Recruiting talent has never had more avenues than today. There’s a wide world full of potential candidates to choose from. But these candidates also have choices. Even if you are attracting this top talent, the next step is to keep them around.
How do you stand out from the crowd and also then retain these staff members?
This is where recruitment marketing comes in. Recruitment marketing is a combination of strategies, tools and avenues that you can use to build engagement and nurture prospective candidates BEFORE the application phase.
For the long term success of your overall recruitment process, you should consider your recruitment marketing strategy. Don’t worry! We’ve got you covered with three golden strategies that are sure to set you up for long term success.
Your Employee Value Proposition or EVP is the unique offerings that an employee will receive in return for their labour, time, skills, ideas and experience they bring to your company. When integrated into all aspects of a business, a strong EVP will help retain top performers and attract the best external talent. Think of it like this.
Your company must offer a USP or Unique Selling Proposition to clients in order to stand out and make revenue. In the same way, employees are like internal clients. What unique selling proposition does your company offer to employees?
Now, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and nor was it built on one street alone. This is not a process you can change overnight for your company. If you are sensing deep-set issues within your company, it may take a number of months or even years to affect change from the roots up. Your EVP comes from every aspect – from your janitor to your IT support. It encompasses every interaction within your company.
And sometimes this is where the chasm starts to grow. EVP is not just a facade, it’s not dressing up a gremlin and presenting it as a fairy. It’s not putting lipstick on a swine. When new recruits are sold the facade, it doesn’t take very long for the disconnect to be apparent and the chasm suddenly cracks across the terrain of your company or workplace.
What I’m saying is that people are not fooled easily. Studies suggest that on average, 75% of prospective candidates research your company through multiple avenues, from google reviews to glassdoor, before they apply or accept a job offer. The remaining 25% have reported that they have subsequently done this research within their initial probation period, particularly when what was promised has not been delivered upon.
Delving a bit further, employer branding and the EVP is more than just skin deep. It incorporates the culture, attitude, workplace flexibility, remuneration, daily interactions, physical workplace like the building, office etc, social side and everything in between. It’s not just what you say you are, it is what you ACTUALLY are.
You need to be honest and pull no punches with this – if it takes two years to fix, then be prepared to roll up your sleeves, and get stuck in to fix it.
When you offer a great EVP, you will have a queue of prospective candidates waiting for a chance to get into your company. And, what’s more, you’ll have something incredibly powerful within. More on that in the second strategy.
You’ve probably heard the expression: “Happy wife, happy life”. Well, we go a step further and suggest: “happy employees, more happy employees”. To put it simply, customer referral programs are excellent ways to cheaply and easily grow your customer base, and employee referral programs are the same for gaining high-level employees. When you have a great culture, a workplace that inspires your employees to jump out of bed in the morning, you will gain an army of promoters who will actively convert their friends and former colleagues to your company.
Employee referral programs are one of the most powerful and yet, often underestimated and underutilised hiring tools. When implemented strategically, they can have multiple benefits for your hiring process, including lower staff turnover rates, spending less time on the recruiting process and onboarding, and minimising the cost per hire.
Given the success rates of this hiring method, many popular brands rely on it. Many small to medium enterprises also rely on this method too – as it’s considered that premium employees tend to recommend other potentially premium employees.
As an example, Intel provides referral bonuses to their employees. Salesforce hosts their self-titled: “Recruitment Happy Hours”, meetings where their staff members can invite people they want to refer.
It’s a hugely important aspect of recruiting – and when combined with the other strategies in this article, you’ll be sure to find excellent employees.
In an increasingly digital age, if you’re not utilising social media, you’re missing out. You’ve probably already got some social media marketing in place for finding new customers and clients, but have you thought about how to find new candidates through social media? The number of social media users is constantly rising exponentially. A research study says that there are close to 3.5 billion active social media users worldwide. Further to this, an average internet user has about 7.6 social media accounts.
So it follows that most of your potential job candidates are on social media. Indeed, a LinkedIn survey reported that 49% of professionals are following certain organisations in order to keep up with their hiring process.
This is why social media needs to be a cornerstone of your recruitment process. Now, no two social media platforms will offer the same results.
The way to unlock your social recruitment success is by using the right platforms to engage with, and subsequently nurture, your relationships with prospective candidates. As the go-to professional social media network, LinkedIn will in all likelihood be your main focal point.
You can use the advanced search and filtering options to find the top candidates looking for a challenge or a sea change, as well as those that work for competitors. Therefore, it’s not surprising at all that a large number of companies are already using this platform as part of their recruiting process.
Aside from LinkedIn, you can also use other social networks like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to target and connect with your potential applicants.
I would suggest that depending on the nature of your company, the role you need to fill and the type of candidate you are looking for, Facebook is the most obvious second place to LinkedIn in terms of potential. Paramount to this strategy is to make sure that your business accounts are updated.
Make sure to provide all of the main business details, such as your company name, address and contact info, as well as to publish company news such as events, accomplishments, and other engaging posts.
There are some really left-field social media avenues to go down too, where appropriate. For instance, McDonald’s uses Snapchat to inform their candidates about new job positions, while Amazon has taken social recruiting to a whole new swipeable playing field by publishing their job ads on Tinder of all places.
Needless to say, as the way the world congregates and communicates continues to evolve, so too should the way we look to engage prospective candidates.
Recruitment marketing is the answer to your prayers. We must make this clear, these strategies will work for you, but not overnight. It will take time depending on how far along in your journey with these strategies you are. By considering your Employee Value Proposition, having a great employee referral program and getting comfortable with social recruiting, you will be sure to attract and retain all the high-quality employees you need. All of these strategies at their core are highly time-consuming, and in the meantime, you may still need to recruit and onboard talent. Using a 3rd party software such as MyRecruitment+ will help you onboard smoothly and positively, whilst giving you the time you need to work on these tips.