Last week I had the great fortune to attend the 2018 HR Technology Conference & Exposition as a member of the HR Tech Insiders blogger team. As the unemployment rate in the U.S. currently sits at 3.9 percent, I decided to attend the session “Real-Life Recruitment Marketing: A Guide to Attracting Great Talent,” presented by Tim Sackett and Shaunda Zilich, to learn the secrets of building a competitive edge in a tight labor market.
The two had great co-speaker chemistry and are obviously passionate about this topic―the information was flowing faster than I could type. This was one of the most tweetable sessions I’ve ever attended, as the ideas were delivered in bite-size pieces to help the audience understand what great recruitment marketing looks like in 2018.
Here are some key points from the session to help you build―or boost―your current recruitment marketing campaigns:
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Know your cost per applicant. Think about all the tools and resources you use to find talent. The cost-per-applicant metric shows the money you spend on these. It helps HR understand the performance of a job ad and the overall cost of recruiting. It also guides data-based decisions about your recruitment marketing strategy. How many of you, right now, know your cost per applicant? (Hint: Sacket said ninety percent of HR and recruiters don't know this number.)
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Content is still king here. A recruitment marketing strategy must have content. Content is the foundation for the strategy. What kind of content? Blog posts, articles, photos and videos. (And we all know that photos and videos perform better on social media!)
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What should your online recruitment marketing presence look like? First, build a landing page or a blog. Fill it with stories about your employees and your organization: Q&As, videos, summer intern stories, tips from employees, internal events and other cool things that are happening in your organization. Get creative and be transparent!
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Dig deep to find stories. You’ll need to dig in to your employees’ stories. Ask them to answer three to five questions, such as: What is their “why”? Why do they work for your organization? What surprised them? What do they enjoy most about their job? What's their No. 1 life hack? This will help to show the human side of your organization. Here’s an idea: Put quotes from these stories into your job descriptions!
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People want you to interact with them. Don't only post content; create a recruitment marketing conversation. Ask your audience members what they want to know about, and engage with them on social media. Facebook Live, Instagram stories, Snapchat, Twitter chats, podcasts and online networking hours are all great ways to do this.
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Make it real. How are you creating transparent and authentic content? People don't like glossy and perfect. It looks fake. They like real-life stories and images.
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Work with your marketing department. Find a peer in marketing, build a relationship and work together. Share your recruitment marketing content on their content platform as well as on your own to give it extra legs and reach.
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Know and use the 5-to-1 rule. A good ratio for content to job postings is 5-1. This means you should share five pieces of good content or stories for every job posting. Job seekers will see your company as real and interesting and will be more likely to engage.
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Organize and measure. Try to organize your recruitment marketing content into categories as you build and post it. Do this so you can measure each category and know which type of content is resonating most with your audience.
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Customers want to see your culture, too! Your company channels are selling products and services. Your HR recruitment marketing channels are selling “life” at your company. Customers want to see your products, but they also want to see what happens behind the scenes at your company. Share your recruitment marketing content across all your social channels and e-mail platforms.
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It's about the rocket ship―not the seat on the rocket ship. If you do recruitment marketing right, people will be attracted to your company and want to be a part of it, regardless of the position they’ll hold.
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Keep the content flowing! Most people don't hear your message until the fourth time they interact with your brand―and they may not interact until the seventh or ninth time. So figure out how you will push content on an ongoing basis for successful recruitment marketing.
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Boost your employee referral program! Employee referrals is one of the most underutilized and highest-ROI methods for recruitment marketing.
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Make referrals easy. Eliminate employee referral bonuses and use technology to boost referrals. Employee referral automation platforms such as Teamable make it easy for everyone in your organization to refer talent.
- Stop playing hide-and-seek with your jobs! Have you ever applied for a job on your own company’s careers site? How hard is it to find the Careers tab? How many clicks does it take to get there? If it takes eight clicks to find it and apply, that's WAY too many.
And finally, this …
- Great recruitment marketing is transparent and about helping candidates find their fit. It may or may NOT be with your organization. The more transparent you are, and the more a candidate knows about your organization, the better.
For more great tips on recruitment marketing, follow Shaunda Zilich @shaunda and Tim Sackett at @TimSackett.
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