Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Luisa Brenton. Her opinions are her own.
Now more than ever, recruiters and HR teams are using marketing techniques to attract the best possible talent. It’s a wise decision. While techniques such as sending cold emails can work, sometimes a bit more finesse is needed. After all, what better way to sell your organization to potential employees than to use the same kind of proven, social media savvy techniques the folks in your marketing department have been using for years?
Of course, to succeed in your recruitment marketing efforts, you need to create engaging content, attract an audience, and spread the word about your company so that you can reach the ideal talent.
To get started, check out these content tips and other recommendations.
1. Create a candidate persona
Marketing teams create customer personas. These are detailed profiles of the different people who are most likely to be interested in their products and services. Personas include demographic information, interests, values, hobbies, the websites they visit, motivations, and concerns. You can do the same by creating personas for the different types of talent you are trying to attract.
Here are some things to consider:
- What is the perfect candidate’s personality?
- What motivates them to work hard?
- Why are they looking for a new job?
- Who influences their career decisions?
- Where do they go to search for jobs and get career advice?
- What about their current job frustrates them?
2. Pick the right social media platforms
There are dozens of social media platforms. Don’t worry about all of them. Instead, pick the ones where you know your target candidates spend time consuming career related content, and where they are most likely to engage with you.
Facebook and LinkedIn are two places to start. Facebook is a good choice because people interested in your brand may already be engaging with you there. If you have an audience that is already interested in your brand, why not reach out to see if any of them might be interested in working for you. LinkedIn has already established itself as a well-respected platform for career related networking.
3. Create an underlying value proposition
To create effective recruitment marketing content, you have to identify your selling points. That’s your value proposition. This answers the question that potential hires are going to have. Why would I want to work for you? The content that you create and share should communicate your value proposition. Think of:
- Compensation and benefits
- Work environment
- Learning opportunities
- Growth potential
- Culture
To be clear, every piece of content you produce doesn’t need to touch on every point, but it should speak to at least one of these elements.
4. Remember: This is marketing and not sales
Marketing is the act of making your company and products appealing to the right audience. It’s building relationships, creating recognition, building trust, establishing thought leadership, and giving your target audience something of value.
The same thing applies to recruitment marketing. Don’t just focus on selling your jobs to people who are ready to come on board now. Focus on establishing yourself as a trusted brand to people in all stages of the job search.
5. Create a recruiting podcast
Podcasts are becoming increasingly popular. They can also be used as a great recruiting tool to supplement your hiring efforts. In fact, the city of Edmonton had great results by adding a brief audio clip to their job listings. These five minute podcasts introduced job seekers to the managers they would be working for, and gave them some great insights into the jobs they were interested in pursuing.
6. Use a SlideShare presentation to make your case
Marketers use SlideShare to present their products. Why not use it to sell your company as a great place to work? After all, SlideShare presentations are visually stunning, and they create plenty of shares and engagement. A SlideShare presentation is a great way to hit on all the points in your value proposition. You can also create a separate presentation for each of your business areas.
7. Include a video tour of your workplace
Behind the scenes content is extremely popular. People want to know about the people behind the brands that intrigue them, and how those folks spend their days. Grab your cell phone camera and take people on a behind the scenes look. Show them a day in the life of one of your employees. You can even use live video at company events. Does your team have a regular bowling night? Do they spend time volunteering in the community? Shoot live videos and broadcast them on Facebook or Twitter to reach your target audience.
8. Use the right tools and resources to make your content shine
Anybody can throw together some blog posts and infographics in an attempt to appeal to job seekers. To really stand out from other brands, you have to double down when it comes to quality. Emphasize great visuals, quality writing, and the best production values you can manage. Fortunately there are a wide variety resources and tools to help. here are some of them:
- Canva
- Grammarly
- White Smoke
- Survey Monkey
- Grabmyessay
- Vimeo for business
- PowToon
- HootSuite
The tools in the list above can help with a variety of tasks. These include content writing, creating videos surveys and infographics, and promoting your recruiting content.
9. Use infographics to explain the hiring and onboarding process
When it comes to marketing content, infographics are among the most popular and the most shareable types of content out there. Rather than using long paragraphs of text, consider using infographics to educate people about the steps they will take, the documents, and what they can expect during the recruitment process.
You can also use infographics to inform new hires and potential hires about your onboarding process. This is a fun and engaging way to ensure that they start off with all the information they need.
10. Start a career and recruiting blog
To really show your commitment to reaching out to potential employees, considered targeting them directly with a Blog dedicated completely to their needs. This could be a dedicated area of your current website, or its own independent microsite. Here, the content might consist of information about your company, perspectives from recent hires, job search and interview advice, even some humorous content about looking for a job and all that goes along with that.
By doing this, you give interested talent a single place to find the information they want. if you can motivate them to subscribe then you can target them with engaging content that meets their needs.
11. Give potential hires a platform
Many brands create user-generated content to engage their target audience and provide them with a platform to share information and ask questions. Consider doing this for potential hires in addition to your target customers. A platform like this could be used to host ‘ask me anything’ sessions with recruiters and managers, frequently asked questions, user forums, and other content.
12. Consider giving recruiters their own social media presence
If you’re recruitment marketing efforts must share its social media presence with your other digital marketing efforts, it might get lost in the shuffle. Instead, consider giving your hiring team the authority to establish their own social media presence. This will ensure that interested talent can easily find the content that has been specifically created for them.
13. Final thoughts
The recruiting and hiring process isn’t just competitive among job seekers. There is also significant competition among companies to attract the attention of the best talent. It’s no wonder that recruiting marketing is one of the emerging recruitment trends. By implementing a great recruitment marketing strategy, you can best ensure that you give your business the best possible advantage.
Brand developer in the past. Mom and educational blogger in the present. Freelance writer by trade. Hiking fan by choice. Desperate inspiration seeker all the time. Author
Luisa Brenton
Brand developer in the past. Mom and educational blogger in the present. Freelance writer by trade. Hiking fan by choice. Desperate inspiration seeker all the time.
