent to you rather than looking for individual prospective employees. Recruitment marketing includes promoting your organization and your culture in addition to specific job openings.
Recruitment marketing can take many forms, from building up your online presence so you’re getting found in search results when candidates begin their job hunt to application generation to reach the right candidates when they’re ready to apply for jobs.
Good recruitment marketing strategies encompass many online marketing tactics so you’re reaching the widest pool of qualified applicants where they’re spending time online.
So, now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s get into some recruitment marketing strategies to help you find the right employees for your organization.
10 recruitment marketing strategies to attract top talent in 2022
The candidate journey is complex. With many different channels for candidates to conduct research and a lot more options for them to choose from when it comes to the job pool, it’s important to stand out and have a presence in the places top talent is searching.
Here are the top recruitment marketing strategies to consider to help your organization attract the best talent.
1. Optimize your website for users with a careers page
Your website is essentially your organization’s first impression for most job searchers. They should be able to clearly identify what you do, your mission, who you serve, and then easily navigate to more information about careers and your culture.
Your website is (rightly) geared toward your clients or your audience, so a career website or page is really the only place you can gear content toward prospective employees. It’s where you communicate your benefits, what current employees love about your culture, and promote open positions.
In order for your website to show up in search results at all and to display correctly across all devices, you also need a robust search engine optimization, or SEO, strategy built around your brand keywords.
Learn more about local SEO here.
2. Showcase your brand organically on social media
Social media is a great place for candidates to learn about your organization and your culture. Because social media is meant to be, well, social, it lends itself well to sharing culture-related content–whether it’s an in-office event, an employee feature, or an example of how your organization is giving back.
And, social media is effective at attracting employees. In fact, leads developed through employee social media activities convert seven times more frequently than other leads.
So, you can’t miss this opportunity to engage with prospective employees while also creating a positive experience online for your current employees.
Related: How to set up a LinkedIn Company Page + tips to use it right!
3. Reach a new audience with Facebook advertising
Another benefit of using social media sites like Facebook and Instagram for your recruitment marketing is that with Facebook ads you can target a new audience who may not know your organization.
Facebook advertising allows you to run ads on both Facebook and Instagram and target users based on a number of factors, including their current job titles, education level, interests, and location. This can help you serve ads on Facebook and Instagram to the types of employees you’re hoping to attract in your area.
This Facebook advertising from Cheeseman Transport shows how they’re using ads to connect with candidates now.
4. Manage your employer brand on review sites
Your organization’s brand reputation is extremely important. Job searchers want to get an idea of how your current employees enjoy working for your company, and reviews give them a way to do just that. So, it’s essential that you’re managing your employer reviews and responding accordingly.
Prospective employees see review responses as almost as important as the review itself. In fact, 75% of job seekers are likely to apply for a job if the employer actively manages their employer brand.
Aside from the top employee review sites like Glassdoor and Indeed, you may also notice employee reviews on your consumer-facing review sites like your Google Business Profile and Yelp, so it’s important to keep an eye on all the places you might be receiving employee feedback.
When it comes to responding to employee reviews, the process will be similar to responding to customer reviews, but there are a few nuances. One positive aspect of employee reviews–even if they’re negative–is that you can influence your organization to make changes based on employee feedback. If you’re noticing a common thread among negative reviews around micromanagement or time-off policy, you can work with your leadership team to identify fixes that will make current employees happier to work at your organization and can help attract top talent.
Get our top tips for responding to reviews here.
5. Promote your organization on job boards
While many job boards allow you to post jobs for free, you can increase your chances of getting seen by the right applicants by promoting your openings on those job boards.
When you promote your open positions and organization through job board advertising, you can show up ahead of other listings on these sites, increasing the chance that candidates will click to your posting instead of a competitor’s.
This medical center saw 2,000 more views on their job board postings.
6. Engage with prospective employees via live chat
Live chat is a huge asset for the consumer-facing side of your website but can also be a big benefit for your recruitment marketing strategy.
When you add live chat to your career site or page, you’re able to engage with prospective employees 24/7. Applicants might have questions about the best way to get in contact with you, how to find relevant job openings, or even where your office is located. These are all questions that can be easily answered through live chat–and, you can collect lead information in the process so you can follow up later.
Quickly and easily providing information and answers to basic questions just might make the difference between your perfect employee submitting an application or clicking out of your site entirely.
Related: Try these 13 talent sourcing strategies to connect with candidates.
7. Employ email marketing to keep your brand top of mind
Once you’ve collected a candidate’s information, you can keep your organization top of mind through email marketing. Consider sending emails to your list regarding relevant awards you’ve won (like Best Places to Work in Houston), spotlights on how your teams are coming together during the pandemic while working remotely, or a client your organization recently helped see success–along with open positions.
Think about what prospective employees would be interested in and what can set your brand apart from the others vying for their applications. If you can continue engaging your talent network, you can increase your chances of reeling in the perfect fits for your open jobs.
Here’s an example of an email Toyota sent out to their talent network.
8. Use video marketing to engage candidates
More than 80% of people say they want to see more video content from brands they engage with, and people retain 95% of the message they watch in a video (up from 10% of what they retain from reading text). So, give the people what they want and get your message across with video marketing.
Videos give you a way to connect with prospective employees on a deeper level than any other content you create. You can use video marketing to showcase your company culture, educate on what your organization does, and highlight employee testimonials so candidates can understand what it would be like to work with you.
9. Take it a step further with YouTube advertising
And, with YouTube advertising, you can target those great videos (or snippets of your videos) to prospective employees directly on YouTube, the world’s second-largest search engine.
The cost of YouTube advertising is fairly low and can help you build awareness for your organization, reach a new audience online, and drive prospective employees to engage with your videos or your career site.
10. Make it easy to contact you with listings management
When candidates are searching for your organization, they’ll likely encounter local listings like your Google Business Profile, Yelp, and CitySearch. While business listings are typically geared toward consumers, prospective employees may use this information to get in contact with you, visit your website, or even get directions to your location.
It’s important to make sure your business is listed accurately so candidates are seeing the right information when it comes time to contact you. This is an often-overlooked recruitment marketing strategy, but it’s extremely important. You don’t want your favorite candidate to get lost on the way to their interview because Google Maps took them to your old office across town.
Check out a full list of the top local listings sites your business should be on.
Ready to get your recruitment marketing strategy in gear?
The right recruitment marketing strategy can make finding and attracting top talent a much easier feat. It all comes down to identifying the right mix of tactics to make your recruitment marketing a success. Let LOCALiQ Recruitment help! A recruitment marketing partner can not only identify the right strategies to help you reach your recruitment goals, but they can take care of running and optimizing your campaigns, so you can focus on getting the right talent through the door and settled in their perfect roles. Reach out today to learn more.
To summarize, here are our recruitment marketing ideas:
- Optimize your website for users with a careers page
- Showcase your brand organically on social media
- Reach a new audience with Facebook advertising
- Manage your employer brand on review sites
- Promote your organization on job boards
- Engage with prospective employees via live chat
- Employ email marketing to keep your brand top of mind
- Use video marketing to engage candidates
- Take it a step further with YouTube advertising
- Make it easy to contact you with listings management
