Behind every headline-making corporate success story, there’s ultimately a human story. One rooted in a group of individuals bringing their talents and passions together to produce something extraordinary.
It’s no wonder that recruitment marketing is becoming a major priority for some of the fastest-growing and most-admired companies in the world. Business growth starts by attracting the right talent via a clearly understood and compelling corporate brand profile. In this article, you’ll learn why recruitment marketing is critical, the possible challenges, and how to stay on top of employer branding trends.
Why Recruitment Marketing Has Never Been More Critical
The job market is being squeezed from all angles. Unemployment rates have reached near-historical lows in 2023, leaving millions of open positions across America. Plus, many open positions need highly skilled labor, and the number of hires entering certain fields isn’t keeping up with demand.
In short, it’s an employee-driven market, with many employers scrambling to attract and retain not just top talent but any talent at all.
Enter recruitment marketing: A proven way to captivate job seekers by building a deep, meaningful brand for prospective hires to get a feel for the kind of workplace they’re entering. According to LinkedIn, companies with a strong employer brand can hire candidates 1-2x faster, with 50% more qualified candidates.
Part of why recruitment marketing is so successful is by helping businesses differentiate themselves in a crowded market. Highlighting a business’s culture, opportunities, and mission in unique and meaningful ways can motivate a strong candidate to go from consideration to application.
Challenges in Recruitment Marketing
Recruitment marketing is a valuable asset for any employer serious about attracting five-star employees to their organization. But being successful at recruitment marketing isn’t without its challenges.
First, there’s the issue of creating a meaningful brand that will resonate with prospective talent. Every business can promote inclusivity, a desire to change the world, and substantial growth opportunities. Your employer brand needs to do what Bayard Advertising has helped clients with for 100 years — find a unique edge that excites people to say they work for your company.
There’s also no single way to create an effective employer brand. If there were a “silver bullet” for recruitment marketing, everyone would use it, and we’d be back to square one. At the heart of any talent brand is a deceptively simple question: What’s the best way to get the best people working here?
Finally, there’s the fact that the actual channels and methods to attract talent are constantly evolving and changing. From limitations on tracking and tagging candidates to taking a more informal approach to recruitment over social media, there are a lot of little, rapid shifts that are having a big impact on how companies recruit.
Tactical Areas for Recruitment Marketing
The days of simply running a job ad online or in print and expecting a flood of applicants are over. You may still get an avalanche of applicants, but whether those candidates are qualified or are the right cultural fit is a different question.
In fact, it’s critical to recognize that recruitment marketing is about a lot more than posting a job ad. Understanding what channels are available to you, and which ones will work best for your business, are all pieces of the puzzle when building a recruitment marketing budget and strategy.
Here are five key areas when building your talent brand — keeping in mind not every channel will have the same importance or impact for each organization.
Direct apply
Direct apply is an ideal way to remove friction from the job application process, allowing candidates to apply directly through a job board or social media site. Direct apply can also expand your company’s reach by exposing your brand to candidates who may not have heard of your organization and wouldn’t have otherwise sought out your job postings.
Lead generation
Never mind waiting for employees to come to you; a modern recruitment strategy involves actively promoting recruitment through email campaigns, ads, social media posts, or content that encourages candidates to express interest that puts them in a talent pipeline. Building relationships with potential candidates can help you bring them on when the timing is right for both of you.
Brand awareness
A great employer brand should accurately reflect what it’s like to work for your organization beyond just a list of perks and benefits. Your corporate brand should cover your vision, mission, and values, employee feedback and reviews, and what makes you different from your competitors. You can promote brand awareness through social media, your website, content marketing, and events.
Localized in-market
Building broad brand awareness is critical, but don’t forget to establish a local focus when necessary. Localized in-market efforts involve targeting candidates in specific geographic markets. When you need people on the ground or in-office, localized in-market is an effective way to bring in talent.
Traditional media
If you need to hire a lot of roles fast, traditional media like billboards, TV or radio ads, and print ads can still be effective, especially if they’re tied to something like a hiring fair or recruitment open house. You can also use niche traditional media, like trade publications, to target prospective employees in specialized areas.
The Future of Recruitment Marketing
It should be pretty clear by now that recruitment marketing isn’t going anywhere. But that’s not to say there isn’t change to come. Savvy brands must be willing to adapt and evolve their recruitment marketing strategies to keep up with changing trends and technologies, including experimenting with new channels to understand the best channels for their individual goals.
Recruitment marketing was traditionally rooted in ‘soft metrics’ such as employer brand perception or candidate engagement. But the future of recruitment marketing is a lot more data-driven, focused on factors like cost per hire, time to fill, and candidate quality or retention.
The formula to staying at the forefront of talent marketing involves taking a more quantitative approach mixed with a commitment to shaping a distinctive employer brand your future and existing team can get behind.
Why Bayard?
With over 100 years in the recruitment marketing industry, Bayard is here to help your organization into the future with the most innovative recruitment marketing solutions. We understand just how challenging today’s market is, and with our team of experts, finding the right fit for your team will be an easy feat.
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