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Recruiting Marketing Strategy 101: Examples, Templates & Content Ideas

Forrester Research suggests it takes up to eight touchpoints for a brand to influence a consumer decision. People rarely arrive at a company’s website ready to buy or apply immediately.

Good recruiters know they need a recruitment marketing strategy. They need to market their company to candidates long before they’re ready to fill out an application. But even with the best intentions, it’s not easy to know where to start planning your first campaign.

How do you first reach out to candidates? What is an appropriate first test for your marketing muscles? How much (or how little) should you write, send, or post? The answers are completely different from one company to another, but we put together a few templates and examples that should apply to most cases, and can help you get started.

A plug-and-play campaign to start

You just imported a large list of potential candidates, cleaned it, updated and tagged it in your database… all you need is to start engaging with the candidates.

Where do you start?

1. The opening email

One great way to open the lines of communication is to share an update about the company that’s relevant to all types of talent. It can be about a new round of funding, a diversity initiative, or a fun video of your team that shows candidates what it’s like to work for your company.

In your future campaigns, you can tailor your content to specific audiences, or react to their recent actions on your website. For example, if you have tagged candidates by personas, you can use that information in your message.

We have a guide on the anatomy of a perfect recruiting email , and you can try these recruiting email strategies if you need more advanced ideas later, but for now, let’s keep it simple. For this example, once you establish that first touchpoint with candidates, you’re ready to invite them to an event.

2. The event page

First, create a custom page for your (virtual or in-person) event. Include a few pictures of your team members who will be attending and of past editions of the event. If you can include videos, that’s even better.

Be explicit but to-the-point in your event description: no need to explain exactly what your company does for example, but do briefly explain what your event is about, and how it relates to your industry, your mission, or your employees. Make sure to include information on the program and logistics of the event.

As your team gets more comfortable developing and implementing recruiting campaigns, you will be able to build a proper recruiting events strategy .

The success of recruitment events as a talent acquisition channel comes in large part from their integration with the overall talent strategy. Recruiting events can be a full-time workstream on their own, but it takes time to build up to that level. And before you dive in too deep, it’s worth doing a quick run-through of the team’s event options:

• Campus events, job fairs, or company briefings, where you invite an audience (likely students) to a talk about your company.
• Networking events, either on site at the company, or in venues of your choice. These could be co-hosted with other companies, or done via meetups.
• Sponsored events, where you may not be the main organizer, but where you associate your employer brand with a cause, a community, or a set of values.
• Educational events, such as workshops, classes, or competitions.
• Other events, such as wine tastings or VIP dinners after industry conferences.

Note that sponsored events might be more appropriate if the event organizer has an agenda that has a low risk of reflecting badly on the employers, such as diversity events, or campus events. When choosing who to sponsor, it’s a good idea to meet with the organizers and review their plan in advance.

When it’s time for your team to dive deeper into the design and launch of a recruiting events strategy, they might find our Recruiting Events Playbook useful to see how their ideas and plans stack up.

3. The Talent Network

First, a quick definition:

Talent network: An opt-in online community where the candidate can interact with recruiters and peers about career opportunities at a specific company.

Talent networks, or talent communities , are an important channel to keep your company top-of-mind for potential candidates. Talent communities can be simple online forums with conversation threads, social media groups, or dedicated landing pages where candidates can fill out a form and request to be added to the talent community.

It’s rare for a candidate to decide to apply to a company right after their first couple of interactions. They might come to the careers site , read a few job descriptions, even click on an application link, but they might leave, making a mental note to come back later.

The role of the talent community is to remind them to do that, in a sense. It gives them regular updates about the company, a space to learn more about it from peers or directly from recruiters, and gives them the opportunity to ask thoughtful questions and stay engaged.

But a talent network needs members to be effective. That is why your next step, after setting it up, is sending an invitation to join the talent community to your mailing list.

For example, you can send the invitation as a follow-up to your event for the attendees. Make it conversational and fun. Leave room for personalization based on attributes like the recipient’s name, city, professional area, or even their hobbies.

4. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

By now, you already have a few touchpoints with your candidate database under your belt. Your Facebook page, Twitter feed, or Instagram account provides an opportunity to add more depth to the overall employer brand, and to grow your audience on social media.

These social channels are far less formal than a traditional recruiting platform like LinkedIn. They can give a more human, more authentic dimension to your brand that career sites and LinkedIn profiles simply don’t have, so use that to your advantage!

If you haven’t already, your next move is to email your database, inviting them to follow the company pages on social media and share them with others as well.

5. The Sharing Game

Gamifying social sharing is not a new trick, but it works when it’s done in a relevant and non-pushy way.

Set up a competition on your social media accounts where each candidate receives a unique URL to join the talent network. For example, you can offer a company visit or a meeting with the Head of Digital Marketing to the top five sharers. A competition like this would be especially relevant to marketing candidates.

You can make the game relevant to other groups depending on what industry you’re in, and who you’re trying to recruit: a quiz on famous geological formations for geological engineers in Oil and Gas, a photo contest for jobs in the Travel and Hospitality business, or an open vote for names of a new plant or office building. (Just be open to the possibility of unusual suggestions — social media never ceases to amaze in that regard.)

6. The Job Ad

The previous step sets you up perfectly for this last one: the ’sharing game’ was a great way to identify engaged and motivated candidates who have interacted with your brand multiple times, and have a positive attitude towards your company. If you have an open job ad in the area of their interest, now is the perfect time to mention it.

Send them an email explaining why you think they would be a good fit for your company, and invite them to look at a few open roles.

If you don’t have an opening that matches their skills at that time, but you know you will in the future, then just let them know you’d love to keep in touch for future opportunities. Everybody likes to be appreciated.

Recruitment marketing strategy: a few content ideas

You can build multiple variations on this first example campaign simply by varying the content contained in each one. Here are some ideas of different types of content to share on different recruitment marketing channels.

On the careers page:

Share current social responsibility initiatives that the company is involved in, and why they matter to employees. Sharing your company’s diversity statistics is a good idea here as well.

In your newsletter:

Either write your own content, share thought leadership pieces written by other teams in the company, or curate content from outside sources based on your candidates’ interests. You can then share the content with candidates in your talent network, for example. A newsletter is also a good place to announce upcoming projects with high impact on the public that the company will begin soon.

On Facebook:

Consider sending invitations to participate in a competition on social media, or give them the opportunity to answer a poll to decide the name of a new business location or company initiative.

On Instagram:

This is one of the best places to share pictures of your team representing the company at a trade show or conference (or even pictures of your employees just hanging out in the office).

There are lots of possibilities for short posts, but do stay “on brand”: keep in mind that these touchpoints must come together to form a unified image of your company. Be consistent, and inject some of your culture and values throughout your content. You can also vary the content you share depending on where the candidates are in their recruiting journey (awareness, consideration, or decision).

What makes recruiting content successful?

Success drivers are different from channel to channel. What makes an email campaign successful is very different from what makes a LinkedIn page attractive to candidates. Good content always helps, of course, but there are other drivers to consider.

More is not always better. Interactions with the audience on social media usually stays on the page in the form of likes, comments, shares or retweets, so make sure that you don’t leave the page looking suspiciously bare, or overwhelmingly cluttered. For example, a Twitter page needs at least one to two tweets a day to feel alive to candidates, while a Facebook page is often engaging enough with just one or two posts per week.

As for email, we’ve put together our best tips about when it’s best to send them to candidates, but it’s still worth experimenting with different times and email types to see what works best your your audience.

Multichannel

Think about every touchpoint the candidate is seeing — do they follow your social media pages or subscribe to your newsletter? Are they going to meetings or visiting your talent community page? Make sure that the whole experience is coordinated and feels cohesive.

Time of day

Test and see what works best for you, but in most cases, around lunch is the best time to get a response on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.

Type of content

In general, videos increase engagement, but you should consider what’s best for each individual channel. 30-second videos with subtitles are well adapted to Facebook or Instagram feeds, where people are inclined to quickly scroll with the sound off. Twitter is better suited to GIFs or static images.

Size and dimensions

There are recommended sizes that can make your content better suited to a given channel. Research each channel’s requirements before sending out creative or design briefs. For images specifically, Hootsuite put together a list of ideal dimensions for a bunch of social media channels. Ideally, you’ll want to develop specifications adapted for each type of content, depending on what you usually use: short videos, live streams, infographics or images.

Great recruiting content is relevant to the candidate, and brings them information that they’re interested in. It could be an inside look into a cutting edge technology in their field, an early bird ticket to an event, or just a quick note asking them how they have been and if they have time to catch up over a quick call.

We’ve published a bunch of articles about the building blocks of a good recruitment marketing strategy: how to write the best LinkedIn message, the perfect cold email, or the ideal subject line, for example. Those resources, coupled with this quick step-by-step template, should get you started with your recruitment marketing strategy.

We have a whole section of our website dedicated to resources around  recruitment marketing and employer branding . Take a look to kickstart your journey.

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What Is Recruitment Marketing? 15 Inspiring Examples.

These tips aim to bolster your pool of potential talent amid the pandemic and move to a hybrid or fully remote office.

The process of finding and attracting great talent is complex, and that’s where recruitment marketing comes into play. Similar to how marketers attract clients, recruiting and hiring teams need to proactively promote their employer brand to draw in high-quality job candidates.

People are key to the growth and success of any company, and building a team of diverse yet complementary personalities, passions and skill sets is one of the most challenging aspects of any business. Because in-person networking is less popular than it used to be, it’s more difficult to get the attention of potential applicants and communicate the qualities that set an employer apart. That means crafting a successful recruitment marketing strategy is more important than ever.

What Is Recruitment Marketing?

Recruitment marketing is the process of promoting your employer brand with the use of marketing methodologies throughout the recruitment life cycle to attract, engage and nurture relationships with qualified talent .

Recruitment marketing is a strategic method of attracting top job candidates by using marketing best practices to promote and communicate the employer brand.

Thorough planning, a clear vision of employer brand and targeted content are key to recruitment marketing. Being able to communicate the specifics of vacant positions is just as important as being able to explain your organization’s mission and values . 

Recruitment doesn’t stop at making people aware that your company is hiring and has benefits and perks . Recruiting teams need to continue nurturing the connections their marketing efforts build in order to encourage active participation in their talent pipeline .  

Discover the latest industry trends and gain expert guidance to navigate the talent landscape with confidence in 2024.

Recruitment Marketing Funnel

The recruitment marketing funnel illustrates the journey from generating initial awareness of the employer brand to fostering job candidates who become active participants in the hiring process by submitting applications and interviewing for open positions. It covers four stages.

Stage 1: Increase Awareness

Top talent can be found all over the world. However, in today’s job market, the majority of candidates are passive , meaning they aren’t looking for jobs.

In order to get great candidates to apply for an open role, companies need to first market their company as a potential employer on platforms where passive candidates spend their time.

Above everything, it’s crucial to create great content that candidates will actually want to read, listen or watch and make your company stand out as a desirable employer.

More on Recruitment 29 Recruitment Strategies With Real Examples

Stage 2: Generate Interest

Now that you’ve got their attention, you’ll want to provide prospective candidates with information that will increase their interest in your company. You’ll need to have a content game plan that is consistent and closely tied to your employer branding campaign .

