The challenges talent leaders face these days with recruitment marketing remind me of my past life as a swimmer. Despite the early mornings, hard workouts, permanent goggle marks, and smelling of chlorine 24/7, I grew to love the challenge of the sport. Every race was about the water, the clock, and me — no one else.
Yes, other swimmers were in the lanes beside me. But if I turned my head for a second to compare my position with theirs, or if I let them distract me from my strategy, that was it. The race was already over. All my fundamentals went out the window as I tried to catch up. Spinning my wheels to reach the finish line, I was left out of breath and out of luck.
Every loss was a huge reminder that my toughest competition was me. To succeed, I had to get out of my own way.
What’s the Recruitment Marketing Lesson?
The race for top talent is similar. In the face of economic challenges and business uncertainty, those of us in talent acquisition, recruitment marketing, and employer branding are working overtime and overspending to find the best candidates before competitors do. Hoping to surge ahead, we turn to new tools like AI and automation.
And we’re not alone. According to a recent Mercer report, incorporating AI into people functions is number 5 on the list of HR professionals’ top 20 priorities. The same report says 50% of executives fear that their business won’t survive beyond 2030 without embracing AI.
Talk about pressure! But there’s more. In a way, AI is also our competition because it can process so much information and perform so much faster.
As much as I love technology, I think we need to remember this truth:
Tech is not a strategy — it is a tool to assist.
I know how overwhelming it is when we’re expected to master ever-changing technology while continuing to excel in our jobs. At what point does the race for talent become like a swim meet, where we’re just spinning our wheels and exhausting our resources as the clock runs out?
So before diving into the AI deep end and layering on more complex HR tech, I think we should take off our business hats for a moment. Let’s revisit the recruitment marketing basics that will help us do our jobs well no matter what tech we choose to use.
Recruitment Marketing Basics
1. Define Your Objectives Clearly
In my experience, tech is most powerful when it’s part of a larger objective. Imagine hiking in the wilderness without GPS, maps, or trail markers. While the expert hiker might enjoy this challenge, most of us would value something to guide us to our destination in the expected amount of time with the right amount of food and water we packed.
The same concept applies as a recruitment marketing professional. Whether we want to receive more quality applications, reduce time-to-fill, or increase job ad impressions, it’s important to identify objectives and map KPIs to those goals. This informs the kind of tech solutions we need, not the other way around.
Everyone has different objectives for different reasons. Entering a new market, requiring new skill sets, managing a merger or acquisition — these and other factors influence recruitment strategies and the tools needed to implement it. We see this in sports as well. Sprinters train differently than long-distance runners, and each will use separate techniques for relay races.
2. Put Candidate Experience at the Center
As we lock in recruitment marketing objectives and start building strategies to achieve them, we need to put ourselves in candidates’ shoes and ensure that their experience is optimized for those objectives.
We all know that candidate experience matters. Forbes says that a positive candidate experience enhances brand reputation, improves retention, increases the quality of hires, and strengthens workforce diversity and inclusion. This is true in my experience.
But lately, candidate resentment is on the rise, according to the Talent Board. This is a direct result of horrible experiences — from frustratingly long application processes, to massive gaps in communication, and poor feedback. These missteps lead to predictable outcomes. When employers treat candidates this way, they lose interest and move on. (And they’re likely to share their negative impressions with others wherever they go.)
3. Revisit Your Brand’s Recruiting Realities
Think back for a moment. When was the last time you applied for a job on your own career website? Do you know what it feels like to experience your brand online? If it’s been awhile since you submitted a job application, give it a try. What happens as you move through each step?
I recommend performing an end-to-end audit of your candidate journey. Take thorough notes about each stage in the process: job search, application, pre-screening, interview, follow-up. What gaps does this process expose? How can you transform these weaknesses into strengths?.
