You’re more likely to find the right talent if you market your jobs (and organization) effectively. Source: Shutterstock

5 ways to transform your recruitment marketing initiatives

RECRUITMENT MARKETING is an important part of any growing business, especially those that want to attract the most coveted new graduates and experienced talent in the marketplace.

Just like branding your products, your company also has a brand, a reputation, and a culture. Bundling it all up in an authentic package and showcasing it to the world will not only help you fill open positions quickly but will also help you ensure that you find the right candidates – people who’re aligned with your company’s goals and vision.

“What we see time and time again in research is that talent pipelines are what hiring managers and recruiters, as well as senior-level HR professionals, see as a critical priority for business. What we’ve found is that, if you deploy marketing tactics, you’re in a better position to hire more quickly and build that pipeline,” iCIMS CMO Susan Vitale told Recruiter.com.

If you’re interested in strengthening your recruitment marketing efforts, here are some ideas for you:

#1 | Use video to tell your story

Video is always exciting, and it’s the best way to tell a story. Recruitment marketers often use video when they want to convey something about a brand, or the company’s culture.

If you’re seeking to indulge young graduates, you’ll find that video works best as it can be shared on social media.

KPMG, for example, uses the following video to drive home the point that they’re a professional firm, but make sure to highlight that the company’s executives make time for fun.

#2 | Find your next recruit on social media

You don’t always have to pay a lot to post a job advert on popular job sites such as LinkedIn and Seek. What you can do instead, is create and host the job description on your website.

Next, simply post the requirement with a picture of the team or your company’s sprawling office building and facilities on social media, letting your followers know you’re hiring.

Soon, you’ll have all the applications you need, with people recommending friends and family members they think would be suitable for the job.

#3 | Leverage online tools and data to hone in on the right talent

Okay, so if you’re looking for someone with a very specific skillset, you’re going to need data to understand who they are. How about you create a campaign to target them specifically?

Well, here’s how you can do it. Create a job advert and host it either on your own website or on an online job board.

Next, head over to LinkedIn and learn about your target candidates – what do they do, what kind of events do they go to, what do they like to discuss online – and finally, create a campaign that targets those characteristics on social media. Doing so will definitely help you reach the right talent and get the most out of your advertising.

Content marketing can help people gain an insider’s view of your office and teams. Source: Shutterstock

#4 | Play the long game with content marketing

Recruitment marketing is not always about immediate needs. For many companies, a big part of recruitments is about building content about the company’s employees, people, teams, and functions.

People who’re thinking about working in your company would like to know what you do, what a day in the life of a company executive looks like, and how people at the company enjoy life outside of work – among all other things.

Go ahead and create a company blog, tell stories of executives who’ve joined your company recently, of those who’ve stayed with you the longest, and of those who your customers celebrate for their service.

Find stories in what your everyday people do, and you’ll create the most appealing content to attract new candidates and recruits.

#5 | Optimize your “applicant experience”

Imagine an applicant seeking to apply for a job you’ve posted online, finding themselves in an endless loop of questions, responses to which don’t save and need to be written up all over again simply because they missed out on filling in one “mandatory” field.

It resonates with you, doesn’t it? Has happened to you sometime in your life. Here’s what you need to do in order to make sure it doesn’t happen to any of your potential candidates: Get the applicant experience right.

Hire a user experience or a customer experience specialist if you need to, but make sure you map out the applicant journey and create a great experience for them – so their first experience with your company is wonderful (representative of their experience working at your company?).