Most companies limit recruitment marketing to ads they post on online and print media. But that’s a naive, narrow and misleading mindset these days. Recruitment marketing includes all communications that an organization uses to reach and engage job seekers, from the job posting and personal emails to social media and career fairs. Here’s a short list of 6 recruitment marketing tools, many of which are free, that almost any company can use to improve their hiring tactics.
Career site
In addition to posting open positions, be sure to include images of your facility and employees and contact details. Make sure to optimize your site for search engines and include photos and videos – they bring your culture to life, giving candidates an inside view of what it’s like to work there. Video might also feature a brief introduction of managers, “day in the life,” and testimonials from employees. While professionalism is important, “YouTube” quality videos and even selfies appeal to candidates seeking authenticity.
Blog
Attract candidates with relevant articles and posts about what it’s like to work for your company. Include tips about how to prepare for an interview and improve career skills. Encourage employees to write articles about their career, working at your company, and even where and how they volunteer. Feature company news and employee success stories too. And don’t hesitate to offer advice for professional and personal development, even if it’s not related specifically to your company. You might even consider department or job-specific blogs (such as tech or sales) for hard-to-fill positions. You can never do too much when it comes to improving your hiring tactics.
Job posting
A job posting is one of the most essential recruitment marketing tools you have at your disposal. Use it wisely. Tell a compelling story. Job titles must be keyword optimized and similar to what candidates will use in their search. Job descriptions need to be convincing (and optimized) too. Avoid cutting and pasting the description you use internally. A job posting should reflect and define your employer brand and list realistic requirements that attract talent with the right potential rather than scare them away. Describe your company culture but be authentic and transparent, not full of rhetoric and buzzwords. Use specific descriptions of experience and education when required and connect them to the job, culture, and overall mission of the company. If a certification, degree, or experience isn’t essential, omit it.
Social media
To attract enough qualified talent today, effective hiring tactics require the intelligent use of social media. Unfortunately social media is so easily abused and misused. And whether management likes it or not, a company owns but no longer controls its brand. If you don’t have company profiles built and optimized for social media channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter or a business blog to showcase who you are and what you stand for, top talent will question whether your company is an attractive place to work. Consumers and job candidates alike don’t really care about the company message you want them to hear. They want to know if you really walk the talk. So they seek what others have to say on review sites and within their networks about buying from and working at your organization. Creating a strategy, maintaining an active presence and regularly publishing contact is a great way to amplify your job openings. Besides the very best source for talent is still referrals and social media is like word-of-mouth on steroids.
Events
Who said that events take a lot of time and money? While face-to-face college job fairs and other networking events are still desirable, they are not always practical. As technology improves, online events are growing in popularity. It’s as simple as scheduling a webinar or conference calls on Skype or Google Hangout. Announce job openings to participants and then have an open discussion about the job, what it’s like to work at the company, or just open it up for question. Or schedule some time each week to answer questions posted by candidates on sites like Quora or within LinkedIn groups.
Email Marketing
Sending emails is one of the most underused hiring tactics at your disposal. Despite the disdain for email, it’s far from dead. Emails are still read by most people, particularly when the content is targeted to the audience. But sending an email that reeks of advertising will likely find itself deleted or identified as spam. Create emails that inspire, engage, and delight both passive and active candidates. While personalized messages are preferred, tasteful automated ones work too. As for definite no-no’s – don’t blast out generic messages using traditional tactics. It doesn’t work and may do more harm than good. Email marketing requires sending great content to a targeted audience.
Ultimately the purpose of recruiting is to fill open positions. But with turnover and new position creation opening up jobs all the time, it makes sense to avoid recreating the wheel every time. The recruitment marketing tools mentioned above allow an organization to build a talent pipeline, an engaged database of qualified candidates from which recruiters can continuously pull candidates.
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As published in Business2Business, November 2015