Attracting Top Talent: How To Successfully Leverage Recruitment Marketing

Recruitment has become a fierce battle for the best talent. Gone are the days when job seekers simply responded to advertisements or answered calls from a trade recruiter.

Now, they select organizations based on shared values, pay, and working conditions. Candidates thoroughly research potential employers on company websites, social media channels, and platforms like Indeed, Glassdoor, and LinkedIn before making a career decision.

In this environment, securing top talent can be challenging and even more so in the skilled trades. This is where recruitment marketing comes in. It is a potent strategy poised to transform talent acquisition efforts. To stand out, an organization must have an impeccable reputation as a great employer.

What reputation does your company have on platforms like Reddit or Facebook? Are your Indeed reviews repelling top-tier candidates? Keep reading to learn how to leverage recruitment marketing to attract top talent.

What is Recruitment Marketing?

Recruitment marketing is a strategy that companies implement to attract, engage, and nurture candidates before they even apply for a job. It uses a combination of marketing tools and techniques to promote your organization as an attractive employer of choice. The strategy also builds relationships with candidates so that they are excited and eager to work for your company.

Recruitment marketing treats candidates as consumers. Just like companies use marketing to attract buyers, recruiters can use recruitment marketing to attract top talent. It's about putting the right message in front of the right person at the right time. This approach creates a positive candidate experience and entices qualified candidates to apply for open positions.

To do this, we need to break down the process:

• Identify your ideal candidate - You can use sourcing data for guidance, interview your own team members to find similar characteristics or outsource to experts that can perform a Candidate Target Market Analysis.
• Develop personas - Once you have your ideal candidate, enrich this persona by determining where this person works, lives, and hangs out online. What are their habits? Why would they want to work for you?
• Tailor your recruitment marketing - You now know who you're looking for and what their desires are. Crafting messages that are highly personalized to the individual will not only capture their attention, but it will also make them think about their career opportunities with you.
• Target your candidates individually - Promoting your tailored messages should be highly targeted as well. Your personas will tell you which digital/traditional channels that you need to invest in and then you can develop the appropriate drip campaign. Create micro experiences where you can reinforce the candidate's journey and leave them with a positive feeling.
• Tone and resonance - Time to delve further into your campaigns to ensure your messaging really resonates with your target. There are currently 4 different generations in the active workforce. To get your message across, you must pay attention to generational differences in your language and tone. Let your messaging reflect different levels of experience, career goals and mind-sets.

How To Leverage Recruitment Marketing

Recruitment marketing also employs a variety of marketing tactics to show off your company as a best place to work. These tactics include social media, targeted ads, content and email marketing, careers websites, mobile recruiting, search engine optimization, and many others. It's become important to use a comprehensive approach to meet and target candidates where they are.

Below are the ways you can leverage recruitment marketing to get top talent excited about joining your team.

Build Your Employer Brand

Your company's brand and values are its identity and the essence of what sets it apart from others. Recruitment marketing allows you to amplify your brand's voice. You can use it to showcase what makes your organization special. This could be your diverse and inclusive culture, unique employee value proposition, or exciting career advancement opportunities.

Highlighting your unique qualities attracts candidates who resonate with your brand values and want to be associated with your company. Conversely, candidates who don't identify with your brand will self-select out and save your recruiters time from having to review their applications.

Research shows that 50% of job seekers refuse to work for a company with a bad reputation - even with a pay increase. Companies with bad reputations pay 10% more per hire. Employer branding matters because it can give you a competitive advantage. Companies with strong employer branding often see up to 50% more applicants and a 28% decrease in turnover rates.

Your company must be clear and authentic about who you are and what you stand for. This fosters trust and will build a loyal team that is passionate about contributing to your organization's success.

Communicate Your Brand

Once you have built a strong employer brand you must strategically communicate it targeting your ideal candidate personas. Today's candidates interact with a multitude of channels and platforms. From social media and job boards to email and text messaging. Recognizing this diversity and adopting an omnichannel approach is crucial for effective recruitment marketing. Don't forget your company's careers page on your website!

For the greatest visibility and engagement, you should be present on every channel where candidates are active. This means leveraging social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok for younger generations to showcase your brand and career opportunities.

Additionally, maintaining a presence on job boards like Indeed, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, Monster, Handshake and career websites ensures that more candidates know your brand. Incorporating email and text messaging into your communication strategy also allows for direct and personalized outreach to candidates. Partnering with trade schools and community colleges can help your company branding by getting at the forefront of recent graduates' minds.

Consistency is key when it comes to communicating your brand across different channels. Your target audiences may vary across platforms, but your brand identity should remain consistent. But this doesn't mean delivering the same message in the same way everywhere.

Instead, tailor your messaging to suit the preferences of each audience and channel while staying true to your brand's voice. This ensures that whether candidates encounter your brand on social media, digital ads, job boards, print, radio, podcasts, SMS, or through email, they receive a cohesive and compelling message that resonates with them. Conducting thorough research or utilizing automation tools to understand your audience's personas is crucial in achieving this.

Social Media Management

Research shows that 98% of organizations use social media for their employer branding and recruitment efforts. This proves that a robust social media strategy is essential for effective recruitment marketing.

By consistently and authentically representing your brand on social media, you will effectively connect with candidates. You can also build meaningful relationships and position your organization as an employer of choice.

To maximize the impact of your social media presence, it's important to actively engage with candidates. This involves sharing relevant and compelling content that your audience wants to see. Hint: Video, Video, Video! You can start by providing insights into your company's ethos, culture, employee value proposition, team member testimonials, and team dynamics.

Additionally, participating in industry discussions, workshops, conference panels, and relevant forums allows you to establish your organization as a thought leader. All this interaction will increase brand awareness and attract the attention of top talent.

Prompt and personalized responses to inquiries and comments show your commitment to candidate engagement and provide a positive impression of your company.

Use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automation

AI-powered software can analyze vast amounts of data and create detailed candidate profiles. Recruiters can then use these profiles for personalized communication tailored to each candidate.

Such personalized communication enhances the overall candidate experience and increases engagement. This is why any modern recruitment agency uses some form of AI or Automation for recruitment.

Recruitment Marketing Helps Attract Top Talent

Recruitment marketing is a vital strategy for organizations aiming to attract top talent. Gone are the days of impersonal templated messages being shot out everywhere in the hopes of garnering interested applicants.

Instead, organizations must proactively initiate and nurture relationships with their desired pool of candidates. By doing so, candidates are more inclined to apply for roles as they become available.

At Hunter Recruitment Advisors, we believe that Recruitment is Marketing! Using innovative custom strategies, we have humbly served over 150 nationwide clients and grown their companies like yours. Do you need expert recruitment services to find and attract top-tier talent?

Contact our team today for a personalized quote and let us assist you in building your dream team.