How to Recruit Like a Marketer
Recruitment is much more similar to selling products these days.
It’s an ordeal today to get the individual that fits your business the best because not everyone has access to the vacancy or takes action. HR people might think they’ve got nothing to do with marketing, when in reality, they ended up falling into a vicious circle of coming up empty with qualified personnel, over and over again.
Time to step up your recruitment game.
What’s Recruitment Marketing?
Recruitment marketing is what you need to end the loop. Basically, it’s about proactively letting others know everything about the job you’re offering from job description, qualifications and skills needed, working environment, to salary and other benefits.
Aside from revealing the necessary information, proactively looking for job seekers also matters because there are, in general, two kinds of job seekers: active and passive, and you want to make sure you reach both of them.
Furthermore, most of the job seekers still stay in consumer-minded state, meaning for them, looking for jobs is like making purchases and making comparisons. You might miss a few potential qualified workforce if you only focus on telling how awesome the job is. Remember, a product without a proper marketing approach will just stay under the radar.
Having said that, here are three things you have to put into your recruitment marketing plan.
1. Social media and content marketing are powerful tools
Job seekers are similar to consumers, so it’s only natural for them to Google your company to look for any accessible information possible. What you want to do is present relevant information that matters to them and trigger their interests. What can you do to ensure that?
I have two words for you: value-packed content and social media (not technically two words, but you know what I meant).
Just like in marketing, content is especially important in recruitment process. With the right content, you can easily announce your company’s culture, visions, missions, and establish your brand persona in the candidates’ mind. Likewise, social media is an effective platform to showcase your content.
You can share relevant and educative content such as articles or recent news (i.e. rewards your company just received, any company gatherings, etc.) at your company’s social media accounts or forum, so these candidates can get a gist of what kind of working expectation they can ask of your company.
Other than that, you can also utilize video content and other attractive visual content to tell your company’s story. Just like in marketing, visual content also matters in recruitment.
2. Use your employees’ voices
I’ve always mentioned this, but I’ll say it again. Your employees are your best assets. People nowadays are drawn to authentic experience. This is why employee advocacy is the HR version of authentic experience.
Try to hold gatherings with several potential candidates and invite your employees to attend. During these gatherings, you can encourage your employees to share their experience while working with you, their overall opinions on the company, and so on. If offline gathering is not possible, you can also ask your employees to share information related to your company on their personal social media accounts or company’s account.
Keep this in mind. Employee advocacy is one of the best recruitment strategies to effectively market your company in a fairly low budget.
3. Embrace technology
Utilization of digital tools should work in alignment with recruitment campaigns. Automation would make the whole recruitment process more efficient. (Check out also the importance of digital knowledge here.)
HR technology is progressing rapidly in the last few years. Now, recruiters have many different types of HR software at their disposal. You can apply AI-driven technology or chatbots, for instance, to your recruitment process to help manage incoming applications, schedule interviews, or even send out personalized notifications to successfully catch the attention of the interested candidates.
Example: Starbucks’ Recruitment Strategy
Starbucks’ social recruitment strategy is known for its strong, cohesive branding, and uncanny ability to communicate personable messaging to its target hiring audience as well as its undivided attention to the most integral element of the company: the people.
Right off the bat, the company’s career site offers visitors comprehensive information of the famous coffee brand. By blending information and attractive visual images with user-friendly platform, Starbucks further emphasizes its brand message that states that the company gives its applicants a chance to be more than an employee, but a partner, the people of the company are placed at the forefront of its immense success. By referring their staff as partners, Starbucks successfully build a sense of community.
Another noteworthy recruitment marketing strategy is its buzz-worthy social engagement, most notably on its career-specific Twitter account, @StarbucksJobs. The account is personalized from the get-go, with feeds revealing current job postings using the on-brand hashtag #tobeapartner, shout outs in recognition of Starbucks; partners, links to Starbucks’ latest news, and pictures of the company events, which successfully entice interested candidates to check the company out.
Key Takeaways
86% of HR professionals agree that recruitment is becoming a lot more like marketing. You may not be selling a product or service to customers, but you’re still selling something: your company.
In today’s competitive talent market, to get the best talent in your pipeline, you need to have a strategic marketing approach to find ways to get out in front of the right candidates for your company. Be precise and focus on your ideal candidates, then leverage the power of social media and other necessary digital tools to efficiently build your brand persona and deliver your message.
Do you have any specific strategies when it comes to recruitment?
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