Most likely, you are already doing recruitment marketing to some extent, and to improve yourself further, it’s always good to ask yourself these questions.
Topic for this blog came in a conversation in Twitter. While talking about the importance of well-made job advertisements and carefully written professional CV’s, talent management expert Milla Kansonen (@millakansonen) summarized recruitment process as a whole very well in a tweet: Both offering a job, and applying for a job are marketing at its best.
We can’t agree more with Milla on this, and we too believe that offering a job is marketing. Recruitment marketing. Recruitment marketing is about applying marketing best practices to attract, engage and nurture candidates and converting them into applicants by communicating and highlighting your employer brand. Most likely, you are already doing some soft of recruitment marketing – say, you have produced content that conveys your company culture, you are present and active on social media, etc – and you want to improve. Well, simply put yourself in candidate’s shoes!
Does your career site feature stories from your employees? Does your website communicate your values to your candidates? Do you pay any effort to make your job advertisement interesting and attractive? Do you have a strong presence on social media? Do you address negative comments about your company online? Think about how you can make yourself known and interesting to your candidates, even before they consider applying to you.
What does your job postings look like? Do they say anything about your company culture, or is it merely a list of responsibilities? What are the words that you use in your job posting, and what are you promising your future employee? What about your application form? Does your application form reflect your company culture well? Does your employer brand message stay coherent throughout the application process? For example, say, you told your candidates that you are a modern company that embraces new ways of doing things, but your application form has 5 pages and consists of several unnecessary fields for the candidate needs to fill. Isn’t that contradicting?
One of the biggest complaints candidates have is poor communication or lack of thereof. You don’t want to leave your candidates hanging, as they will easily drop out from your application process and find a job somewhere else. If you promised your candidates to get back to them by a specific date, be sure to be true to your word. If the candidate can’t trust your word during the recruitment process, do you think you give a great impression of yourself as an employer or as a possible future boss?
Ps. If you are looking for ideas for candidate communication, we prepared you this material!
Paycheck isn’t the only thing that matters.
✅ What is your company’s strength compared to other employers?
✅ Do your employees enjoy working for you?
✅ Do they have fun at work?
✅ Or is your company simply the top dog – everyone wants to work for the biggest in business?
Whatever this strength is, you need to communicate it. Rather do this early in the process, instead of waiting for the job interview. Which leads me to my last point.
Likability works both ways. Both offering a job and applying for a job are marketing at it’s best. If you are a top candidate with a few great offers on the table, would you sign the offer made by a boss who’s body language tells he’s too busy to pay any more attention to you than is necessary? Or would you rather choose the offer made by company, which involved your possible future team in the recruitment process and you have already met them at least on a video?
Well, obviously the final decision is up to the candidate, and depends on a whole lot of other factors besides the ones listed here. But making yourself seem attractive as an employer is never going to do any harm for you.
If you are planning to enhance or start building your employer brand, start with this practical handbook.
