What is a recruitment marketing strategy? Simply put, it is a marketing plan directed at potential job seekers. Whether you are a small, two-employee startup firm, or a giant Fortune 500 entity, recruitment marketing is essential in today’s world.
Why do I need a Recruitment Marketing Strategy?
The goal of recruitment marketing is to give your organization an employer reputation. Even if you are small firm with minimal brand recognition, potential job seekers will learn about your employer reputation through research. If there is nothing for them to find, they will create their own idea of your reputation, which may not be beneficial to your recruiting efforts.
Steps to create a Recruitment Marketing Strategy
Below are six steps to creating a competitive recruitment marketing strategy. These steps are scalable for any size organization.
Step 1: Objective
What do you want to accomplish? What are you challenges?
Step 2: Target Audience
What types of employees do you want attract? Where do you expect to find these employees? What are the demographics associated with these potential employees? Where do you find and engage your audience, such as user groups, social media, universities, trade organizations, etc.?
Step 3: What Products and Services should you highlight?
These are not the products and services your company sells to businesses or consumers, but the features and culture of your company that are most attractive to your target audience. Examples might include geographical features if you need to relocate candidates. Benefits, flexible work schedules, technology, continuing education, student loan repayment or tuition assistance, and retirement plans might be other features for which your target audience values.
Step 4: Create a Strategy
What do you know about your target audience and how can you leverage that information? Do you have competitive intelligence? What are your tools, resources, and timelines? How will you implement and monitor your strategy? Make sure to include inbound and outbound marketing campaigns. Your current employees are vital to the success of building your employer reputation.
Step 5: Implement Strategy
Training for internal staff is critical in this step! If your hiring managers don’t align their management styles and interview techniques with your recruitment marketing strategy, you might get more qualified applicants, but you might not be able to secure and retain them.
Step 6: Monitor, Analyze, Report, and Adjust
As with any marketing campaign, determining the effectiveness of your strategy, adjusting as needed, and keeping the strategy aligned with changes in the economy, business direction, and job market is critical.
Recruitment Marketing Strategies are all about engaging people with your brand, but from a personal and prospective employee perspective, instead of a buyer’s perspective. Align your HR team with your general marketing team to overlap where possible and ensure cohesion among the campaigns. It is time to start recruiting, not just hiring!