The last thing you want to do is lose candidates because they’ve forgotten about your company or they aren’t clicking with your content.

Mapping out a robust content calendar with set deadlines will both ensure your story is being told in a thoughtful way, and it’s a surefire way to continuously generate interest among passive and active candidates.

Stage 3: Nurture the Decision

Your net is cast, now it’s time to reel ‘em in. Candidates have consistently shown interest in your company, but what differentiates your opportunity from all the other fish in the sea? At this point in the funnel, you’ll want to provide more specific information on your company as a potential employer.

Now’s the time to promote your open roles, benefits, perks, compensation and anything else a candidate needs to know before making an informed decision to apply.

Stage 4: Drive Action

While candidates may seriously consider your company in their next career move, there are several obstacles that prevent candidates from applying.

First of all, applying to jobs takes a significant amount of time. Candidates must create role-specific resumes, cover letters and portfolios that may never be reviewed. One solution — simplify the application and decision process. Cut out any unnecessary qualification and application requirements, and give applicants all the juicy details of your offer — yes, that includes salary info.

Even if a candidate makes it this far and applies but ultimately opts out of doing an interview, don’t stop there. Add them to your candidate pool. It may not have been the right time or circumstance for them to pursue your company, but they may be interested in the future.

Your candidate pool is also likely growing exponentially if you are opening your positions up to remote workers across the nation and globe.

How to Develop a Recruitment Marketing Plan

Before you even start thinking about developing a recruitment marketing plan, you need to define your employer brand . Employer branding is crucial for managing and influencing your reputation as an employer of choice and therefore, should encompass every aspect of your recruitment marketing plan.

Once you’ve got your employer branding down with a clear mission statement, core values and employee value proposition , start creating your plan with these six recruitment marketing tips.

6 Steps to Create a Recruitment Marketing Plan

• Set goals. Do you want to add hires, or increase the candidate pool?
• Define roles. Set specific qualifications and expectations.
• Establish target candidates. Outline the ideal persona to fill the role.
• Identify recruitment channels. Is social media or events the best to use?
• Allocate resources. Document expense and results of paid or organic services.
• Create a content calendar. Note team assignments with deadlines.

1. Set Recruitment Marketing Goals

Decide on goals for your recruitment marketing campaign. Examples could be increasing the candidate pool or connecting with potential applicants who better match the skills and experience needed to fill open roles. To assess how effective your efforts are, establish a system for measuring progress, such as tracking metrics like the number of applicants per opening or application completion rate.

2. Define Job Requirements for Open Roles

Formulate job descriptions that explicitly explain the responsibilities and the required versus preferred qualifications needed for the position. Sit down with your team and relevant managers or department heads to ensure everyone is on the same page about what will be communicated to prospective candidates.

3. Outline the Ideal Candidate Persona

Develop a candidate persona that covers the ideal skills, characteristics and experience you’re hoping to find in the person who will fill a job opening. The candidate persona can include factors like education, current employment status, geographic location, communication style and career goals. Conducting research and surveying the employees who will be directly managing or working alongside that person can help to fill in some of the blanks.

4. Identify Recruitment Marketing Channels

Based on your recruiting goals and the types of positions you’re hiring for, identify the most valuable marketing channels to target. Will you find the best people for the job on LinkedIn? Should you try to create Facebook groups to build a community of candidates? Or will your efforts be best served by in-person networking?

5. Allocate Recruiting Resources

Assess the resources available to your team and then determine the costs and necessary manpower associated with potential recruitment marketing activities. Do research and data analysis to understand the value that comes from different channels and tactics before deciding how to most efficiently allocate money, people and time to produce worthwhile recruitment marketing campaigns.

6. Create a Recruitment Marketing Content Calendar

Create a content calendar to maintain a schedule of when and how often content will be emailed to subscribers or promoted on social channels. This practice ensures a diversity of content while also holding team members accountable for fulfilling their recruitment marketing responsibilities. Keeping a content calendar can also provide a helpful record to inform future recruitment marketing activities.

More on Recruitment Mass Hiring: What to Know Before You Start

15 Best Recruitment Marketing Examples

When it comes to recruitment marketing, we’ve seen it all. There’s a lot that goes into creating an effective plan, so we’re sharing some of the best recruitment marketing campaigns, tactics and examples that we’ve learned from our experience as well as from other recruitment experts.

Snapchat and Huddle Target Competitors’ Talent

Snapchat used its own social media app to target engineering talent at Uber and Pinterest with geo targeting and creative filters. People using the Snapchat app while they were at Uber or Pinterest headquarters could use these punny filters.

Huddle took a different approach by driving around several moving billboards outside the Microsoft office to catch talent on their way in and out of work.

Tailored Social Posts Make the Most of Content

Every social media platform has its own unique nuances and culture, and what works on one may fall flat on another. We always consider the platform when crafting social media posts, and while creating two or three separate versions may add a little time, it’s well worth the effort.

The Facebook and LinkedIn posts above lead back to the same content, but each one features unique language and imagery tailored to the platform.

Goldman Sachs Targets Candidates With Quizzes

You know the drill. Once you’ve established your target audiences, you can identify the channels to target your recruitment marketing efforts. Here are a few examples of companies that nailed their targeting efforts.

Goldman Sachs clearly knew its target candidate demographic when they placed ads on Spotify with the caption “You majored in something you cared about. Use it to make a major impact. Take the Goldman Sachs Careers Quiz.” If BuzzFeed has taught us anything, it’s that Millennials are entertained by quizzes.

Meanwhile, marketers, politicians and now recruiters are using the popular dating app Tinder to target candidates on a local level. Talk about reaching candidates where they spend their personal time.

Paid Social Ads Reach More Users for Less Money

Sure, organic posts are free and they have the potential to yield great conversions, but a little paid boost never hurts. You’re probably already spending thousands on HR tech tools and job boards, so why not spend a few hundred on social ads to reach a highly targeted audience?

This content proved popular when posted organically, so we decided to spend a little money to get it in front of even more people.

For less than what many people spend at Starbucks each week, we connected with another 4,000 highly targeted potential candidates and drove several hundred of them back to our site. That can be the difference between making a great hire in record time and a never-ending process that goes nowhere.

Read More 5 Lessons From the Pandemic I Hope to Remember as a CEO

German Company Creates Out-of-the-Box Content

No one said recruitment has to be boring. And if you want to attract bright and innovative candidates, you better put your money where your mouth is. Here are a few examples of recruitment marketing campaigns that stepped outside of the box.

A German company called jobsintown.de designed site-specific stickers with the phrase “Life’s too short for the wrong job” all over the city, depicting images of people working behind everyday machines. The high-quality images have a quick wit that certainly compete with their website’s viewership and average time on page.  

Print Content Reaches Candidates Offline

Nowadays physical print has a certain quality that is more present than digital copy. In addition to your digital recruitment marketing efforts, take advantage of print opportunities like this one.

If you know where talent spends their free time offline, it might be worthwhile to deploy paper ads on bulletin boards, like this tear off flyer . To take it a step further, they entice computer engineer talent with an equation to challenge their problem solving abilities before they can reach out.

Google Poses Challenge to Lure Talent With the Right Skills

Skills testing is nothing new, these companies turned their tests into recruitment marketing magic.

An oldie but a goodie, this inconspicuous Google ad led those who could solve the riddle to 7427466391.com. On the website users were also prompted with another equation that when solved correctly, would land them an interview with the company.

Microsoft Builds Talent Community on Social Media

When it comes to recruitment marketing, piggybacking on your company’s corporate social media accounts simply won’t cut it. Your corporate accounts are designed to appeal to customers, not candidates, so you’ll need dedicated social media profiles for recruiting. Developing a community of followers isn’t easy, but it pays off in the long run.

Just ask Microsoft. The company’s talent acquisition team has created a Facebook community. That’s half a million extra candidates in their pipeline, whenever they need them.

Taking Advantage of Meme Culture Captures Attention

Memes are hands down the 21st century’s greatest invention. To recruitment marketers benefit, memes are super specific to cultures and like-minded groups of people, making them ideal for targeting candidates.

The tricky part is you have to constantly be aware of what’s trending and why so that your reference is appropriate and hits the right note.

Lennon Wright nailed this adaptation of the “Distracted Boyfriend” meme for their recruitment marketing plan. It’s creative and certainly hit a funny bone for their target talent on Instagram. This simple post received nearly 600 likes.

Users Engage With Recruitment Marketing Content Over Job Descriptions

Creative content captures the attention of active candidates and gives passive candidates a reason to further explore your company like nothing else can. Don’t believe us? On average, our users spend 250 percent more time engaging with content than with job descriptions.

Think about it from their perspective. If you were a candidate, would you spend more time with this article full of tips about applying to specific companies or a list of bullet points on a standard job description.

Newsletters Get Recruitment Marketing Content in Front of More Passive Candidates

Sending personalized, one-to-one emails will always be part of a recruiter’s job, but even with the best automation it just isn’t scalable. Creating recruiting newsletters allows you to build a list of subscribers and communicate with all of them with a single click.

Weekly newsletters allow you to share valuable content with tens of thousands of passive candidates at a time. As a result, you’re able to spend more time creating great content and less time managing our inbox.

Salesforce and Apple Impress Candidates With Events

People have plenty of options for how they spend their free time and hosting a traditional job fair or boring networking event won’t open the floodgates of top talent. 

Creating a riveting online or in-person event will not only leave a lasting impression on attendees, but it will reverberate throughout their personal and professional networks via the best source — word of mouth. And that, in turn, may lead them to your careers page to apply. 

Salesforce, for example, held its 2021 user conference Dreamforce as an in-person and online event. Apple, meanwhile, held its annual worldwide developers conference (WWDC) as an online-only event .

Strategic Event Promotion Gets People in the Door

Hosting an online or in-person event is only half the battle. Getting people to actually log-on or show up is the real challenge. People aren’t going to attend an event that they don’t know about, so it’s crucial that you promote your event in a thoughtful and strategic way.

Target your announcements to different social media channels based on the audience you are trying to reach. Also ask event speakers to promote the event on their social media, as well.

Dedicated Recruitment Marketing Team Emphasizes Quality Over Quantity

Not all videos are created equal. Just like written content, candidates don’t want to sit through poorly produced videos that don’t answer their questions. It’s much better to create a few well-thought-out videos that will keep viewers attention and satisfy their curiosity.

We invested in a dedicated team to ensure that every video we create reflects each company in an authentic and high-quality manner. Keep in mind that not everyone is comfortable on camera, so it’s important that you feature willing participants in a relaxed atmosphere.

Hyperloop One Gains Exposure by Promoting Recruiting Video on Multiple Channels

Congrats! You created a sweet video that candidates are excited about . That’s great, but you aren’t done yet. Now it’s time to share and promote your video content across all channels, including your careers page, social media platforms and email campaigns. We always cross promote video content to ensure candidates can easily find and engage with it.

Hyperloop One was able to significantly increase exposure of this video by featuring it on their website, Facebook page and YouTube channel. The best part? It only took a few minutes. The heavy lifting is over, and they have a great piece of content that will engage viewers and remain relevant for much longer than most written pieces.

