Recruitment Marketing: The Definitive Guide For Recruiting Leaders

Recruitment marketing is one of those trendy terms being used to describe much of the work that recruiters and their organizations are already doing to attract top talent and keep their recruiting pipelines full.

In this quick guide, we’ll discuss recruitment marketing, the strategies and tactics used to attract highly qualified candidates, and the metrics you’ll need to track in order to determine whether it’s working for your organization.

What is Recruitment Marketing?

Recruitment marketing can be many different things, but when you boil it down, it is simply the strategies and tactics that an organization utilizes to find, attract, engage, and nurture potential talent before they apply for a position. It’s all the stuff that recruiters do to source great candidates, attract them to the organization, and make them want to apply for a job.

It’s marketing for talent.

The activities and tools you can use while marketing for candidates is nearly endless and many of the fundamentals of recruitment marketing come straight out of traditional marketing strategies and tactics. Let’s take a look at some of the key ingredients of recruitment marketing.

Key Elements of a Successful Program

There are a few elements necessary for a successful recruitment marketing program. While you may already be engaging in several strategies and tactics to attract candidates, these key elements are the foundation of a fully formed and well-constructed recruitment marketing program.

Your Employer Brand

Employer branding is something that we talk about a lot because it is (or should be) a reflection of your organization’s values, culture, and mission. Your brand is what entices top talent to apply for positions with your company and gives candidates a glimpse into what it would be like to work for your organization.

The Candidate Experience

Throughout the hiring process, candidates are judging your organization through their experience. We call this is the candidate experience. It’s a window into what it would be like to work for your organization. A positive experience bolsters your employer brand. On the other hand, a bad experience not only hurts your brand and drives away top talent, but it can even hurt your company’s bottom line.

Your Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

Your EVP is very closely related to your employer brand, and serves as the underpinning on which your organization’s brand is built. Essentially, the employee value proposition defines the “What’s in it for me?” or “WIIFM” your company offers to employees in return for their performance. Whether it’s career progression, amazing perks, or something specific to the role you’re recruiting for, your EVP needs to be a part of your messaging.

Your Candidate Personas

Candidate personas are representations of your ideal candidate. These target personas help you focus on exactly who you want to hire for specific positions within your organization and are a profile of the ideal skills, cultural fit, and experiences of the talent you want to attract. Knowing your candidate personas will help you to create more relevant and engaging job descriptions, understand the sourcing channels where your ideal candidates are, and create alignment across your team.

Analyze Your Competitors

Gathering intelligence on your competitors allows you to see what they are doing to attract top talent. Analyzing that information helps you discover the best tactics to attract your target candidates and uncover strategies that will help you gain a competitive advantage.

Recruitment Marketing Strategies and Tactics

As you already know, there are lots of different tactics and strategies that fall into the category of recruitment marketing. Chances are, you’re already using a lot of them, depending on the types of jobs that you’re sourcing for. Regardless of the strategies you choose, it’s important to keep the key elements we discussed above in mind and make sure your organization’s brand, culture, and EVP are clear.

Job Postings & Boards

- Use dynamic and descriptive job titles
- Include job description keywords for search engine optimization (SEO) and make sure that job seekers can find your open position (we’ll dive into SEO in a future post)
- Post jobs on the best job boards for the industry and the places where your targeted candidates tend to search
- Make sure your postings are optimized for mobile
- Include photos and videos wherever possible

Your Company Career Site

- Your career site should make your employer brand clear to visitors
- It should include your company mission and allude to your EVP
- Pages should be SEO optimized
- Career site should be mobile responsive
- Include video, photos, and employee testimonials if possible

Social Media

- 92% of all companies use social media for recruiting, so you’ll need to use it wisely to be competitive
LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are the top channels to focus on for most jobs, but consider industry-specific networks for special industries
- Use photos, videos, and content to attract candidates to your company
- Post jobs on Twitter with a unique hashtag for your open positions
- Be sure to monitor your social media analytics to determine what’s effective for your company
- Employee Referral Program
- Implement an employee referral program for your organization
- Create campaigns for open positions

Other Tactics

- Consider content marketing for your career site and post on social media, including photos, videos, ebooks, -webinars, infographics, and articles
- Keep a database of applicants, unsuccessful candidates, and those who have subscribed to your site or social media pages for future recruitment marketing efforts
- Create email nurturing campaigns targeted to former applicants and those who have expressed interest in working for your organization
- Attend recruiting and industry events

Tracking Your Recruitment Marketing Efforts

The only way to be sure that your recruitment marketing efforts are paying off is to monitor the results and track the metrics. In order to do this, you’ll keep track of the metrics involved in specific media such as response rates for email, social media metrics, and website analytics, but you’ll also monitor the metrics that you’re already using for recruiting itself.

Ultimately, successful recruitment marketing will lower your recruiting costs, and reduce time to hire, as well as attracting better talent. Here are some metrics you should monitor:

- Cost per hire: recruitment marketing spend divided by the number of hires
- Cost per applicant: recruitment marketing spend divided by the number of applicants
- Visitor to applicant ratio: number of applicants divided by the number of visitors to your career site
- Applicant to hire ratios
- Time to hire
- Quality of hire

Conclusion

Although recruiters have largely focused on their assessment and sales skills to reach their recruiting goals, it’s clear that marketing skills are more needed than ever. Candidate-driven job marketing means that organizations must work harder to find and attract top talent.

Although you’re probably using some of these tactics and strategies right now in your recruiting, implementing a complete recruitment marketing program for your organization will keep your talent pipeline full, ensure that you engage the best candidates for your open positions, and lower your recruiting costs.

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