Some gaps to look for:
- Outdated functionality or brand cohesion across our career website
- Difficulty navigating the career site
- Lengthy application or interview processes
- Inadequate or unclear job descriptions
- Poor communication and feedback during the interview process
- Lack of candidate personalization throughout various touch points
- Technical issues or tech platform instability
Also, when in doubt, go straight to the source. Listen to what candidates say, save their feedback as data, and use it to guide future adjustments.
For example, when hiring for multiple positions and many candidates say they’re applying but not hearing back, this could be an opportunity to enhance candidate communications. It might even help to add an email campaign with a post-interview feedback survey.
An audit helps narrow down tech options even further, leading us toward solutions that will directly address candidates’ pain points. But we need to keep the overall experience in mind. It’s similar to treating an injured athlete. We treat the primary injury, but we also consider related symptoms that affect the athlete’s overall health.
4. Analyze the Market Objectively
While we’re performing an internal audit to assess the candidate experience, we should also look outside our organization’s internal process. What is it like to interact with our brand in the wild?
To get a sense of what candidates see, follow a typical journey and find out what it’s like to interact with our brand alongside others in our industry. Note points of friction and ease. Think of candidates as consumers. If they’re looking for a new pair of shoes, they’re likely to search for a variety of keyword phrases. They may click on several ads, explore multiple sites, read dozens of reviews, and compare prices before making a decision.
Candidates’ interactions with a brand even before they apply is likely to influence their final decision. This is why it’s critical to look at the market from as many angles as possible. Focusing on elements like these can really raise your game:
1. Ensure Cohesive Brand Messaging
Candidates don’t want to be blindsided. (Heck, nobody does!) What potential employees see and read about us online should be what they get in real life. How and where do our competitors amplify their brand messaging? Does our messaging resonate with people who match our ideal candidate profile?
2. Anticipate the Future of Career Websites
Today, a career website is a central hub for brand and candidate experience. How easy or hard is it to navigate our site, compared with the competition? Candidates might be turned off by the number of clicks it takes to find desired information, or to start an application. And this frustration may be compounded by technical errors or lack of transparent information about our culture.
Let’s also be mindful of how AI is rapidly changing online search and websites in general. As algorithms become more focused and more personalized pathways take shape, how do we make the most of this new landscape? These are things our digital marketing team thinks about, so we can be sure our clients can remain competitive in the future.
3. Be More Personal With Social Media and Content Marketing
Social media is a great place to connect with candidates and transparently showcase an organization’s culture. Do we post regularly, engage with our followers, and respond to comments and feedback on review websites?
Where and how do competitors show up on social media? Also check competitors’ mix of content marketing tactics, like email marketing, to nurture candidates as they move down the funnel. How does it compare?
4. Hone Digital Advertising and Search Engine Marketing
A simple Google search reveals a lot about competitors’ digital advertising and search engine marketing creativity and tactics. If we’re sponsoring ads, what happens (or doesn’t) happen when we click on them?
When hiring for specific positions, search for those roles in various locations. If those job ads don’t appear, that’s a big clue about why we may not be getting eyeballs on those ads or the volume of click throughs we expected.
5. But Don’t Forget…
Although it’s helpful to analyze competitors, setting benchmarks based on them can be ineffective. As I mentioned earlier, everyone has different objectives. That means we all have different success benchmarks.
Consider differences in company size, resources, products. It’s rarely an apples-to-apples comparison, and that’s okay! The best way to track progress and see how incremental changes are working is to benchmark against ourselves.
The “Next Big Thing” Is Always a Sure Thing
The thing about the next big thing is that there will always be another next big thing. That’s particularly true for technology. Today we’re focused on AI. But tomorrow it will be something else.
But here the important question: When that next thing arrives, will we have a strong foundation to excel and win the race? Or yet again, will we find ourselves distracted, overwhelmed, and adrift?
Keep these strategic recruitment marketing elements in mind, so you can build and maintain a solid foundation that will help now, and position your organization for continued growth, innovation, and success in the future.
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