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How to run a recruitment campaign: A practical toolkit

Hiring the right people is harder than ever. More than 40% of large businesses say they’re struggling to recruit – and it’s hurting business performance enough to have a knock-on impact on GDP. 

Recruiters are under monumental pressure to attract more high-quality candidates, plagued by extreme competition and dire skills shortages. 

That’s where recruitment campaigns come in , within a proactive recruitment marketing strategy.  

Instead of firefighting – frantically hunting the same active candidates as everyone else – you build warm, long-term relationships. Creating a network of engaged people who’re less likely on other recruiters’ radar and who’re willing to discuss new roles with you (even if just to consider passing along a referral).

Let’s dig into the nitty gritty. Here’s a step-by-step guide to running a successful recruitment campaign. 

6 steps to running an effective recruitment campaign

#1 – define your goals.

Recruitment campaigns are typically more successful when you focus efforts on a narrow goal (“get more applications for this hard-to-fill role”) rather than broad (“overcome skills shortages”). 

Some common recruitment campaign goals:

• Get more applications to a given role
• Get more high-quality applications
• Get more applications from diverse backgrounds 
• Build employer brand awareness
• Add more passive candidates to your network
• Build engagement in your talent pools
• Get more referrals from employees
• Get more attendees for your recruitment event  

Your goal will typically be triggered by a specific business problem. 

Maybe you’re under pressure to decrease time-to-hire and lack of candidates for hard-to-fill roles is holding you back. Or perhaps you’ve got a high early high turnover rate and need to improve quality-of-hire. Or maybe you’ve got a low offer acceptance rate because your brand has some perception issues.  

Now translate your goal into a target that’s Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely (SMART), so you can objectively measure success. Like, “increase diverse application rate to 20% of total applications by end-Q2”. 

#2 – Define your audience

Your audience will stem from your goal. A narrow audience is important to create messaging that’s personalised and highly relevant. That’ll make your campaign more compelling (so more likely to be successful). 

For example, maybe you’re planning an internal recruitment campaign for your employees, to increase referrals. Or maybe you’re targeting passive candidates in EMEA, or senior developers with exceptional C++ skills, or graduates from top-tier universities. And so on.

Your decisions here will impact how you run your campaign (see #4). If your audience is a talent pool of previous great interviewees, you’ll probably build an email campaign. But if your audience is graduates with certain degree types, you might run an advert on LinkedIn first. 

P.S. Proactively sourcing and segmenting talent into talent pools is an excellent way to build relevant audiences for targeted campaigns – but make sure you collect explicit permission, to stay GDPR compliant. 

#3 – Develop a concept

Even if your goal is to increase application volume, a recruitment campaign doesn’t just mean promoting a job advert. So roll your sleeves up and get creative. 

A great campaign concept combines two things:

• An inside-out knowledge of your brand
• An incisive insight about your target audience

1. Knowing your brand…

… ensures your campaign activity is on-brand and reduces the risk of reputation-damaging missteps.

Think of recruitment campaigns like the drumbeat of your brand. Every campaign might feel very different but they should all align to your vision and values. Here’s where to cement your employee value proposition (EVP), if you haven’t. 

2. A powerful audience insight…

… helps your campaign resonate with your audience, so it’s more memorable and more effective. A great insight is often the difference between MEH and WOW campaigns. The best insights are data-led, and typically emerge when you dig deeper into your target audience. 

For example, social listening tools might show that many technical candidates’ major bugbear is they’re not given much creative input – that’s your insight. Then, knowing your EVP, you’d know that creative input is actually a major selling point of working in your dev team. So you could build a campaign highlighting the creative side of your roles.

Read more : Copywriting for recruiters: A practical toolkit

#4 – Decide how to bring your concept to life

Once you’ve agreed your message, you’ll need to decide how you’ll deliver it. Be guided by your goals, message, and audience to find the right channel and approach for your campaign. How you’ll resonate with active job-seeker students, for example, is different from passive senior executives. 

Some options to consider:

• Gated downloadable content
• Short form content like blogs and PR
• Interactive content like quizzes
• Email marketing to your talent pools 
• PPC advertising direct to your job advert
• Multi-media content like videos, webinars, podcasts
• Guerrilla stunts
• Games and competitions

Thinking outside the box can pay back big

Red Studios knew they’d struggle to hire programmers to grow because of a super competitive hiring landscape. So they identified their top 100 ideal candidates and sent them each a personalised engraved iPod with a custom message from their CEO inviting them to apply. Almost 100% did.

A word of caution though. 

Running campaigns to talent pools can be an excellent tactic but it’s not a guaranteed win. Success hinges on three interconnected things:

• Good data. Your talent pools are filled with comprehensive profiles, without endless blanks and duplicates. And then…
• Good segmentation. Your talent pools are all tightly defined, so you can create highly relevant messaging that in turn drives…
• Good engagement. Your talent pools want to hear from you. They find your content interesting and relevant. 

Don’t endlessly spam out jobs. Go back to #4 and think about a more creative concept that adds value and interest. For example, could you run a campaign for passive senior developers with a quiz to discover if they’re well-paid enough in their current role? 

#5 – Create your landing page

In practice, almost all campaigns will need a landing page. That is, a dedicated standalone page dedicated to one conversion goal (like taking your quiz; downloading your eBook; watching your careers video; applying for your role). 

You’ll typically drive traffic to your landing page from email, SMS, social media or PPC. A dedicated landing page helps you collect and convert more leads, and better track your campaign’s success. 

Businesses with 10-15 landing pages increase conversions by 55% compared to those with fewer than 10. Those with more than 40 landing pages increase conversions by 500%.

For example, say you want to increase diversity applications. You create a recruitment video focussing on diversity in your company. 

You could host this on your careers site but it’s probably more effective hosted on its own landing page. Then you can prompt visitors to apply for roles right after watching or share their email address to learn more. 

Then instead of just knowing your view-count, you’d also increase applications and have engaged leads to nurture over time, building your future talent pipeline. And you can more easily attribute ROI to the video, making the case for future recruitment marketing investment.

#6 – Measure, learn, and optimise

Recruitment campaigns are a continual work-in-progress. Reverse-engineer success and failure, to increase your success rate. What worked? What didn’t? Where can you tweak as you go? 

Maybe your video was awesome but PPC wasn’t an effective promotion channel. Perhaps your whitepaper missed the mark, but social media feedback showed you how to tweak your underlying insight.

If you’re new to running recruitment campaigns, don’t fret about everything being perfect. Every recruitment marketer has seen campaigns flounder – but even an unsuccessful campaign is more effective than no campaign at all. It’s an invaluable learning opportunity.

Over 25 million people use Tribepad’s talent acquisition software to build a more proactive recruitment function. Learn more about our Core ATS + CRM , featuring our recruitment campaign manager. 

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11-Steps Recruitment Marketing Action Plan

Need to create an effective recruitment marketing action plan ? In this detailed, step-by-step guide you’ll learn how to create it - from scratch. Great r ecruitment marketing tips and tricks included. Are ready to put them in action?

Why do you need a recruitment marketing strategy?

If you’re an HR or recruiting professional in today’s candidate-driven job market then you already know how hard  it can be to  fill open positions with great  candidates. 

Candidates  are now in demand . These days, they are  in control  and they get to pick and choose  where they want to work. 

And with so many other companies competing  for these same candidates, it can seem impossible  to get top talent’s attention . 

But with a well-rounded recruitment marketing strategy , it can actually be quite easy  to build your talent pool and keep it filled with a steady stream of great candidates.

➡️ Download free eBook: Most Productive Recruitment Marketing Strategies !

In this blog post, I'll show you how to build an effective recruitment marketing plan . 

You’ll be able to put into action immediately  and start attracting great candidates  right away ! 

What is recruitment marketing all about?

If you’re new  to recruitment marketing, check out this short explainer  video : 

Recruitment marketing is HR’s latest tool for attracting  candidates. 

It means using marketing  methods to get candidates interested  in your company and eager to apply  for your open positions. 

Recruitment marketing is focused on the first three stage s of the candidates’ journey :

1. Awareness

In this first stage, your aim is to build awareness  of your company and your employer brand .

2. Consideration

In this stage, your goal is to get potential candidates to start considering  you as their next employer.

3. Interest

In this stage, your goal is to convince  candidates to take action and apply  for your open job positions. 

Recruitment marketing can help you differentiate  your company. 

Using proven marketing tactics, you can attract  candidates attention and get them to apply  to your open job positions. 

In the following text, I will explain exactly how to create an effective recruitment marketing plan . 

Follow my step-by-step guid e and learn how to master  recruitment marketing! 

How to create a successful recruitment marketing plan?

Here is how you can create  an effective  recruitment marketing plan in  11 easy to follow steps:

Step 1: Define your recruitment marketing goals

Think about what you want to achieve  with your recruitment marketing strategy. 

Of course, your overall goal is to attract  great candidates to apply  to your open job positions.

However, you should also define precise specific  goals that can be measured. 

Some of the common  recruitment marketing goals  include:

• Get more job applicants
• Get more high-quality candidates
• Increase candidate engagement
• Increase employer brand awareness
• Get more career site visitors
• Get more applicants from  social media
• Increase employee referral  rates
• Increase offer-acceptance rate
• Increase the number of diverse  applicants
• Increase the number of recruitment events  attendees.

Step 2: Identify your candidate persona

Identify your ideal candidate by defining your candidate persona . 

A candidate persona is the semi-fictional representation  of your ideal  job candidate. 

Who  is your ideal  job candidate? 

Think beyond your job requirements such as education, experience and skills. Dig deeper  to really get a sense of this person. 

Try to pinpoint their interests  outside the work, habits, motivation and goals. 

Some of the characteristics  you may want to think about when building your candidate personas are:

• Sex and gender
• Geographical location
• Motivations
• Frustrations
• Brands they may associate with
• Current job
• Personality type
• Introvert/extrovert
• Analytical/creative
• Passive/Active.

Check out our  cheat sheet for defining a candidate persona!

Step 3: Define your employee value proposition

An employee value proposition is a message  you will target  your candidate persona with. 

Why  should your potential candidates come to work for your  company? What  can you offer them that other  companies can’t ?

The employee value proposition is so much more  than just a great salary . 

It also includes opportunities for career advancement, challenging work , working on interesting projects and with cutting edge technology, great company culture, attractive workspace, etc.

Employee Value Proposition is a comprehensive  offering made up of 5 main components :

Step 4: Create recruitment content

One of the best ways to attract  your candidate persona’s attention  is by presenting them interesting and useful recruitment content . 

Great recruitment content will help you target  the best candidates at the right  time with the right  message. 

And no, your job ads are not enough - no matter how great  they are! 

There is a myriad of different types of recruitment content for each step of the candidate's journey . 

Here are a few examples  of different types of recruitment content you can create: 

• White papers, case studies and eBooks
• Infographics, diagrams, flowcharts & graphs
• Mini games and competitions.

Step 5: Optimize your career site

Your career site should be the hub  of your recruitment marketing activity. 

When potential candidates land  on your career site, they should immediately  find all the information they need to determine whether they want to work for your company.

A perfect career site explains who your company is, what you do and contain information about your company culture, values and work environment. 

It also invites  potential candidates to browse  your open job positions and makes it easy for them to apply . 

Finally, make sure that your career site is  mobile friendly  and optimized for SEO . 

