Recruitment marketing

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Recruitment marketing refers to the inbound strategies and tactics an organization uses to find, attract, engage, and nurture talent before they apply for a job, also called the pre-applicant phase of talent acquisition. It is the practice of promoting the benefits and value of working for an employer in order to recruit talent. It is analogous in many ways to corporate marketing, and is extremely similar to employer branding except recruitment marketing relates to trackable initiatives that drive awareness, engagement and conversion of applicants versus someone's impression of working at a company. Of course others see employer branding as a subset of recruitment marketing, in addition to extending the reach and exposure of career opportunities through search engine optimization (SEO), building and nurturing candidate relationships through talent communities, and the management of messaging and advertising of talent acquisition efforts.

Contents

Process

The focus of recruitment marketing involves ongoing efforts to reach and engage potential candidates to initiate relationships to meet current and future talent needs by utilizing the many touch points of the modern job search. The goal of a recruitment marketing strategy is to increase the number of qualified candidates in an organization's talent pipeline. Recruitment marketing may consist of a collection of tools and processes that meet the needs of a given employer's recruiting goals. The first step in recruitment marketing is an optimized corporate career site to ensure potential candidates can find employers jobs in search engine results. To manage applicants and the hiring process employers typically use a modern ATS (iCIMS, Lever, Workable, GreenHouse, etc.). A dedicated recruitment marketing platform is used to handle anything from social media to ad buying (Nexcv, or traditional demand side platforms or marketing agencies).

Bersin by Deloitte defines a talent pipeline as an organization's ongoing need to have a pool of talent that is readily available to fill positions at all levels of management (as well as other key positions) as the company grows. [1] In contrast, traditional recruitment is focused on the immediate need of filling a specific job requisition.

A recruitment marketing strategy leverages the principles of inbound marketing by integrating an employer's value proposition [2] as part of their employer brand, career site optimization, job distribution, and online advertising (job boards and job aggregators like Indeed, Resume-Library SimplyHired, CareerBuilder, Monster, LinkedIn and more). Search Engine Optimization SEO builds an employers' organic candidate visitor traffic, mobile recruiting, landing pages, content marketing, career site design, social media marketing, employee referrals, and email marketing engage potential candidates to convert them to active members of an employer's CRM or talent network. Once in the CRM (candidate relationship management), the focus is building relationships and nurturing candidates through personalized content, alerts and calls-to-action, including relevant job openings.

Optimizing corporate career sites and open job opportunities to perform well in search engines, social media and mobile devices enables employers to reach and attract candidates directly rather than relying solely on third party sources (job boards, paid advertising).[ citation needed ] Tracking, measuring and analyzing the effectiveness of candidate sourcing and recruiting efforts gives employers the control and insight to maximize their talent acquisition strategy. Recruitment marketing has become an effective, data-driven function that consistently and predictably drives more qualified applicants to employers' career sites and applicant tracking systems. Using integrated recruiting tools, [ buzzword ] performance metrics, business intelligence and predictive analytics, companies can now report on the entire recruitment and hiring process from applicant source to hire, including the effectiveness of their recruitment marketing efforts, ROI and the value of their talent pipeline and audience.

Evolution of recruiting

Business in all facets has largely turned "inbound" in the last decade—customers are finding their own paths to services, products and companies versus companies using ads to disruptively get in front of potential customers. Inbound marketing has been the most successful marketing method for doing business in recent years because companies are creating value and interest for prospective customers, turning them into loyal and long-term advocates. HubSpot notes that inbound marketers who measure ROI are more than 12 times more likely to be generating a greater year-over-year return. [3]

Marketing teams have thus transformed and expanded, adding new positions like content strategist and digital analyst, and expertise in social media, SEO and demand generation. The modern marketing team has key roles with specific knowledge in efforts that will attract more interested leads through broader channels, and more importantly, will nurture them into qualified prospects to deliver to sales.

To create differentiation and improve candidate engagement, recruiting is using marketing tactics with similar functions and strategies. While there has always been an element of marketing in a good recruiting process, historically it has never been the core, and departments have been siloed between marketing and HR. [4] Now, however, the talent acquisition industry is seeing marketing and recruiting becoming intertwined, with recruitment marketing emerging both as a distinct discipline and a core competency affecting every part of the talent acquisition cycle. Increasingly, recruitment marketing is becoming not only a practice but also a profession, with new job titles such as recruitment marketing specialist, social recruiting strategist and talent brand manager. [5]

Where the value comes from

Typically recruitment marketing drives value in two major ways. First is through driving awareness. This can be through traditional job advertisements, that are more broadly distributed through paid placement on websites like Indeed. This can also be done through advertising strategies that are both paid and organic, but more natural to the world of marketing such as social media advertising, SEO focused content, and even webinars. More awareness leads to more candidates and further growth of a given company's talent pipeline.

