How To Attract More Candidates Applying Marketing Tactics

Learn how marketing principles to attract the right applicants

The recruitment landscape has changed.

Gone are the days when filling a role meant posting an ad to a job board and waiting for the applications to coming flooding in; for the ‘magic to happen’.

I recently listened to a talk by Michael McQueen, a Futurist and Public Speaker, who spoke about the power shift amongst consumers - something that marketers have long accepted - and it got me thinking about how this shift applies equally to candidates.

The decision to join a company, to apply for a role, or even just to click on an ad, will likely be driven by a level of intense online research of readily-available information about the company, its employees, its benefits and, unfortunately as is sometimes the case, its flaws.

After all, it has been said that a consumer ‘touches’ a brand 8 times before enquiring or buying.

It’s for this reason that recruitment is now, and will continue to be, a role centred on marketing with a major focus on branding and acquisition. Think about this in these simple business-centric terms:

Candidates = Leads

Employees = Sales

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How to apply marketing principles to recruitment

Marketers will often break down their activity into two buckets:

• ‘Always On’ - ongoing activity that usually builds the brand
• Campaign and event-driven - timely activity tied to specific dates or products

With so much information now available online (think: company and staff social profiles, Glassdoor reviews, new, etc.), we can easily apply this approach to our candidate acquisition strategies to help us attract the best talent; not only when roles are available, but equally when they are not.

Here, I wanted to offer you a very simple take on how these two activity types can be aligned to your recruitment efforts.

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How to apply ‘Always On’ marketing principles to recruitment

Promoting your employer brand is a continuous process, which is why we can easily call this your ‘always on’ activity. This covers the following:

• Continuous management of your social channels to promote your company culture and values
• A communication strategy to help manage online reviews, questions, and inbound job applications
• Optimisation of your company channels, like your LinkedIn careers page

These are the elements of your recruitment efforts that may not always relate to a specific role or set of opportunities but must remain an ongoing focus for optimal employer branding.

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Campaign and event-driven recruitment processes

While your ‘always on’ activity will ensure your company remains attractive to candidates, your campaign-driven tactics will be applied when you are hiring for specific roles. This might include:

• Setting up job ads on traditional channels
• Using paid advertising on Facebook or LinkedIn to target passive candidates
• Email marketing your pool of candidates to invite them to apply

While traditional recruitment tactics are still leveraged to drive these efforts, the approaches and tools we can now use to achieve them have evolved.

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