You can find detailed information on how to optimize your career site in our guide Best Tips for Optimizing Your Career Site & Generating More Job Applicants .

Step 6: Use social media

Social media recruiting is another key pillar  of recruitment marketing. 

Using social media is a great way to promote  your recruitment content and reach  potential job candidates. 

However, presenting your employer brand on many  different social media networks is a lot  of work. 

Make sure to communicate your recruitment marketing messages on the social media networks that your candidate persona prefers and uses regularly. 

Check out our guide  with detailed instructions on building a social media recruitment strategy .  

We also prepared specific tips  for recruitment marketing on the most popular social media networks used for recruiting: LinkedIn , Instagram and Facebook . 

Step #7: Develop employer brand ambassadors

Your existing  employees  are your best employer brand ambassadors . 

Candidates trust employees 3 times more than the employer to provide information on working at the company, according to LinkedIn’s research .

So get your employees involved  in your recruitment marketing plan! 

Ask them to share  your company’s recruitment marketing content on their personal social media profiles. 

That way, you’ll be able to reach a much wider audience. 

You should enlist them to help you create authentic  recruitment content. Encourage  them to: 

• Write an article  for your career blog
• Take photos  of everyday life at your office and share it on  social media
• Share an inside perspective of working at your company in a video
• Write a review  of your company on Glassdoor.

Step #8: Build your talent pool

A talent pool is a database of candidates interested  in working for your company. 

You can dip in your talent pool each time you have an open job position  to find great candidates. 

Sounds perfect, right? So how can you build  your talent pool?

You should proactively  reach out  to candidates and invite  them to join  your talent pool. 

You can do that in many different ways using lead generation method . 

Here are some great ways to build your talent pool :

• Include a  call to action at the end of every article published on your  career blog and invite potential candidates to join your talent network.
• Create a social media post that includes a link to an application form for your talent network. 
• Invite candidates to attend your recruitment event and collect their contact information via the application form on a specialized landing page.
• Organize an online webinar that would be of interest for your candidate persona and collect their contact information via the application form on a specialized landing page.
• Create an interesting career guide or an eBook  and ask potential candidates to fill in a  short application form in order to download  it. 

Step #9: Manage your talent pool

Filling your talent pool with great candidates doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t actively manage  it. 

Successful talent pool management starts with segmentation . Divide your talent pool into different groups . 

This will enable you to nurture  your candidates with highly personalized  and customized  marketing campaigns. 

You need to stay in contact with your potential candidates, and  nurture and engage with them until they are ready to apply for your open job positions. 

You will do that by delivering useful, relevant content to their inbox via your newsletter regularly . 

Step #10: Use paid advertising

When I mention paid advertising to HR professionals, they usually immediately think of paid advertising on online job boards.  

But paid advertising offers  so many more great opportunities  to reach  candidates, especially passive  ones - those that you won’t find on job boards.

Paid advertising can put relevant  content in front of your ideal candidates, whether they're searching for jobs on Google, using social media or just casually browsing the internet. 

Here are the  4 key types of paid advertising that are most useful in recruitment marketing:

• Search advertising Many candidates start their job search on search engines like Google or Yahoo. Paid search advertising can place your job ads on search engine results pages.
• Display advertising Paid display ads are classical banner ads you see when you're browsing the internet. With paid display advertising, you can show your banner only to people who match your candidate persona’s characteristics and behaviors. 
• Social media advertising Social media advertising means paying to promote your ads, posts, or sponsored stories on social media networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Paid ads on social media will ensure that your job post reaches a larger number of people who match your candidate persona. 
• Retargeting With retargeting, you can show your ads to people who already visited your career site. For example, you can retarget people who started filling out your job application but left without submitting it. 

Step #11: Measure recruitment marketing results

Finally, you need to measure  the success of your recruitment marketing efforts. 

By gathering metrics  on what works and what doesn’t you can adjust and improve your recruitment marketing plan.

In order to achieve even better  results , you need to experiment . 

By tracking your metrics, you can test  different campaigns and identify  job ads and calls to action that work best . 

Thus, HR teams must constantly  measure, store and evaluate data and track the most important recruitment marketing metrics . 

Luckily, with modern recruitment marketing tools , this process can be completely  automated . 

Work smarter, not harder: Use recruitment marketing tools

Implementing  a recruitment marketing strategy is much easier  when you have all the help you need in one tool , created especially for recruiters!  

This is why we created TalentLyft Recruitment Marketing Platform - to help you work  faster and better!  

Our recruitment marketing software will enable you to  automate, streamline and improve  your recruitment marketing process. 

It is affordable, and easy to use and our customers love it ! 

Take action now:

➡️ Check all the possibilities  offered by  specialized   recruitment marketing software! 

Frequently asked questions

Why do you need a recruitment marketing action plan?  

A recruitment marketing action plan is essential for attracting top talent in today's competitive job market, helping to build and maintain a talent pool of great candidates.

What are the key steps in creating a recruitment marketing action plan?  

Key steps include defining recruitment marketing goals, identifying your candidate persona, creating compelling recruitment content, optimizing your career site, and effectively using social media.

How can you effectively manage your talent pool?  

Effectively managing your talent pool involves segmentation, personalized engagement, and nurturing potential candidates with useful, relevant content until they are ready to apply.

What role does paid advertising play in recruitment marketing?  

Paid advertising extends the reach of your recruitment efforts to passive candidates through platforms like search engines, social media, and other websites.

How do you measure the success of your recruitment marketing strategy?  

Measuring success involves tracking key metrics to understand what works and what doesn't, allowing for optimization and improvement of your recruitment marketing strategy.

Most Productive Recruitment Marketing Strategies

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TalentLyft is an intuitive recruitment app made for successful hiring.

Building a High-impact Recruitment Marketing Strategy: 5 Lessons for Success

Noa Ferber is the Global Talent Attraction Manager at PayPal and holds a master’s degree in occupational psychology from the University of Haifa. She has more than 20 years of recruiting experience across diverse industries from tech to healthcare, with expertise in strategic sourcing, employer branding, and recruitment marketing.

Noa Ferber, Global Talent Attraction Manager at PayPal, shares her journey to recruitment marketing—and five key insights she learned along the way.

I have a “How to Build a Recruitment Marketing Program” presentation deck that I’ve used since being promoted to Global Talent Attraction Manager at PayPal three years ago. On the second slide, I explain my recruitment marketing team’s mission: “We aspire to set PayPal as a globally recognized employer of choice, ensuring the best talent is engaged with our brand, including current and future opportunities.”

I consider recruitment marketing the secret sauce that adds flavor to our recruitment team’s efforts. It enhances the employer brand and candidate experience while ensuring we drive traffic to our career site and ATS.

At its essence, recruitment marketing is a strategic approach to attracting and engaging potential candidates. In practice, recruitment marketing is similar to any other digital marketing activity (like ads placed on your social feed inviting you to try a new product or service), and my team is responsible for designing and managing these recruitment campaigns. We want to encourage our target audience to view our social media feeds and visit our careers website.

Think of it like this: If the talent acquisition funnel begins when a candidate applies for a position and ends with a job offer and onboarding, recruitment marketing sits on top of that funnel. A candidate’s journey does not start when they apply. It starts way before that—as early as when they become aware of an employer or a specific opportunity and develop an interest in the company. Only then do they take the first step in the application process—and only then are the recruitment marketing efforts deemed successful.

From the Israeli National Health Services to PayPal, I gained much of my initial recruitment marketing knowledge on the job, without even calling it recruitment marketing (the new domain has only really emerged in the past 10 years). Based on my experiences, I’d like to share five important lessons I’ve learned in developing a recruitment marketing strategy that nets results, regardless of whether you’re a global giant or a small or midsize business.

Lesson 1: Start Small

I started my recruitment career in Israel 20 years ago, where I did in-house talent acquisition for various private companies. In my last role in Israel, I was the Head of Recruitment and Assessment for the Israeli National Health Services; I built the career site blog, started academic partnerships for university recruiting, and developed our employer brand. Nowadays, these promotional activities fall under recruitment marketing.

When I moved to the UK, where I am currently based, I took a regional recruitment role for Amdocs, a prominent IT company that provides services to telecom companies globally. Six years later, PayPal approached me about a TA manager role overseeing Europe.

I built the Talent Attraction and Insights Team, which has since become our Global Talent Attraction Team, focusing on recruitment marketing. With PayPal’s support, my team and I have all become Certified Digital Marketing Professionals via courses offered by the Digital Marketing Institute , and I have earned an additional strategy and planning certification from DMI.

You can pick up many recruitment marketing skills along your career journey, but you may have to go out of your way to find them. There is a misconception that recruiters should automatically be able to do this type of work on top of their day-to-day jobs without additional training. But if you want to create a recruitment marketing strategy and evolve it over time, you need to learn specialized skills like social media and campaign management, media planning, and content creation.

You might think that only big companies can afford a recruitment marketing team, but it doesn’t need to be that way. There is usually a lot of low-hanging fruit that even one person can do, such as creating a basic plan for social media posting. So don’t be afraid to start small and grow from there.

Lesson 2: Be Agile

I like to say, “Try, learn, move on,” and I’m a big proponent of pivoting. Not surprisingly, there is a vast difference between where my team started and where it is today. We have implemented processes that have made us more effective, including measurements to check our campaigns’ progress and success. I am also proud that we have built a library of assets that any of our global recruiters can use, allowing them to adapt their own methods and processes.

However, getting to this point hasn’t been without challenges and learning opportunities. Initially, we had ambitious plans to produce new content multiple times a week. We quickly understood that investing in quality content to repurpose on various platforms was better. For example, during International Women’s Month last year, we produced four videos spotlighting women in tech at PayPal and distributed them using a multichannel approach. The series received great social media engagement and was hailed as a success.

When adapting your processes or trying to understand the direction you want to take your recruitment marketing in, be sure to take a step back and consider whether your aims benefit both you and your target audience. It is easy to get lost in ambitious plans, and the recruiting landscape will continue to change while you attempt to reach those goals. It’s important to stay attuned and flexible.

Lesson 3: Know Your Talent Personas

My education is in psychology, and I come from the assessment side of recruiting, which looks primarily at candidates’ skills, motivations, and interests. So I enjoy interviewing and getting to know the person behind the CV—understanding what drives them, what makes them happy, and what they’re looking for in their next career opportunity.

Today, I view this process through a marketing lens and in terms of understanding different personas. What key motivators will make somebody engage with us as a potential employer? Is it the fact that we provide professional growth? Is the person looking for a company that invests in community contributions? What will make them click on this ad and start their journey with PayPal?

In light of this approach, one of my team’s top priorities relating to online engagement has been redesigning and rebuilding PayPal’s career site. With the career site relaunch, we wanted to represent PayPal’s culture and values and tell the stories of our employees. A desirable company culture ranks exceptionally high on candidate wishlists; in 2022, an EY survey found that company culture factors into 92% of employee decisions when considering whether to remain with their current employer. Establishing an attractive employer brand is crucial, and authenticity is key as recruitment marketers seek to connect with their audience amid the hubbub of social media.

