How to Get More Leads for Your Recruitment Firm

5 Tips for Attracting New Leads

Professional recruiters like you must have a steady stream of candidates they can add to their talent pool. Because your main task is to connect job seekers and employers, it makes sense that you have a long list of qualified, skilled and talented professionals you can refer to at all times.

However, there is stiff competition these days when it comes to talent acquisition. This makes it hard for many recruiters to find leads to new talents. Fortunately, there are many ways to find new candidate leads for your recruitment agency. One of them is lead generation.

What is lead generation?

Lead generation is a term commonly used within the marketing sector. It refers to the strategy of building a list of potential customers.

How does it work in recruitment and talent acquisition?

Many recruitment firms have incorporated lead generation into their strategy because it promotes proactive talent pool building. With a long list of candidates to choose from, it will be easier for recruiters to filter them out according to any number of factors. It also makes it easier for them to fill various roles, allowing recruitment agencies to attract new clients that need help finding people with specific experiences and skill sets.

Who are your leads?

When used in the context of talent acquisition, leads refer to potential future candidates who tick all the boxes in your candidate persona profile. For a job candidate to qualify as a lead, he or she must have shown some interest in your ability to help them find employment.

5 Tips for Attracting New Leads

Creating a pool of candidates that match a hiring company’s needs with regards to skills, experience and other factors is usually easier said than done. A good thing then that you can get ideas from this recruitment marketing guide. Here are some tips to help you when using lead generation to attract job candidates.

1. Identify your target leads

Before setting up a lead generation strategy, you must determine who your target candidates are. Do you focus only on certain types of roles or skill sets? Also, you should create candidate personas. This will help you identify who it is you want to appeal to, allowing you to attract stronger and more qualified professionals.

Because more and more people are using the internet to find jobs, don’t forget to conduct keyword research. Find out which keywords and phrases people are using to look for recruiters or job placements online. You can use tools such as Google’s keyword planner. Once you have identified the relevant keywords, include them in your online content such as blogs and web pages. This will help optimise your site for search engines, making it easier for people to find you online.

2. Post on key job sites for more exposure

Consider posting job announcements on sites other than your website. Not only will this help you gain more exposure but it is also an excellent link building strategy.

To help your job postings rank well on search engine result pages (SERPs), do some research and identify the sites that are showing up for specific job searches. Be sure to check up to the third page of SERPs. List down these sites and determine which of them are free or paid. Post your job listings on all free local classified sites. If you have the resources, you may also consider posting on a few highly ranked paid sites to get better search rankings.

3. Build trust by setting up career blogs

Search engines, particularly Google, love content, and for good reason. Having good web content helps with search engine optimisation. It also allows you to build and nurture trust while providing something of value to your web visitors.

Although they are relatively new, career blogs are among the most popular type of recruiting content today. Not only can they make your site more search engine friendly but they can also serve as the main source of information for job seekers who might be interested in your services. Furthermore, they allow you to create good opt-in opportunities.

4. Create a talent network

Sometimes, there are job candidates who are interested in your services but aren’t ready to commit yet. They may be good candidates for your future job postings and openings. Make sure you don’t miss the chance to add them to your list of leads.

You can do this by creating a talent network or a list of people who are interested in your company. You can put up a simple form on your site with a call to action and a few fields where interested candidates can enter their contact details.

5. Set up opt-in opportunities

Once you build some level of trust with interested candidates, you should create opt-in opportunities so that you can finally convert visitors to your site into actual leads. As mentioned earlier, career blogs provide good opt-in opportunities. For example, at the end of each post, you can ask visitors to either subscribe to your mailing list or join your talent network. Either way, you’ll be able to get their email address.

You can also write career guides and e-books that visitors can access or download after submitting their email address.

Attract, Engage, Acquire More Top Talent

Conclusion

To succeed and stay ahead of the competition, professional recruiters should have a continuous source of candidates they can add to their talent pool. However, finding new names to include in your talent pipeline can be a challenge at times.

It’s therefore a good thing that there is recruitment lead generation. Through this online marketing strategy, you can find and create an exhaustive list of qualified and talented candidates who can potentially fulfill your client’s hiring needs.

Contributor: Chris Anderson is a search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) expert with more than 15 years’ experience in online marketing.