What is Recruitment Marketing?
At its core, recruitment marketing looks to employ the same concepts that are applied to any other marketing effort. Except in this case, rather than try to get customers to buy a product or a service, the organization markets itself and its features.
To do this, they consider their potential candidates as prospective customers, their own organization as the product, and the benefits of working there as features. In a job market where candidates are increasingly motivated by factors other than just compensation, recruitment marketing is a great strategy to promote organization practices and values that appeal to prospective candidates.
When applied to an overall hiring strategy, recruitment marketing is generally the set of activities that precede the action of candidates applying for a position. The purpose of these activities is to create awareness and interest in the organization or a specific job opening.
Every recruitment marketing effort has a simple goal To attract and hire the right Talent for a given role.
Over the years, like other aspects of business, how organizations approach and define recruitment has gradually evolved.
A number of recruiting strategies have been developed and implemented with varying degrees of success in order to keep up with the changing demands of job markets.
With the exponential growth of technologies bringing about the Digital Age, it is only appropriate that organizations are now once again looking to revamp their recruitment strategies in order to stay relevant; specifically with regards to how they attract high-quality Talent.
One concept that is at the forefront of this revamp is Recruitment Marketing.
While the concept is constantly evolving, there are certain practices that characterize a good recruitment marketing strategy.
Consistently promoting organization benefits, culture, achievements, and events on platforms where potential candidates are likely to be active.
This helps create awareness about the organization’s product or services, and also provides insights on the values, beliefs and culture that candidates can expect to experience if they were employees. If done right, even passive candidates could seek out opportunities to work with an organization.
Organizations that consistently engage in meaningful discussions on topics relevant to their industry, through blogs or similar mediums, can build brand credibility and attract the right kind of talent.
Potential candidates are likely to apply to a position when a prospective employer shares their passion and interest for a particular topic.
Once an organization has identified a pool of high-quality talent, they must implement a strategy to keep these candidates engaged.
An example of this would be to set up an email campaign targeted at these candidates. This can be used to communicate new job openings, organization achievements, team activities, and similar content that could be appealing to a potential candidate.
Similar to traditional marketing, recruitment marketing must be data-driven. Using analytics to measure the performance of various efforts can help assess and improve processes.
By identifying what works and what doesn’t, organizations can focus their resources on areas that have proven to be more effective.
Equally important to how recruitment strategies are implemented, is where they are implemented. Identifying the right platforms aligned with recruitment marketing efforts is an important contributor to the success of a recruitment marketing strategy.
After discovering a company, candidates are most likely to seek more information about job openings from the careers page on a company website.
Organizations must ensure that the content on their site is relevant, optimized for viewing on various devices, and written in language that the candidate would relate to.
For instance, organizations are increasingly ensuring that their job descriptions include non-technical aspects, such as hobbies and behaviors, that can help both candidates and organizations gauge whether the candidate would be a good cultural fit.
By posting recruitment content directly to university or school websites, organizations can create an excellent pipeline of young Talent.
University students are constantly looking for internship opportunities, and organizations are constantly looking for interns that are interested to work in the industry in which they operate.
Interns that demonstrate abilities in-line with organization expectations can then be trained and considered for full-time positions.
Using social media profiles of the organization as well as current employees is an excellent method to spread recruitment content in a fast and affordable manner.
By identifying the right social media platforms where potential candidates are active, organizations can market to high-quality talent that may not be actively looking for jobs and get them interested in a job opening.
Consistently putting out high-quality content related to their industry on their own blog, or as guest blogs on other relevant websites, can greatly improve the credibility of an organization. Prospective candidates that view an organization as an authority on a particular topic that they are passionate about are likely to want to be associated with the organization.
In a job market where competition for high-quality Talent is fiercer than ever before, recruitment marketing serves as an excellent differential for organizations. By applying tried and tested concepts of marketing to recruitment, organizations can greatly improve the quality of candidates that they attract.
While the concept has not yet been widely adopted, early implementations have yielded organizations several benefits. Most important of these benefits is one that organizations have frequently struggled to achieve; hiring candidates that are a good cultural fit.
Further, incorporating a recruitment marketing strategy does not require drastic changes to an organization structure; merely more collaboration between the different functions of an organization.
Organizations that wish to stay ahead of the curve must seriously consider recruitment marketing as a viable addition to their recruitment strategy.
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