Understanding what makes your target audience tick is crucial to successful recruitment marketing. I have found that email marketing is one of the most effective tools when attracting candidates: using our talent communities to regularly engage with prospects and sharing news, stories, and new opportunities—activities which enable us to highlight our employer brand and nurture our relationship with prospective talent.

Lesson 4: Embrace Cross-team Collaboration

PayPal has a strong “one team” culture focused on collaboration. None of my team’s successes would be possible without working closely with our fellow recruitment, communication, branding, and business teams. Our weekly meetings with the external and internal communication teams are critical to ensure we are telling the same employer branding story.

Likewise, because one of our primary goals is to help the global recruitment team meet its targets for talent procurement, we recently provided support for the PayPal university program , which coincided with the opening of our 2024 internship application process.

As part of our recruitment marketing function, we also gather inspiring employee experiences to share. Personal stories about what it’s like to work at a company can be some of the most powerful content. For instance, we published a blog post on a program in Israel that supports women returning to work after maternity leave.

Many of these spotlight ideas come from other teams. Recruitment marketing doesn’t happen in a silo. Collaborate with other functions to better understand your company culture and achieve your goals.

Lesson 5: Stay Grounded

I’m a true believer in the power of data. My team has implemented reporting capabilities to ensure we develop sound strategies and present results to stakeholders according to what we've learned. To understand the ROI of our activities and increase engagement, we eventually need to say, “OK, we got 1,000 visitors to the career site from this campaign. From those, how many people applied or were hired?”

We seek input in weekly follow-up meetings with the different recruiting teams—from APAC to the Americas. If, for instance, we have received a high volume of traffic but a small number of leads, or we’ve gotten leads but they’re not meeting the quality we are looking for, what do we need to optimize and change about the campaign? How will we push our ads to create the most engagement and get qualified leads into the talent pipeline?

Tracking is essential because candidate behavior is multifaceted. According to data from Workable, 33.4% of the US workforce is actively looking for work, but a more significant percentage of 37.3% is “passively” looking—i.e., they are workers who are comfortably employed but are open to hearing about new opportunities. This passive talent may initially be more hesitant about signing up for open positions and will likely take longer to convert. By staying abreast of the latest recruitment data, you can keep track of user behavior over a more extended period and utilize techniques to convert hesitant visitors to your careers site. Any campaign’s success hinges on your ability to evaluate the necessary data.

Recruitment Marketing Recap: Achieving Success in a Competitive Hiring Landscape

By aligning recruitment marketing strategies with business hiring objectives and harnessing the power of digital marketing techniques, you can bolster your employer brand, expand your talent funnel, and achieve a higher ROI to secure the best talent in a fiercely competitive market. As you embark on your recruitment marketing path, remember this: It is a marathon, not a sprint—a journey of continuous learning and improvement.

Some of the skills in recruitment marketing will come naturally to recruiters, but that doesn’t mean it won’t require additional resources and skill development for you to flourish. Because recruitment marketing is a newer domain inside talent acquisition, it is a fantastic way for recruiters to explore and learn new practices as a potential career direction and area of expertise.

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What Is Recruitment Marketing? Ultimate Guide With 15 Examples

Mariya is a talent acquisition professional turned HR leader with experience in large corporates and start-ups. She has 10+ years of experience recruiting all over the world across many different industries, specialising in market entries, expansion, or scaling projects. She is of the firm belief that great candidate and empoyee experiences are not just a luxury, but a must. Currently she is the People Lead at Focaldata.

Underwhelmed by the number and/or quality of applicants for your roles? Discover where and how to market what you offer as an employer to attract more of the right talent for you.

You have your employer value proposition and employer brand , but how do you put all that out there and get people excited? This is where recruitment marketing comes in!

Recruitment marketing is under-utilized in many spaces, which is precisely why you have the opportunity to make a splash regardless of how big or small you are.

It's an opportunity to get creative with expressing your company identity, take candidates on a journey, and have a little fun!

Use this guide to understand the what, why, and how. Sprinkled throughout is advice on what to watch out for when putting yourself out there.

Let's dive in.

What Is Recruitment Marketing?

Recruitment marketing, sometimes called talent marketing, is when you adapt traditional marketing strategies to attract and hire talent. It’s aimed at potential candidates to advertise what your company does, who you are as an employer, and what working for you will look like.

In reality, recruitment marketing occurs everywhere regular marketing occurs because potential candidates are likely looking at what you’re putting out there that’s aimed at clients.

That’s why it’s good to work with your general marketing team when creating your recruitment marketing strategy.

However, there are certain channels that are more specifically aimed at job seekers that you should be taking full advantage of. That way you may find yourself attracting the best talent for you.

Why is recruitment marketing important?

In the recruitment funnel, recruitment marketing mostly makes a difference at the top of the funnel i.e. increasing brand awareness and enticing more and better applicants to apply.

Further down the pipeline, recruitment marketing can still support you and your recruitment team to close candidates by providing them with more organic glimpses of what it’s like to work for your company and interview tips and guides.

11 Recruitment Marketing Channels

1. jobs ads.

Job adverts are the classic form of recruitment marketing. When it comes to creating them, they need to be both informative and attention-grabbing—not an easy combination as the two are not necessarily compatible.

What I like to do is make sure that the job advert follows a logical flow and use headings to make it easy for candidates to know where to look for different kinds of information (e.g. “Responsibilities and Outcomes” and “About us”). 

I also like to use the company values to structure the outcomes of the role (how their role contributed to your company’s mission) in a way that echoes those values as a signal that you truly do live what you preach.

For example, if one of your values is to “deliver exemplary experiences for customers”, or something along those lines, that is something that everyone can contribute towards.

So, under responsibilities and outcomes in a job ad for engineers, you could include something like “Work with the product team in requirement gathering to truly understand what will move the needle towards an even better customer experience”.

It just gives a bit more flavour on what you’re requiring and why than just “requirement gathering”.

Another thing is to think carefully about where you’re posting. Do some research and think about where your target audience hangs out—perhaps there’s a jobs board or a jobs channel. e.g. if you’re looking for designers, check out Dribble (more on this later).

A note on funky job titles

Code whisperers, sales ninjas etc. sound interesting but think about whether they are discoverable.

If someone is looking for a job, would they look immediately for a “code whisperer” or a Software engineer as the first stop? Likely the latter and considering they will have applied to all the other roles with the more “regular” title they may not even look at the creative title at all.

I’m not looking to stifle your creativity—if anything you can mention it in the job description, but think of it as SEO—optimise the keywords that are more used to make sure you get more eyes on the job at least from the title.

After that, the creativity can shine through in the content of the job advert! 

2. Outreach message

Be it LinkedIn or other platforms, outreach messages also have to be treated as a form of marketing.

This will help you write more engaging messages rather than the cut-and-dry “job here”.

Again, make sure that your messages reflect your identity as an employer and guide potential candidates through the information you’re presenting to them. 

I like to send a few links shortened using Bitly or other link shorteners. You’re likely trying to reach top talent and they need information, but make sure your information is tailored to the person receiving it—especially the role being relevant.

I remember receiving a message offering me a position as a recruitment sourcer, despite being the Head of Talent and not having been a sourcer for at least 6 years. Not a great candidate experience right out of the gate!

Every talent platform will tell you to personalise messages to increase response, but, if you’re sending many many messages a day (perhaps you are working on multiple roles at the same time like I usually am), that may not be possible.

So a quick tip from me is to separate your pool into a few categories e.g. Linkedin people who are “open to work”, or people from a specific background or company, and acknowledge the thing that made them unique in the message. You can build a space or prompt for it right into your recruiting email templates .

It still personalises it to them somewhat and you can more easily send a few messages concurrently.

3. Hiring platform profiles

Certain hiring platforms will work with you to create a page where featuring your company to potential candidates. Typically, they’ll allow videos, links, and mini-pages for all the information you want to highlight.

For a cost, LinkedIn allows you to create a so-called “Life” page, which is a space for you to show off life at your company.

It’s useful for providing more information to candidates, allowing them to organically discover information on the platform where they’re likely to apply for the role anyway. 

If your budget can’t accommodate that yet, you can use your company’s LinkedIn homepage to post content aimed at candidates as well as clients.

Other platforms like Hired, SheCanCode, Cord, Haystack, and AngelList also allow you to create a page to show off your company.

Make sure to keep the page alive with relevant information and vary the content so it’s not just “here’s a new job” style posts. 

It’s always a good idea to feature some sort of video or “employee highlight” featurette-style content so people can understand what day-to-day looks like for different roles. 

While it’s great to hear from the leadership, for most of the really engaged candidates, you will find that information from regular team members would be more valuable to them.

Lastly, highlight your posts to your colleagues so they can share and react to your content. That way it can reach a wider audience including their own talent networks!

4. Social Media

Social media can be a powerful tool but only when used appropriately. It’s important to think deeply about your company and your brand when choosing to invest time in a platform.

I don’t have a winning formula but, if you’re looking for pharma scientists on Instagram, for example, while not outside the realm of possibility it’s likely not the best use of your resources to run a dedicated recruitment marketing campaign there.

However, you can always have a “Life at [Company]” Instagram page—especially if you have a pet-friendly office. That always goes down well on the platform (pay your pet tax!).

Twitter/X is a bit more universal and can be a place where you put out more general content about “life at [Company]” or job posts. In some industries, really outstanding candidates can be found actively participating in the conversations on X.

TikTok, the new kid on the block and popular with Gen Z, has some job posts for junior/entry-level roles, but it’s not proven territory yet.

There isn’t a lot of data or metrics available for actual conversion rates, however, it can be your space to show off your organization’s fun side.

The most cited metric out there is about how Chipotle increased their applicant pool by 7% when they started taking TikTok video resumes in their pilot program, however likely more time will be needed to generate more data.

Getting really niche, depending on the industry or roles, the right candidates may now be on federated versions of the above apps.

The “Fediverse”, as it’s now known, is a collection of open-source and self-hosted platforms that are being used as alternatives to X (Mastodon), Reddit (Lemmy).

They operate like email i.e. we have a lot of providers of email but we can send emails to each other regardless of provider. It’s like being able to see Twitter/X replies inside of a Reddit post. 

A lot of cyber security experts, for example, have moved towards these platforms after the shifts in X especially as they don’t want to be in a platform that is under the control of one person. 

Regardless of your platform of choice here are some things to keep in mind:

• Keep in mind your candidate persona when choosing the best platform
• Research the most appropriate hashtags and trends and see which ones the talent community is using the most in their own posts or following. 
• Make sure you understand any viral trends before you post something that shows you didn’t understand the context (example: look at Digiorno’s #WhyIStayed fiasco).
• See if it’s appropriate to work with influencers - again really industry-dependent but it can be a really effective marketing tactic for both brand and recruitment marketing. 

For a deeper dive, check out my article on social recruiting .

Email is an incredibly effective form of regular marketing and the same goes for candidate marketing too.

Using your candidate database like a CRM, you can send targeted emails designed to target different types of candidates e.g. to techies you can send info about a new technology your teams are working with or simply new opportunities.

6. Careers pages

Careers pages are underutilised as a channel because not many companies take it seriously or actually update employees, but that is how you can stick out!

A study from LinkedIn found that your website is where candidates go the most to get information about your company, so it’s not just about having your job openings somewhere!

