Recruitment Marketing: Communicating Your Employer Brand

Jan 9, 2024

Applicant Tracking, HR and Recruiting Industry Information, Recruiting Best Practices

Updated January 9, 2024

If your organization is struggling to find and recruit top talent, you’re not alone. In fact, filling a new position takes an average of 44 days, with more specialized roles taking as long as multiple months. But with the right approach, your business can improve its hiring efforts and strengthen the teams. Find out more about the role of recruitment marketing in building a strong and happy workforce.

What is Recruitment Marketing?

Recruitment marketing refers to the efforts made to promote a brand as an appealing place to work. Throughout the recruitment process, a business should continue to emphasize the advantages of working there through discussions of the core mission, vision, and values, as well as the overall culture. Using this strategy can boost brand awareness and encourage top talent with shared values to join the team.

What’s the Difference Between Recruitment Marketing and Recruiting?

Recruiting is the process of finding and screening candidates to fill job vacancies. It’s something that happens in nearly every organization that has employees, as people leave and their roles must be backfilled. Additionally, small businesses may invest in the recruiting process when experiencing growth that requires the addition of staff.

By contrast, recruitment marketing is the process of targeting people who might be interested in working for the organization, whether now or at some point in the future. Through the use of tools like employer branding and awareness, targeted ads, and social media platforms.

Goals of Recruitment Marketing

As you consider incorporating recruitment marketing into your hiring strategy, think about the goals you may be able to achieve.

Increase the number of applicants for job listings: With more applications to consider, it becomes easier to find well-qualified individuals for open positions.
Improve applicant quality: The quality of the people who apply for jobs determines the success of the hiring process. Improve applicant quality by casting a wider net and reinforcing the appeal of working for your organization.
Support nurturing efforts for candidates: Candidates need to feel supported and nurtured throughout the process, whether they receive an offer or not. Maintaining these efforts when filling positions can also generate more positive awareness around your organization as a supportive and appealing place to work.

5 Advantages of Investing in Recruitment Marketing

Utilizing recruitment marketing can benefit your organization in a number of ways.

Improve time-to-fill

As mentioned, it can take a long time to fill an open position. With every day that goes by, the team members of that unfilled role are likely taking on additional tasks and responsibilities, potentially increasing the risk of burnout and declining morale. Reducing the time it takes to hire can make a big difference in overall satisfaction while keeping costs under control.

Lower cost-to-hire

Speaking of reducing costs, recruitment marketing can also aid in lowering what your organization spends on bringing on new hires. As you create a framework for the hiring process, you can reduce the time and money typically spent on various efforts that become obsolete. Additionally, getting employees involved in building the brand doesn’t cost a lot, yet can have a significant impact on the overall success of finding top talent.

Encourage engagement

Beyond just those directly involved in the hiring process, recruitment marketing encourages the entire employee base to get involved with recruitment efforts. Employees can serve as brand ambassadors, sharing their experiences with the organization to encourage others to apply for open positions. You can also request feedback and insights from employees, using this information to market the employer brand more effectively.

Improve candidate quality

Candidate quality is a key factor in hiring top talent. When you don’t have high-quality candidates applying for open roles, you can’t bring on the best people. But utilizing recruitment marketing tactics allows a company to seek candidates who already have similar experience and may be good cultural fits. As a result, you can target better candidates who may not be actively searching for jobs, yet open to better opportunities that come along.

Build diverse teams

Diversity in the workforce contributes to enhanced opportunities for solving problems and responding creatively to challenges. Additionally, a diverse group of people is able to pull information from a wider range of experiences and sources, leading to educated decisions that benefit the organization as a whole.

With recruitment marketing efforts, your business can target specific individuals to fill open roles. Doing so can aid in building more diversity across departments.

Technology for Recruitment Marketing Efforts

Access to the right technology can make a big difference in your company’s efforts to find and bring on skilled individuals, as well establish the organization as a welcoming and supportive place to work. As you think about how you can increase the number of applications and generate a wider talent pool, consider the following tools and resources:

Job board listing management tools
Candidate management technology
Text-to-recruit capabilities
Content creation and graphic design tools

Recruitment Marketing Tactics to Consider

Wondering how to make the most of this process? Check out these tips:

Make the most of job posting sites: Job boards are among the first places people go when looking for new opportunities. Make sure all open roles with your organization are accessible across a variety of boards, including those targeted to specific groups and niches.
Utilize online paid advertising to recruit: It may be worth putting some money behind your efforts, as paid advertising can get your message in front of a wider audience. Some options allow your business to target those in specific locations or with unique skills. Consider sponsoring or boosting job listings to reach more potential applicants.
Use traditional advertising channels: Similar to other marketing efforts, your organization should utilize traditional channels when getting the word out about the employer brand.
Develop a social media recruitment strategy: Social media has skyrocketed in the recruiting world, so get your piece of the pie by developing a strategy that utilizes the top platforms. Advantages of this tool include the option for two-way communication, an easy option for brand ambassadors to share information about open roles, and a wider reach.
Rely on employees in recruiting efforts: Include your current team members in efforts to find and bring on talent. Employee referrals tend to be higher-quality candidates, and current team members may be able to reach passive candidates who aren’t currently looking for work yet would be excellent fits in specific roles.
Showcase talent and subject matter experts: Think about how to incorporate your existing talent and subject matter experts in your efforts to find talented individuals.
Utilize customer base as recruiting source: Use every resource available to you when seeking to fill open positions, including reaching out to your customer base. You never know who may be open to changing roles or knows of someone who would align well with the organizational culture.

You could also look into video recruitment marketing tactics, such as creating video-based employee testimonials or interviews with brand ambassadors and including the media on your hiring page or recruitment ads. Other options include offering virtual office tours, showing remote work setups, and providing a “day in the life”, behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to be an employee of your organization.

Recruitment Marketing Metrics: Measuring Your Efforts

After you take steps toward creating and implementing a recruitment marketing plan, it’s essential to keep an eye on the success. Metrics like time-to-fill, cost-per-hire, and how long an employee sticks around can indicate how well your efforts are working and what you can change to make the process even better for all involved.

Other metrics to look at for online channels include:

Content impressions
Click volume
Click-through rate (CTR)
Cost-per-click
Cost-per-application
Cost-per-hire
Application rate

Even offline channels have metrics that your hiring professionals can keep an eye on to determine what works and what doesn’t. These include:

Phone calls
Landing page visits
Cost-per-application
Cost-per-hire

Use your data to identify the top candidate sources and measure the effectiveness of new tactics. You can also use the information to determine what your company is spending, on average, to bring on a new hire and whether it’s more worthwhile to hire and promote from within or seek out external talent.

Invest in Your Hiring Efforts with ApplicantStack

ApplicantStack is an all-in-one hiring and onboarding platform that can aid in your efforts to bring on top talent. You can easily use the system to create and post open jobs across hundreds of job boards, as well as connect with social media platforms for a wider reach. Plus, you can maintain your company’s transparency with consistent communication, like email notifications and texting, to hire the best candidate with less effort. Try it for free today to learn how it can complement your plan to invest in recruitment marketing and build a stronger employer brand.