Attract and retain employees with recruitment marketing

What is recruitment marketing?

Recruitment marketing applies the same types of tactics companies use when marketing a product or service to consumers. The main difference is that, with recruitment marketing, you’re promoting your entire organization in order to attract and retain talent.

It’s about presenting your company in the best possible light in a labour market where candidates now have so much leverage. That means tapping into a broad range of online and in-person marketing tactics and channels, backed by in-depth insights into who your ideal candidates are and where they can be reached. That way, you can differentiate your employer brand and employee experience.

“There are so many organizations looking for talent,” says Nalepa. “In the past, businesses could just post a bunch of job descriptions online, ‘throwing spaghetti at the wall’ to see if anything sticks and hoping somebody applies. Now they need to be a lot more precise in how they approach recruitment.”

Targeting a more specific group of job-seekers allows entrepreneurs to access a better pool of potential candidates. That includes “passive candidates” who may not be looking for work right now. But because they heard good things about your company, they might think of you first when they do enter the job market.

Recruitment marketing also helps speed up the recruitment process. There’s a saying in the sales world: “time kills all deals.” It also applies to hiring. If you have a slow recruitment process and it takes a candidate a long time to get familiar and comfortable with your organization and what it stands for, you could be giving other companies an opportunity to lure that person away.

Recruitment marketing examples

What does recruitment marketing look like in practice? There is no one-size-fits-all approach, says Nalepa. As is the case with traditional sales and marketing, the methods you use will depend on the nature of your business and the people you’re looking to attract.

“Take a closer look at the channels you typically use for recruiting,” he says. “Who are the consumers of those channels? Do they reflect your ideal candidate? You’ll likely need to leverage a blend of many different channels and approaches to reach the people you want.”

For some companies, recruitment marketing means moving away from long, wordy job descriptions to focus on videos that tell a “day in the life” story of what it’s like to work at your company. Those videos could be complemented by an increased presence at in-person job fairs to make your organization more visible and accessible to candidates. Or it might mean dropping your Facebook ads and going to TikTok to reach a younger demographic.

Essentially, any tactic you could use to promote your products and services could be applied to recruitment marketing. That also means following the same process of testing, refinement and continuous improvement. For example, A/B testing of different types of recruitment marketing messaging and platforms can help you determine what works and what doesn’t to inform future decision-making.

Key elements of a recruitment marketing strategy

The traditional recruitment funnel consists of three stages: application, selection and hiring. Recruitment marketing adds an additional three layers on top of that stack: awareness, consideration and interest.

Before they even consider applying for a position, many of today’s job-seekers will do online research to get a sense of a potential employer’s brand character and reputation. As prospective employees become more discerning in their job search, to generate that top-of-funnel awareness in your company, you need a strong employer brand and employee value proposition (EVP).  

Your employer brand is your reputation as a place to work. Unfortunately, it's not something you can fully control. It’s shaped by the perceptions of your company from past and current employees, successful and unsuccessful candidates, clients, and other stakeholders. Check out websites like Indeed or Glassdoor to get a sense of what people are saying about your company and what you might need to change to shape your employer brand.  

An EVP can help enhance your employer brand and attract the right talent. It articulates everything about the employee experience, such as your:  

• workplace culture 
• leadership style 
• monetary and non-monetary benefits 
• learning and development opportunities 

Together, these paint a picture of why a person should work for and stay with your company.  

“Your EVP is the promise you make to employees in return for their commitment to your organization,” says Nalepa. “It’s a foundational piece to recruitment marketing, but it needs to be authentic to who you really are as an employer.” 

He also cautions that maintaining an employer brand and EVP can be difficult for smaller companies who might not have a dedicated HR professional in-house. It’s important to set aside a budget for recruitment marketing activities. It’s also a good idea to have an internal champion who will manage, support and own the recruitment marketing process from end to end.  

How digital recruitment marketing tools can help you implement your strategy 

There are many digital tools available for developing and implementing an effective recruitment marketing strategy. These include: 

• a careers page on your website that clearly communicates your EVP
• a LinkedIn page to help get your messaging out to the right people and influence/manage your employer brand
• an applicant tracking system (ATS) or customer relationship management (CRM) software to help automate and accelerate the bottom-of-funnel application intake and selection processes
• analytics software and dashboards to measure the effectiveness of different recruitment marketing tactics and channels to inform continuous improvement

While the technology is still quite new, Nalepa says some businesses are starting to explore the use of AI-powered chatbots to answer questions from candidates, even after-hours, to further strengthen their employer brand.

Why is recruitment marketing important?

Finding great talent is a zero-sum game: if you are unable to attract and hire that high-potential applicant, some other company will, putting you at a disadvantage. This is especially true as Canada’s labour crunch continues, with entrepreneurs across the country needing to take their recruitment activities to another level to find the right people to grow their businesses. That means applying a more strategic, marketing-oriented mindset to their recruitment activities — one that focuses on raising awareness of the organization as a whole and the kind of employee experience they can deliver. By doing so, small and medium-sized companies will be able to put their best foot forward and stand out in highly competitive job market.

Next step

Prepare to interview candidates more effectively with this free tool: Interview template