Separate out a space for candidates so they have their own journey—ideally a separate careers site that is easy to navigate to from the homepage. Treat it like a source of leads and invite people to connect or become part of your talent pool.

The Twitch careers page is a good example. I like the fact that they have well-maintained news and updates of programmes and employee highlights as well as the different career paths and what the interview process looks like.

For more on careers pages, read my article how to create an attractive careers page .

7. Review sites

It’s now standard procedure for candidates to look up a company on review sites like Glassdoor, Kununu, or Indeed before applying.

That’s why it is so surprising that companies still don’t see those as opportunities for a more active way of creating a recruitment marketing funnel of candidates who are already engaged enough to look up your company.

Instead, companies often see reviews and testimonials as something “that happens to them” rather than a place where they can increase candidate engagement by showing themselves as caring about the experiences of people in the company.

That’s why you need to make sure that you create and maintain a page where you monitor the feedback you receive. 

When you’re first starting out building your profile, ask your current employees or candidates to review their employment experience or candidate journey.

Make sure you keep track of your scores there and respond appropriately to any critiques. Your score is certainly something you can feature to show your employee engagement and happiness.

Glassdoor has a dynamic list of the best places to work ; if you can get on there you’re golden!

Also, don’t underestimate the power of Trustpilot and review sites aimed at customers. One time I dropped out of an interview process at a Wellness App after seeing that their Google Play score is less than 2 stars.

8. Recruitment events

There are many recruitment events aimed at different candidate groups. For example, there are recruitment fairs for grads, start-ups, tech-specific roles, etc.

My recommendations when prepping for these are:

• Make sure you jump on and engage with any marketing content made by the organisers and advertise your attendance over social media or during chats with candidates.
• Prepare some fun swag!
• Come prepared with tech (iPad or laptop) in case people want to register to have a further chat with your company.
• Ideally, have a few people at your stand—if you have a recruitment team make sure they’re there, but they also have people from the relevant audience. For example, if you are at a Women in Tech event, have at least one female engineer to chat with people.
• Make sure you follow up with attendees and add them to your talent pipeline to keep them updated.

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9. Community outreach

This is where I have found a lot of success, but only by following the rules.

Harking back to what I mentioned earlier about finding where your potential hires hang out, there are spaces like forums, Subreddits, and Discord or Slack communities where professionals of a specific area can gather, share ideas and discuss. 

These are great sources of talented professionals who are engaged in their own domain and are looking to keep on top of new developments. What is more, these communities sometimes have a jobs channel where you can post your roles.

One thing to note is to pay attention to the rules about joining. For example, some communities I reached out to don’t allow recruiters to join and it makes sense.

Other times, as I discovered recently, I was able to join because the rule was that the forum was aimed at women only and all our techies at the time were guys.

If you’re not sure, reach out to the organisers and make sure you make yourself available to the community in which you want to take part.

Even if you're not a subject matter expert you can still be an active member and take part in their initiatives, so be prepared to give back.

10. Blogging, webinars, and other forms of content marketing

There are other ways like webinars/blogs/Medium posts for you to put content out there specifically for recruitment, but I’d only recommend them if you have actually something to say. 

Don’t post for the sake of posting or to fill a quota!

Most companies use these spaces to educate clients on new product developments or as a source of getting clients, but a webinar or a blog can easily be just focused on your company as an employer.

One of my more successful posts was on the company blog page, where we usually posted about new product/industry developments.

One week I took over and wrote about how I created the recruitment process and why I did it the way I did it. Turns out job seekers really appreciate the demystifying of the hiring process at your company!

11. Open source wiki/Notion

Depending on where your company is in your journey, you may not have an ATS or a careers page. A great alternative is to have an open-source wiki or publicly available employee handbook to give candidates more to explore.

You can either create a microsite or a page from your main site or use a tool like Notion, Obsidian, or Nuclino. Here are a few examples:

• Pento Home ( notion.so )
• Welcome Human! - Handbook ( hmn.md )
• Monito's Handbook [Public] ( notion.site )
• Blendle's Employee Handbook ( notion.so )

Wikis are especially useful for featuring information and being transparent with candidates from the get-go about things like your employee value proposition or your recruitment process .

With Notion in particular, it’s also super easy to post pages with open roles.

Creating a wiki is a great fit for those companies that aren't at a stage where they have implemented an ATS that can easily manage a careers page, or companies that have a really well-developed culture that they’d like to show off more.

So this can either be a link on the main website that replaces a careers page, or it can be a link from within the careers page to “Learn more”.

Openness and transparency to candidates at the early stages of the funnel is becoming the norm, which is great to see. 

If you are not sure where to start, check out OpenOrg —they’ve amassed a bunch of resources on where to get started with engaging qualified candidates and making your company not just a collection of open positions!

The Recruitment Marketing Funnel

A useful tool pinched from regular marketers and adapted for recruitment marketing is the recruit marketing funnel.

It breaks recruitment marketing into 6 stages and helps you develop and hone your efforts at each stage.

Stage 1: Awareness

This is the top of the funnel, where potential candidates first become aware of your company and employer brand. 

This stage involves casting a wide net using various channels such as social media, job boards, career fairs, and company websites.

The goal is to build brand recognition and attract the interest of potential candidates.

Stage 2: Generate interest

At this stage, candidates who are aware of your company begin to develop an interest in learning more about what it offers.

They may explore the company's culture, values, mission, and available job opportunities. 

Content such as your careers page, employee testimonials, blogs, and behind-the-scenes videos can help nurture this interest.

Stage 3: Nurture the decision

Candidates in the consideration stage are evaluating whether your company is a good fit for their career goals and personal values. 

They may compare your organization with others and seek more detailed information about the roles, benefits, work environment, and career growth opportunities. 

Engaging content, such as detailed job descriptions, employee benefits information, and interviews with current employees, can be crucial here.

Stage 4: Drive action

This is the stage where interested candidates take action by applying for a position. Clear job postings and a smooth and user-friendly application process will increase the likelihood of this happening.

Remember, even if someone’s rejected here or after an interview or assessment, you still have their details for any future opportunities.

How To Develop A Recruitment Marketing Plan: 6-Step Process

While recruitment marketing opportunities will occasionally fall into your lap, for maximum impact and measurable results, it’s always best to create a strategic plan.

Here’s my process for creating a strategic recruitment marketing plan.

1. Define your EVP

• Craft your employer value proposition (EVP) : Define what makes you a unique employer and what benefits and opportunities your company offers workers. This includes aspects like company culture, growth opportunities, compensation, and work-life balance.
• Consistent messaging : Ensure that your EVP and employer brand is consistently communicated across all channels, including your website, social media, job postings, and internal communications.

2. Set goals

• Set clear objectives : Identify what you aim to achieve with your recruitment marketing efforts. This could include increasing organic applications, attracting more qualified candidates, and reducing time-to-fill.
• Establish measurable goals : Define specific, measurable goals that align with your objectives. For example, aim to increase the number of organic job applicants by 20% within six months.

3. Define job descriptions

• Clear and concise titles : Use specific and engaging job titles that accurately reflect the role and attract the right candidates.
• Detailed role descriptions : Clearly outline the responsibilities, qualifications, skills, and experience required. Remember to state how the role can contribute to the organization’s mission, values, and goals.
• Emphasize your EVP : Integrate your company's unique position, benefits, culture, and growth opportunities into the job descriptions to attract candidates aligned with your values.
• SEO optimization : Use relevant keywords and phrases that potential candidates might use when searching for jobs to improve the visibility of your job postings. Good recruitment SEO will lower costs and bring in better candidates to begin with.

4. Identify and Understand Your Target Audience

• Segment your audience : Determine the key demographics, skills, experience levels, and other characteristics of the candidates you want to attract. Consider different segments for various roles and departments.
• Develop candidate personas : Create detailed profiles representing your ideal candidates, including their motivations, career aspirations, preferred communication channels, and challenges. This helps tailor your messaging and strategies.

5. Assess resources

• Budget assessment : Determine the budget available for your recruitment marketing efforts, including advertising, tools, and external partnerships.
• Personnel and skills : Evaluate the skills and availability of your recruitment team and other relevant departments, such as marketing or HR, to support your strategy.
• Tools and technology : Identify the tools and technology needed, such as ATS, customer relationship management (CRM) systems , analytics tools, and social media management platforms. Ensure that you have access to the necessary resources or plan for acquisitions.

5. Develop and implement content and channel strategies

• Channel strategy : Identify the most effective channels to reach your target personas, e.g. LinkedIn, job boards, social media platforms, your company website, career fairs, and email campaigns. Optimize each channel for maximum reach and engagement at different stages of the recruitment marketing funnel.
• Content strategy : Create a content calendar with engaging content for different stages of the recruitment funnel, such as blog posts, employee testimonials, videos, social media posts, and detailed job descriptions. Focus on showcasing your company's culture, values, and success stories.
• Make a calendar : Put together a calendar outlining all your recruitment marketing activities for at least a month in advance. Ensure each entry includes the what, where, who, and any deadlines. You can use project management tools like Clickup or Trello for this.

6. Monitor, Evaluate, and Optimize

• Regular Monitoring : Continuously monitor the performance of your recruitment marketing efforts against the set goals and objectives. Use analytics to identify trends and areas for improvement.
• Feedback and iteration : Gather feedback from candidates, new hires, and the recruitment team to identify strengths and weaknesses in your approach. Use this feedback to refine and optimize your strategies, ensuring they remain aligned with your objectives and market trends.

15 Recruitment Marketing Examples

Recruitment marketing is the opportunity to have some fun and display what makes you unique. These are some of my favourite examples past and present.

FIFA’s famous billboard advertising a designer for the 2026 World Cup Logo.

2. Microsoft

A cool engineering job ad from Microsoft invites us to solve an equation. I like how they include the salary too (I think it must be quite old!).

3. Webinargeek

View this post on Instagram A post shared by WebinarGeek (@webinargeek)

Really like this “day in the life of” employee takeover from Webinargeek. The way it was worded it was almost like Tech support was going to be there to help everyone!

Top tip : Before handing them the reins, ensure employees are trained and have guidelines on what to post and how to handle interactions.

4. Dublin Bus

I came across the above recently and thought it was so nice and heartwarming! Everyone across all levels should be celebrated so think about who you may be forgetting. The shoutout was posted on the company page as well as by the CEO.

@michellejoseph__ Was not worth it 🥲 also why did we think that was a real thing?? #childhooddream #childhoodmemories #heels #relateable ♬ original sound – spready0urwings

@michellejoseph__ First day vibes⚡️ @asos #workoffice #newjobcheck #asoslifestyle #asos #foryou #CinderellaMovie ♬ Aesthetic Vibes - sxldi

First day - celebrate! Been here a year - celebrate! Been here 5 years - celebrate more! ASOS’s first-day TikTok video above is a cool example that will appear to the Gen Z audience the brand wants to market to.

@typo_shop Welcome to Typo HQ #thingsthatjustmakesense #officetour #work ♬ original sound - Typo

More TikTok goodness from Typo with their office tour to attract creatives.

7. Focaldata

Focaldata with a nice piece of educational content from my organization that highlights our team’s expertise and helps them increase the reach of their knowledge.

8. Black and White Zebra 

Cool post from my editor, Finn Bartram’s, LinkedIn showcasing the media organization’s creativity and culture. Cool T-shirt too!

