4 Easy Ways to Improve Your Recruitment Marketing Strategy
Statistics Canada reports record job vacancies in Canada in 2022. The pandemic completely transformed the job market. People close to retirement edged out of the job market. Immigration slowed during the pandemic. Sectors hit hard by frequent lockdowns pushed many individuals into new careers. If your business is having a hard time finding qualified, talented job applicants, you’re not alone. It’s time to rethink how you recruit. Use your online presence to build and support a solid recruitment marketing strategy. Reach out to job applicants where they live – on social media and the internet.
Effective Ways to Use Your Digital Assets for Recruiting
Digital marketing has transformed how businesses interact with customers. Now, employers are using digital avenues to recruit top talent. Recruitment marketing is a way to attract people who are searching for jobs to come to you, rather than the other way around. It’s not about advertising one job at a time, but about marketing your career opportunities to candidates. Job seekers have so many ways to find a job in today’s marketplace that you have to position your organization as a great place to work and your brand as one that employees stand behind.
Here are four ways to build recruitment into your current online marketing strategy.
1. Leverage Your Website to Build Your Employer Brand
Marketing to job candidates isn’t much different than marketing to customers. You may be “selling” a different product, but you can use the same techniques. A well-written and interesting career page can work wonders and should be part of your recruitment marketing strategy.
Here are some tips on how to make your company known to potential candidates and get them interested:
- Don’t be shy to flaunt brand value and culture by designing a page for job candidates that includes employee testimonials.
- Make it easy for job applicants to understand your mission and your achievements in your industry.
- Showcase what you offer. Mention all the perks, benefits, community involvement, and team building. Don’t hide the salary! It’s also a good screening tool to help draw the right candidates.
- Provide videos of your team and business environment to show potential candidates the culture they can expect to see and experience.
- Include other content that may encourage candidates to apply. Create blog posts about employee engagement, awards, and innovations. Add an FAQ section to your career page to answer the questions most often asked by potential candidates about job opportunities and the hiring process.
- If you have a dedicated human resources department, add Live Chat functionality to your career page. Job seekers want to ask questions and get information as quickly as possible.
- Collect lead information from potential job applicants. Use email marketing to follow up with potential candidates.
Here are three employers that have impressive career pages to take inspiration from:
- Airbnb: The page content aligns perfectly with the brand’s mission to offer a home anywhere. It attracts job seekers to “live and work anywhere”.
- Squarespace: At a quick glance, candidates can see the different job categories, how many positions are available, where they are located, and if they are remote or hybrid.
- Cisco: The careers section is a microsite offering everything a job seeker would want to know and hear about, including why current employees love their ‘home’ at Cisco.
2. Make Your Job Offers More Visible
When it comes to making your job postings more visible, you have several options.
The first and most common one is to post your job offers on job boards such as Indeed, Monster, Glassdoor, LinkedIn, etc. Many of these sites offer you the option of paid advertising to increase the visibility of your offers.
While job boards are effective, they are not the only option. As mentioned earlier, creating a career page with content relevant to job seekers and a listing of your job opportunities can help in a competitive job market. If your website is built on WordPress, many great job board plugins are available and can be added to your website. All the information on your career page will allow Google to index your page properly and improve its ranking in search results and by default, the visibility of your job offers.
Google is now helping recruiters highlight their job opportunities (and candidates find a job) with its powerful tool called “Google for Jobs”. As an employer, this tool allows you to reach more potential candidates actively searching, increasing your chances of finding the right candidate for the job. Most job boards are integrated with “Google for Jobs”, but you can also do this for your job listings on your website. Your digital marketing agency can help you make sure that the jobs on your website also appear in “Google for jobs” via the addition of job posting structured data.
Finally, a good job posting would not be effective without a complete and optimized job description. It is important to use keywords and phrases that pertain to your job description, and relate to your industry and location, especially if you want local candidates with the right competencies for your industry. Analyze how candidates search for jobs related to your job openings to see what keywords they use in their search, and tailor your job postings accordingly.
3. Manage Your Online Reputation
Customers aren’t the only ones who are reading your business reviews. Job candidates are evaluating your brand’s reputation to learn more about your culture. When you’re dealing with job seekers, you also have to look at your online reputation on job sites and social media channels, such as Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and Indeed, as well as Facebook and Google.
Leverage reviews left on these channels by former employees and customers to identify flaws in your culture, values, human resources processes and more. Work with your leadership and management team to address recurring issues to potentially improve your talent recruitment. You can also ask your current employees to review your company on Glassdoor, Indeed and other online job boards to increase your online reputation scores.
4. Showcase Your Brand on Social Media Platforms
Social media isn’t just a place to reach customers. Job seekers are just as active on social media as everyone else, maybe even more so. You can use social media marketing to share your company values and culture and show them in action.
- Use social media to showcase your organization’s innovative spirit and forward-thinking approach. Get pictures of your team working on a current project. Show off the diversity in your organization. Let job seekers know what kind of technology you’re using in the office to support the team. Take pride in and show off what employees in your organization are accomplishing and achieving.
- Leverage employee advocacy as part of your social media recruitment marketing strategy. Ask and encourage employees to share their experiences at your company. Create videos with employee testimonials.
- Share your community involvement. Post content about your connections with other businesses and organizations and share content on the causes you support.
- Communicate when employees get promoted, to let job seekers know that career advancement is encouraged. Have team members take pictures to post on Facebook when they attend training programs or special events.
Note that other techniques such as PPC, Social media advertisement and email marketing can also be used to improve your recruitment effectiveness. While PPC can help you introduce your company to potential candidates who don’t necessarily know you, email marketing helps you stay in touch with candidates who have shown an interest in your company in the past.
Final Thoughts
Finding the best talent (and sometimes just labour) in a competitive job market isn’t easy. Online job boards and newspapers are no longer enough to attract the right candidates, and employers are increasingly required to be creative and transparent in their hiring process. From employer branding to social media, a well-planned and executed digital recruitment marketing strategy can help you reach the best potential prospects.
Having trouble recruiting? Maybe it’s time to rethink your recruitment strategy. As a digital marketing agency in Montreal, WSI can help you maximize your online recruiting efforts by helping you put in place the various elements that will allow your company to shine. Contact us to discuss your recruiting challenges and learn how WSI Montreal can help your business attract and retain the best talent in the job market.
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