Recruitment marketing is a very interesting ‘fraction’ of marketing governed by similar principles. Only the target is a bit different!
That is why I have put together 10 key principles from the perspective of someone who has worked in both marketing and HR.
1. Drive traffic to your Career Page – and nowhere else
“Investing in your own Careers website doesn’t make sense”.
Said nobody. Never.
Your Career Page should be the apple of your eye, polished almost every day!
When browsing it, your potential future talent:
- will fall in love at first sight and feel convinced that this is the place they have been looking for, or
- will abandon the idea of working with you forever.
Rarely does anything in between happen.
The biggest recruiter’s “sin” is directing candidates interested in the job to job boards, instead of their own Career Page.
Why?
I recommend a little experiment. Step into the shoes of a candidate and try applying from a job board. As you read the details of the offer, you will be attacked by job ads from competing companies. Is this distracting? Are you giving away your sourced and interested candidates straight into the clutches of your competitors this way? Yes, you do!
Once you’ve submitted your application, you’ll receive a lovely thank you email. And you will probably see an “Other job offers that may interest you” section. Whose offers will that be? Competing employers offers.
Conclusion – whatever you do (social media promotion, emailing, offline campaigns) – drive traffic to your own Career page.
2. Everything you do must have a CTA (‘call-to-action’)
What would be the point of a job post without an “Apply” button?
Or a Careers page without a “Join Us” button?
Well, that’s what it is. This is a CTA. A “call to action”.
No social media post and no landing page make sense if there is no CTA.
The key objective of a Career page is to persuade the candidates to apply. So it is worth making it easy for them. Remember to maintain the interest of candidates who didn’t find an offer for themselves when visiting the site!
A great example of a CTA on the Career page can be also a section inviting candidates to add their CVs to your database.
3. If you can’t measure something, why doing it?
Numbers allow us to understand the impact of what we do.
Numbers allow us to prove the business value of what we do.
Numbers show where we can optimize something.
There is a huge number of tools that can help you achieve this. For example, Google Analytics. It is free! With this tool, you will see the traffic to your Careers page and ads.
Collect numbers wherever you can. Collect and analyze. Compare. Use your ATS and recruitment reports to understand what are the most efficient application sources.
You can put your recruitment marketing to the next level by adding UTM parameters to your campaigns to know the exact source of every single talent in your pool. Highly recommended!
I once heard that you can’t measure traffic from offline campaigns.
But even on leaflets, city lights. and billboards you can add a shortened link or QR code directing to your website.
4. Build your own talent pool
Every time a vacancy in your company opens up, you start the whole process from scratch. You create the job post, prepare graphics, and post it on paid job boards and your career page. Over and over again.
You waste time and money reaching out to candidates who might already know about you,
Candidates who fit the role and know their CV is in your database think to themselves:
“Why didn’t they contact me? They have my CV!”
You are increasing the cost of acquiring applications
“The average cost per hire was $4,129 in 2019 but rose to $4,700 in 2023,
which is a 14% increase“
according to SHRM – The Society for Human Resource Management (source)
Creating and nurturing your candidate base is just as important as sourcing applications for a specific position. And those who are already in your talent pool should not forget about you!
For example, my company has a newsletter called TRAFFIT Talent and we keep our candidate base informed about what’s going on. It’s called candidate nurturing and you should put it on your TO-DO list.
5. Create candidate personas to get into their shoes
A persona is a fictional character from a specific target group. It is the answer to the question “Who do you want to reach with your message?”
In recruitment marketing, a persona is not a picture of the ideal candidates you are looking for – it is a fictional representation of what they are really like.
I recommend arranging a 2-3 hour workshop with your Hiring Managers to visualize your personas. It does make things a lot easier!
Here’s my example:
6. Don’t imitate. But look for inspiration!
Imitating others is not cool – especially in marketing. When they see imitation, recipients feel rather embarrassment than interest.
But that does not apply to getting inspired!
- Don’t be afraid to visit the Careers Pages of those with whom you are “competing” for top talents
- When you see a job posting on LinkedIn for a position you too are now looking for – read it
- If you see another company’s cool stand at a job fair with crowds at it? Visit it!
I remember watching Kitchen Nightmares and the owners of a restaurant who said they hadn’t eaten anywhere for years, because they didn’t want to spend money to eat at someone’s restaurant since they have their own one.
Research and knowing what’s going on in the industry is key!
7. Make friends with A/B testing
Do you know all the answers?
Do your candidates prefer more formal or informal language in the job ads?
Do they click Apply more often when the button is blue or pink?
Are they more keen to apply when the job post includes a photo gallery of the team?
This is where A/B testing can help. This is simply making two or more variations of the same page and comparing their effectiveness. You can make the decisions based on facts, and not your beliefs.
I like performing A/B tests of emails. I’m dividing the target group randomly into two groups and comparing what % in each group opened the email. That % is called the open rate. The higher, the better! If the e-mail with the title “A” got 25% open rate,
This shows me which title is more likely to attract attention and convince people to read the content.
You can start with simple things, such as publishing similar ads on the same Facebook group – but at different days and time. This way you will find out what the best time to publish is.
According to Sprout Social’s research on Facebook, the best time to publish posts is from Tuesday to Friday. In our experience, the best time may be Tuesday at 10 AM.
Posts posted then often reach a larger audience and generate the most engagement.
The worst day to post on Facebook is Saturday. (source)
I believe that there is no one universal time and that a lot depends on the industry.
8. Stock photos are not a good employer branding material
The first thing worth spending your budget on is a photo shoot. It’s not theory – it’s my experience. Sure – there are some people you can’t drag in front of the lens or to an employer branding session.
But if you create a cool, friendly environment and a fun atmosphere, there will be plenty of people willing to take photos together. These photos will win the hearts of your potentail candidates on social media, in job posts, and on the Career Page.
We have gone one step further and created non-stock GIF’s 😉
9. Don’t be afraid to use video
The written word is important and allows candidates to reach your Careers page from search engines like Google. But it’s the video that catches the eye and can convey more than 1,000 words!
You can win on social media if you just invest in video.
Applications increase by 34% when job adverts include photos or video testimonials.
(source)
And no – you don’t have to be a director of Cameron’s caliber or have million-dollar equipment. We shoot with a regular camera and sometimes even a phone.
The videos are not perfect, but the candidates appreciate it.
10. Cooperate closely with your marketing department
What you do to attract clients should be consistent with how you try to attract candidates.
The language, the visual identity, the way you communicate. Whatever you do outside of the company – talk about it with your marketing team.
Use similar templates for graphics, and create HTML templates for newsletters together.
Share good practices and lessons learned.
This is what a funnel looks like in recruitment marketing:
Looks familiar?
Yes, this is exactly what the marketing and sales funnel looks like. That’s why it’s worth talking to marketing sometimes, not just in the kitchen during the lunch break!
Hope you have enjoyed reading and got inspired by my list!