9. Reading Room

Digital agency Reading Room highlights some of their work that will also catch the eye of potential candidates too.

API management startup Tyk sending speakers to an event about a specific technology (Kubernetes).

Google’s popular career community is perfect for connecting with potential candidates and advertising roles.

Apple supplies some handy interview tips for those bottom-of-funnel candidates.

13. Triplebyte

Tech recruitment agency Triplebyte showing us how it’s down by jumping on the popular Drake meme.

LEGOLAND Discovery Centre Shanghai turned their hunt for a new LEGO Master Model Builder in an open audition event in China.

15. WestRock

A nice, clear CTA from WestRock on their job ad.

Recruitment Marketing Best Practices

Be authentic.

Whichever channel you choose, or whatever combination you want to go for, always make sure the content is authentic, appropriate, and attention-grabbing.

• Authentic : You can ensure you remain authentic by always thinking about your employer brand and identity.
• Appropriate : Always keep in mind your target audience and personas.
• Attention-grabbing : Do something to stand out from the pack in your own way.

It can be easy to turn into one of those brands who post for the sake of posting or, even worse, try to be down with the kids in a space where they don’t fit in naturally.

Take a long hard look at yourself and think, do I want to be on Instagram or would I rather spend my precious time elsewhere? 

Maybe Insta is your perfect platform or it’s not, the important thing is to not rush blindy in on the new “it” platform—think about where your ideal candidate persona hangs out.

Interestingly, the more niche the position the more the right channels will make themselves known pretty quickly. 

Leverage your existing employees

As you can see from the examples above, existing workers feature heavily in recruitment marketing activities. 

If your EVP is strong, they’ll be your biggest advocates on reviews sites and will probably appreciate the chance to have a bit of fun too.

Just remember to ask permission and be conscious about asking for too much of people’s time, they have their regular jobs too!

Be data-driven

While it may seem like a lot of ‘colouring in’, marketing is actually highly strategic and data-driven.

If you’re serious about maximizing the potential of your marketing events, set some goals and create a dashboard in your ATS or similar to easily track what’s working and what isn't.

This will help you refine your channels and maximize your ROI.

Have fun mixing it up

You won’t know what will work and what won’t straight off the bat, so there’s no harm in make educated guesses and trying new tactics. 

For example, getting offline and attending recruitment events and fairs may seem like a big investment, but I’ve had a lot of success with these in the past and it’s always valuable talking to people in the real world.

If something doesn’t work out, don’t get discouraged, evaluate what could have gone better and keep experimenting.

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Table of contents

• Recruitment campaign – definition

Impact of employer branding on recruitment campaigns

The impact of recruitment campaigns on the candidate experience, features of a good recruitment campaign, elements of a recruitment campaign, identifying goals and needs, analysis of the labour market and target group, campaign planning, campaign implementation, analysis and summary, costs of recruitment campaigns, challenges of recruitment campaigns, benefits of recruitment campaigns.

Recruitment campaigns – what are they and how to conduct them?

Recruitment campaigns are an integral part of the hiring process in modern organisations, aiming to attract and select the most suitable candidates. How to effectively plan, implement and analyse recruitment campaigns to achieve the best results?

From this article you will learn:

• What is a recruitment campaign?
• What are the relationships between a recruitment campaign and employer branding?
• How does candidate experience affect recruitment campaigns?
• What distinguishes a good recruitment campaign?
• What does a recruitment campaign consist of?
• How to create a recruitment campaign?
• What affects the cost of a recruitment campaign?
• What difficulties can be expected during recruitment campaigns?
• What can be gained from recruitment campaigns?

Recruitment campaign – definition

A recruitment campaign is a structured and purposeful process designed to attract qualified personnel to an organisation. It is more than just a series of job advertisements; it is a comprehensive strategy involving identification of company needs, planning, targeting, communication, as well as analysis and optimisation.

A recruitment campaign is a planned and organised set of activities designed to attract and select candidates to work for an organisation. What is a recruitment campaign?

A successful recruitment campaign not only fills current staffing gaps, but also has a positive impact on long-term business goals and corporate image as an attractive employer. Recruitment campaigns mainly focus on talent acquisition and have specific performance indicators, such as time to hire and quality of applications.

Employer branding influences the perception of the company on the labour market and among employees, which can significantly facilitate the recruitment process. Properly planned and executed recruitment campaigns can reinforce the employer brand, which in turn can significantly facilitate the recruitment and retention of top talent. Success in one area often translates into success in another, creating a synergistic relationship that benefits multiple levels of the organisation.

Candidate experience refers to the candidate’s overall experience and impressions during the recruitment process. How he or she is treated, how fast and transparent the process is, and even how easy it is to find job information and apply, all affect the candidate’s experience. If these are negative, even the most effective and well-planned recruitment campaign may not be successful. On the other hand, a positive candidate experience can significantly facilitate recruitment, as well-treated applicants are more likely to accept job offers and also recommend the company to others.

Candidate experience affects a company’s long-term image as an employer. Recruitment campaigns can be temporary and goal-oriented, whereas attention to candidate experience is a permanent part of any recruitment process and impacts your brand as an employer for years. When managing the recruitment process, this aspect cannot be overlooked. Every touchpoint between a candidate and a company, from the job advert to the final recruitment stage, has an impact on their experience and overall impression of the company. A good recruitment campaign should support a positive candidate experience.

A good recruitment campaign must first and foremost be targeted, such as filling specific vacancies or attracting talent from a specific area. Targeting a specific target group is key, although the means can vary from social media to traditional forms of advertising. Another important feature is consistency with the overall brand strategy. This means that the messages and language used in the campaign should be in line with your company values and culture. This not only facilitates identification with the company, but also builds trust among potential candidates.

Another important aspect is transparency and clarity of communication. Candidates value clearly defined expectations, procedures and timelines. Ambiguity can lead to frustration and negative experiences, which will ultimately affect the effectiveness of the campaign. Also, innovation and creativity should distinguish a good recruitment campaign. In the age of digitalisation and social media, traditional recruitment methods may not be enough, and the use of gamification or the use of advanced data analytics tools can improve results.

Last, but not least, is the ability to measure and analyse results. This includes both campaign performance tracking tools and KPIs that can be used to optimise future activities. A recruitment campaign that has the elements listed above not only attracts the right candidates, but also serves the company’s long-term goals, such as building a strong employer brand and maintaining high levels of engagement among employees.

The elements of a recruitment campaign are diverse and can vary depending on the goals and specifics of the organisation. However, there are a few basic components that are commonly used within such campaigns:

• The job advert is one of the most important elements of the campaign and the most popular recruitment method . It should be clear, precise and well-worded. The job description, requirements and terms and conditions of employment are the basic information that must be included.
• Communication channels are another important aspect. These range from traditional methods, such as newspaper advertisements, to modern tools, including social media, job websites or email marketing. The choice of channels should be tailored to the target group.
• Employer branding , although often treated as a separate issue, is an indispensable part of any recruitment campaign. All materials and communications should be consistent with the company’s overall image and values.
• The selection and recruitment process is not only the initial CV screening stage, but also interviews, tests and possible candidate assignments. This is crucial for assessing the skills and competences of applicants.
• Analysis and monitoring tools are also important to measure the effectiveness of the campaign and possibly make adjustments. This can include different types of indicators, such as the number of applications, the quality of candidates or the time it takes to complete the recruitment.
• Last, but not least, is communication with candidates. Adequate feedback, updates on the progress of the recruitment process and clear messages are key to a positive candidate experience and can influence their decision to accept an offer.

Creating recruitment campaigns

Creating recruitment campaigns is a multi-step process that requires careful analysis, planning and execution. Managing a recruitment campaign is a continuous learning process and adapting to the changing conditions and needs of both the organisation and the labour market.

The first step in creating a recruitment campaign is to precisely define the organisation’s objectives and needs. At this stage, HR and department managers analyse which positions need to be filled and what their specificities are. Requirements for candidates, such as technical skills, experience or soft skills, are also identified. The initial analysis not only helps to target the right campaign to the right target group, but also allows attractive and precise job advertisements to be created. It also lays the foundation for further activities in the recruitment campaign.

The next step is to analyse the labour market and understand where and how your target group is looking for jobs. Do they use traditional job portals or do they actively follow social media? The answers help you choose the most effective communication channels. At the same time, it is useful to understand the expectations and needs of candidates regarding the positions on offer. This can range from salary to development opportunities or company culture. Understanding these aspects will allow you to better tailor your offer to candidates’ expectations, ultimately increasing your chances of attracting the right people.

Planning is the time when specific activities are arranged in a logical and effective structure. Decisions on budget are key at this stage, as well as the choice of tools and platforms to be used for the campaign. Alongside this, a campaign timeline is created, which determines when and how the various campaign elements will be launched. All the necessary recruitment materials are also prepared – job adverts, social media posts and any additional promotional materials are developed to catch the attention of potential candidates and encourage them to apply.

During implementation, the previously developed plans and strategies are put into action. Pre-prepared job advertisements are then published on selected platforms, social media activities are launched and an email campaign is initiated. Each of these elements must be in line with the previously adopted plan and schedule. In this context, it is extremely important to maintain consistency in communication and employer branding across all channels. This not only helps to build trust among potential candidates, but also makes it easier for them to identify and remember the offer. Consistency and professionalism at this stage are crucial to the success of the entire campaign.

During the analysis, all data on the performance of the campaign is collected. Analytical tools and a variety of indicators, such as the number of applications, the quality of candidates applying or the duration of the entire recruitment process, are used to measure the effectiveness of the campaign. If you notice that certain elements of the campaign are not delivering the expected results, this is the time to make adjustments.

The final stage, evaluation and debriefing, occurs after the campaign has ended and is used to reflect on its effectiveness. On this basis, conclusions are formulated that can be used in future campaigns. It is also an opportunity to reflect on how the results of the recruitment campaign fit into the broader employer branding strategy. This not only allows future recruitment campaigns to be refined, but also influences the optimisation of the overall employer branding strategy. In this way, each campaign becomes not just a single project, but part of the company’s long-term strategy.

The cost of recruitment campaigns is a complex issue and is influenced by various factors. Among the most important are:

• the choice of communication channels on which ads will be published,
• the cost of analytical tools and applicant tracking systems,
• remuneration of the HR team or external agency for running the campaign,
• creation of promotional materials,
• paid advertising,
• time spent on screening and interviewing.

The question still arises as to what is more cost-effective for your business – running the campaign in-house or outsourcing it to a marketing agency, both approaches have advantages and disadvantages. Running a campaign in-house gives you more control over the process and can be more cost-effective if you already have the right tools and skills in the team. However, it can also mean that human and time resources are dispersed, which can affect other company activities.

Outsourcing a campaign to a marketing agency, on the other hand, often involves higher upfront costs, but can deliver better results in the short term due to the specialised know-how and tools that the agency has. It also reduces the burden on the internal HR team. The disadvantage can be less control over the process and a potential divergence from the company’s long-term strategy if the agency is not fully integrated into the organisation’s objectives. The final choice depends on the specifics of your company, its needs and resources.