The second main source of value is from increasing the rate at which job seekers apply for jobs, or conversion rates. For example, if 5% of your career site visitors currently apply for a job, and you increase that number to 10% by having more compelling content on your careers site, then your recruitment marketing efforts have resulted in double the amount of applicants you would have otherwise gotten.

The end results of these efforts should always be a decrease in time to fill, as well as cost per hire.

Related Research Articles

Staffing is the process of finding the right worker with appropriate qualifications or experience and recruiting them to fill a job position or role. Through this process, organizations acquire, deploy, and retain a workforce of sufficient quantity and quality to create positive impacts on the organization's effectiveness. In management, staffing is an operation of recruiting the employees by evaluating their skills and knowledge before offering them specific job roles accordingly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Recruitment</span> Process of attracting, selecting and appointing candidates to a job or other organization

Recruitment is the overall process of identifying, sourcing, screening, shortlisting, and interviewing candidates for jobs within an organization. Recruitment also is the process involved in choosing people for unpaid roles. Managers, human resource generalists, and recruitment specialists may be tasked with carrying out recruitment, but in some cases, public-sector employment, commercial recruitment agencies, or specialist search consultancies such as Executive search in the case of more senior roles, are used to undertake parts of the process. Internet-based recruitment is now widespread, including the use of artificial intelligence (AI).

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a software application that enables the electronic handling of recruitment and hiring needs. An ATS can be implemented or accessed online at enterprise- or small-business levels, depending on the needs of the organization; free and open-source ATS software is also available. An ATS is very similar to customer relationship management (CRM) systems, but are designed for recruitment tracking purposes. In many cases they filter applications automatically based on given criteria such as keywords, skills, former employers, years of experience and schools attended. This practice of application filtering has caused many to adopt resume optimization techniques similar to those used in search engine optimization when creating and formatting their résumé.

In marketing, lead generation is the process of creating consumer interest or inquiry into the products or services of a business. A lead is the contact information and, in some cases, demographic information of a customer who is interested in a specific product or service.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising. SEM may incorporate search engine optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and site architecture to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages to enhance pay per click (PPC) listings and increase the Call to action (CTA) on the website.

Yahoo HotJobs, formerly known as hotjobs.com, was an online job search engine. It provided tools and advice for job seekers, employers, and staffing firms. It was acquired by Yahoo in 2002, then acquired by Monster Worldwide, owner of its major competitor Monster.com in 2010—leading to its merger with Monster.com and eventual closure.

Social media optimization (SMO) is the use of a number of outlets and communities to generate publicity to increase the awareness of a product, service brand or event. Types of social media involved include RSS feeds, social news, bookmarking sites, and social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, video sharing websites, and blogging sites. SMO is similar to search engine optimization (SEO) in that the goal is to generate web traffic and increase awareness for a website. SMO's focal point is on gaining organic links to social media content. In contrast, SEO's core is about reaching the top of the search engine hierarchy. In general, social media optimization refers to optimizing a website and its content to encourage more users to use and share links to the website across social media and networking sites.

Sourcing is a talent acquisition discipline which is focused on the identification, assessment and engagement of skilled worker candidates through proactive recruiting techniques. Professionals specializing in sourcing are known primarily as Sourcers; but also Internet Recruiters, Recruiting Researchers or Talent Scouts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital marketing</span> Marketing of products or services using digital technologies or digital tools

Digital marketing is the component of marketing that uses the Internet and online-based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones, and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services. Its development during the 1990s and 2000s changed the way brands and businesses use technology for marketing. As digital platforms became increasingly incorporated into marketing plans and everyday life, and as people increasingly used digital devices instead of visiting physical shops, digital marketing campaigns have become prevalent, employing combinations of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation, campaign marketing, data-driven marketing, e-commerce marketing, social media marketing, social media optimization, e-mail direct marketing, display advertising, e-books, and optical disks and games have become commonplace. Digital marketing extends to non-Internet channels that provide digital media, such as television, mobile phones, callbacks, and on-hold mobile ringtones. The extension to non-Internet channels differentiates digital marketing from online marketing.

Recruitment advertising, also known as Recruitment communications and Recruitment agency, includes all communications used by an organization to attract talent to work within it. Recruitment advertisements may be the first impression of a company for many job seekers. In turn, the strength of employer branding in job postings can directly impact interest in job openings.

In the field of search engine optimization (SEO), link building describes actions aimed at increasing the number and quality of inbound links to a webpage with the goal of increasing the search engine rankings of that page or website. Briefly, link building is the process of establishing relevant hyperlinks to a website from external sites. Link building can increase the number of high-quality links pointing to a website, in turn increasing the likelihood of the website ranking highly in search engine results. Link building is also a proven marketing tactic for increasing brand awareness.

Employee retention is the ability of an organization to retain its employees and ensure sustainability. Employee retention can be represented by a simple statistic. Employee retention is also the strategies employers use to try to retain the employees in their workforce.

Employer brand is branding and marketing the entirety of the employment experience. It describes an employer's reputation as a place to work, and their employee value proposition, as opposed to the more general corporate brand reputation and value proposition to customers. The term was first used in the early 1990s, and has since become widely adopted by the global management community. Minchington describes employer brand as "the image of your organization as a 'great place to work' in the mind of current employees and key stakeholders in the external market. The art and science of employer branding is therefore concerned with the attraction, engagement and retention initiatives targeted at enhancing your company's employer brand."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corporate social media</span>

Corporate social media is the use of social media platforms, social media communications and social media marketing techniques by and within corporations, ranging from small businesses and tiny entrepreneurial startups to mid-size businesses and huge multinational firms. Within the definition of social media, there are different ways corporations utilize it. Although there is no systematic way in which social media applications can be categorized, there are various methods and approaches to having a strong social media presence.

A talent community is a mechanism that employers use to keep active pipelines of talent for future recruitment. Talent pipelines consist of potential employees who are interested in working at a given employer, but are not ready to apply. This group is engaged with on a frequent basis so that when the potential employees are ready to seek a new job, they have a relationship with the company.

Social recruiting is recruiting candidates by using social platforms as talent databases or for advertising. Social recruiting uses social media profiles, blogs, and other Internet sites to find information on candidates. It also uses social media to advertise jobs either through HR vendors or through crowdsourcing where job seekers and others share job openings within their online social networks.

Mobile Recruiting is a recruitment strategy that uses mobile technology to attract, engage and convert candidates. Common mobile recruiting tactics include mobile career sites, mobile recruiting by text, mobile recruiting apps and social recruiting. Mobile recruiting is often cited as a growing opportunity for recruiters to connect with candidates more efficiently with "over 89% of job seekers saying their mobile device will be an important tool and resource for their job search." Traditionally, recruiters have used emails and phone calls to engage candidates, but the increase in mobile usage among job seekers has contributed to mobile recruiting's rising popularity.

A social employee is a worker operating within a social business model. Following an organization's social computing guidelines, social employees use social media tools both for internal workflow and collaboration purposes and for external engagement with customers, prospects and stakeholders through a combination of social media marketing, content marketing, social marketing, and social selling. Social employee programs are considered to be as much about culture and engagement as they are about business processes and best practices. In addition to increased leads and sales, social employee best practices are said to improve business outcomes important to social media marketing, such as increased connections and web traffic, improved brand identification and "chatter", and better customer advocacy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Recruitee</span>

Recruitee is a business producing or selling computer "software as a service "(Saas.) The software functions as an applicant tracking system for handling applications for jobs. It includes a careers site editing system for employer branding, a plugin for sourcing (personnel), employment website integration, email and calendar synchronization. Within 4 months of its public launch in August 2015, Recruitee attracted over 1000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and recruiting agencies worldwide.

Data-driven marketing is a process used by marketers to gain insights and identify trends about consumers and how they behave — what they buy, the effectiveness of ads, and how they browse. Modern solutions rely on big data strategies and collect information about consumer interactions and engagements to generate predictions about future behaviors. This kind of analysis involves understanding the data that is already present, the data that can be acquired, and how to organize, analyze, and apply that data to better marketing efforts. The intended goal is generally to enhance and personalize the customer experience. The market research allows for a comprehensive study of preferences.

References

  1. ↑ "Talent Pipeline". Bersin.
  2. ↑ Einck, Jillian (March 7, 2018). "EVP vs. Employer Brand: What's the Difference?". Recruitics.
  3. ↑ "State of Inbound" (PDF). HubSpot.
  4. ↑ Wheeler, Kevin (25 June 2014). "Recruitment is Marketing: 3 Changes You Need to Make". ERE.
  5. ↑ "What is Recruitment Marketing?". Rally™ Recruitment Marketing. Retrieved 2019-01-17.
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