Recruitment campaigns are often fraught with challenges that can affect their effectiveness and ultimate success. One of the main problems is reaching the right target group. The job market is dynamic and competitive, with many companies vying for the attention of the same candidates. Another aspect is budget. Limited financial resources can significantly affect the scope and quality of a campaign, and companies often have to balance cost and efficiency, which requires precise planning and monitoring.

Time management is another challenge, especially when the campaign is complex and multi-stage. Every element, from the preparation of materials to the selection of candidates, requires attention and time, which can be a problem if human resources are limited. Consistency of communication and brand image is also a significant challenge. All elements of the campaign must be consistent with the company’s overall strategy and image. Any inconsistency can affect brand perception and discourage potential candidates.

Last, but not least, the challenge is to analyse and measure the effectiveness of the campaign. Without the right tools and indicators, it is difficult to accurately assess which elements of the campaign are most effective and which need to be optimised.

A well-planned and effective recruitment campaign can significantly increase the reach of job offers, touching a larger and more diverse group of potential candidates. This not only increases the chances of finding the ideal employee, but also builds brand awareness as an attractive employer in the market. Recruitment campaigns are also a way to attract candidates with specialist skills or competencies.

These campaigns are also an excellent opportunity to promote the company culture and values, which is key to employer branding. A well-run campaign can influence the perception of a company not only by potential candidates, but also by existing employees and the wider market environment.

From the candidates’ point of view, recruitment campaigns are also a benefit. This is because they make it easier for them to familiarise themselves with job vacancies and the company’s culture, making it easier to make informed choices about their future career path. Finally, it is also worth mentioning that effective recruitment campaigns reduce the time it takes to recruit new employees, which is beneficial from both a cost and an operational efficiency point of view for the company.

A recruitment campaign is a structured process to attract and select the right candidates to work for an organisation.

In order to carry out a recruitment campaign, it is necessary to define the objectives, analyse the labour market and the target group, plan, implement the activities and monitor and analyse their effectiveness.

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5 Strategies for Successful Recruitment Marketing Campaigns 

Margaret Harris

• April 12, 2023
• Recruitment Marketing

Recruiting successful, talented, and engaged employees is an essential component of any business, which is why recruitment marketing campaigns are so important. Recruitment marketing campaigns outline how an organization will source, attract, and engage the ideal applicants to fill specific roles. These strategies often involve a combination of digital and traditional tactics, such as using social media, advertising, newsletters, and job boards.

When developing a recruitment marketing campaign, it is important to consider factors such as target audience and budget. Once these elements are identified, a recruitment strategy should be developed that includes tactics such as optimizing job postings to target relevant keywords, creating compelling advertisements, and building relationships with relevant employers. Additionally, it is important to incorporate a tracking system to monitor results and guide decision making.

By implementing a successful recruitment marketing campaign , organizations can ensure that they are recruiting the most qualified, relevant candidates. With a strategic combination of techniques, recruiters can successfully identify the best talent for their organization and ensure that their recruitment efforts are successful. 

Table of Contents

Best Strategies for a Successful Marketing Campaign  

Take advantage of social media for recruitment marketing  .

Social media has become an essential tool for recruitment marketing. It can help to build an online presence for recruitment companies and reach wider audiences in a much quicker and cost-effective manner than other more traditional outlets. Social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram are all great examples of how recruitment companies can reach, interact with, and engage with candidates all over the world.

Recruitment marketing through social media allows recruiters to have more control over the message that they distribute to potential candidates. Effective content can be created that showcases a recruitment company’s core values, mission, and recruitment processes. Sharing meaningful posts and using visuals such as videos and infographics can also be a great way to spread the word. Furthermore, recruitment companies can also leverage social media to source talent.

They can set up specific accounts dedicated to candidates and make use of hashtag campaigns to highlight particular requirements. Furthermore, recruitment companies can also use social media monitoring tools to stay on top of potential candidates for job openings. By focusing on the people aspect of recruitment marketing, companies can create relationships and capitalize on the power of social media to create a better recruitment experience. All in all, social media is an effective recruitment marketing solution that is essential for modern-day recruitment companies. 

Hirebee ensures that you don’t have to worry about finding the right candidates for your specific job openings, since automated recruitment marketing and candidate screening features can find the right people for you.  

Engage With Applicants as an Effective Campaign Strategy  

Engaging with potential job applicants can often be a powerful recruitment campaign strategy. As a modern-day alternative to the traditional job fair and posting on job boards, engaging with applicants has the potential to build relationships and streamline the recruitment process.

Consequently, this strategy may result in more successful applicant placements and create a more positive brand image for an organization. A key way to engage with applicants is through social media and digital tools. Social media is an effective tool for broadcasting job openings and engaging with potential applicants. Many organizations create social media campaigns to post job openings on different media platforms and to connect with applicant pools that may be interested in their job opportunities.

Utilizing hashtags and hosting digital events such as virtual interviews, career panels, and webinars, allows organizations to create a strong human connection with job applicants. In addition to utilizing digital tools , indirect advertising options may also be employed to reach potential applicants. For example, sponsoring community events or sponsoring interesting and relevant outdoor posters could help an organization to reach applicants. Such sponsorships allow organizations to get the word out about their job openings, while showing local or global support for important causes.

Finally, developing a rewards system for referrals is another great way to engage with potential applicants. This type of system is specifically beneficial for organizations that are in need of employees with a specific set of skills or qualifications. For example, a rewards system for employees who can refer potential candidates can be a great incentive for networking and encouraging people to apply.

Ultimately, engaging with potential applicants is an effective recruitment campaign strategy that can help organizations to expand their applicant pool and increase successful placements. By utilizing digital tools and indirect advertising strategies, organizations can create a human connection and spread the word about their job openings to the right people. 

Use Video Marketing and Testimonials to Improve Employer Branding  

Video marketing and testimonials are powerful tools that companies can use to improve employer branding and create an attractive, engaging workplace environment. Video marketing and testimonials can help employers create meaningful connections with current and potential employees and boost their employer brand. Video marketing allows employers to showcase their company culture and values on social media, websites, and other platforms.

This type of content offers a visual representation of the company’s culture and environment, as well as making candidates more relatable, allowing them to gain a better understanding of the employer. As well as showcasing the company’s culture and values, employers can also use their videos to introduce members of senior management, explain job roles and responsibilities, offer employee testimonials, and discuss available benefits.

Testimonials are another effective way for employers to improve their employer branding. Current and past employees can be used to provide insight into the company culture, employee benefits, and overall working experience. Video testimonials are particularly beneficial as they offer a more personal and authentic feel. Video testimonials also provide potential candidates with a more comprehensive understanding of an organization and its work environment.

In conclusion, video marketing and testimonials are powerful tools that employers can employ to improve their employer branding and make their organizations more attractive to potential candidates. Video marketing and testimonials allow employers to showcase their company culture, values, and equity, while providing potential candidates with an authentic look into the organization and its working environment. 

Maintain Your Reputation on Review Sites  

Maintaining your reputation on review sites is essential for businesses. Online reviews represent valuable customer feedback, which can help improve customer service, build trust and increase your visibility in the online community. The first step to maintaining your reputation on review sites is to regularly monitor what customers are saying about your business. You should track and respond to reviews on various online platforms (e.g., Yelp, Google, TripAdvisor, etc.).

Consider setting up email notifications or using a review monitoring tool to be alerted when a review has been posted. It’s also important to respond quickly, politely and professionally to reviews, both positive and negative. This acknowledges customers’ experiences and shows that you are interested in their feedback. Responding to reviews also helps to build trust and credibility for your business. It’s also important to encourage customers to leave reviews, both on your website and on external review platforms.

Consider incentivizing customers by offering discounts or special offers in exchange for their feedback. Finally, it’s important to avoid over-promotion or solicitation of positive reviews. Focus on providing top-notch customer service that encourages customers to leave honest feedback. By following these steps, you can maintain and even strengthen your reputation on review sites. This can give your business the edge it needs to increase visibility and attract new customers. 

Make It Easier for Applicants to Contact You 

One recruitment marketing strategy to make it easier for applicants to contact you is to create a website specifically for potential job seekers. This website should provide all the necessary information regarding available jobs, qualifications needed, and application process. Additionally, the website should have a contact page that clearly states how interested applicants can reach out to you. When creating the contact page, it is important that you provide multiple options for contacting you.

This could include both an email address and a physical mailing address, as well as phone numbers. Additionally, you should include an online form where applicants can fill out their contact information and submit it. This way, they do not have to call or mail you directly. Having a simple yet detailed FAQ page could also help applicants easily find answers to their basic questions without having to reach out to you.

Moreover, it is essential to ensure you update content on the website frequently with current job postings, qualifications, and application process information. This will increase the chances of applicants applying to the available job openings. Finally, with the proliferation of social media, having accounts on sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook can be a great way to engage potential applicants. On these accounts, you can post information about available job postings, upcoming events, and other related news. It is important to ensure that these accounts are active, so that job seekers have an easy and consistent way to contact you. 

How Following These Strategies Will Affect Your Recruitment Marketing Campaign  

You will be able to maintain your brand  .

Following an effective recruitment strategy can provide a host of benefits that can bolster both the organization’s brand and its ability to function more efficiently. Effective recruiting helps to build a positive organizational culture by bringing in the best candidates for the job and reinforcing the company’s core values. In addition to maintaining brand recognition, effective recruiting can also reduce overall recruitment costs by eliminating time-consuming, expensive hiring practices.

Additionally, it can secure the most talented workers by targeting the right candidate pool , thus increasing job satisfaction and reducing turnover among employees. A well-crafted recruitment strategy also serves to reduce the risk of bad hires and subsequent legal issues. Assessing applicants with the right job qualifications, personalities, and skills provides the organization with a more rounded view of the potential for success. Furthermore, utilizing a reliable screening process that is tailored to the needs of the specific job can yield more accurate results.

Another key benefit of effective recruiting is that it can help to create a more diverse workplace. A diverse workplace is one in which employees from different backgrounds can work together to build a more dynamic and cohesive organization. It can also foster greater creativity and empathy within the workplace, leading to more innovation as well as stronger customer relationships. Overall, following an effective diversity recruiting strategy is invaluable for organizations that are looking to maintain their brand and secure the best talent for their company. Doing so enables a company to further its core values and maintain a positive working environment by investing in the right people and processes. 

Improved Candidate Quality 

The benefits of an effective recruitment strategy for talent acquisition are numerous and may contribute greatly to the success of any business. Having a successful recruitment strategy should be a key component of any employer’s talent acquisition plan as it helps to streamline the process, attract more highly qualified candidates, improve efficiency, and save time and money. Through effective recruitment strategies, employers can target the perfect candidate for their open positions. The job posting should accurately reflect the skills and qualifications needed for the job, as well as be tailored towards the type of person employers want to hire.

This not only boosts the chances of the relevant keywords being picked up by search engines, but also helps employers determine if a candidate is a good fit for the organization. In addition to increasing the chances of sourcing the right candidate, an effective recruitment strategy helps to improve the efficiency of the process as a whole. Employers can better manage the flow of candidate applications, effectively author profiles and job descriptions, properly manage and track applicants, and store data and documentation.

This can help save time and costs to their operations. Having an effective recruitment strategy helps employers define the value of the position and use this to market the job to top talent. By identifying the unique selling points associated with the job, employers can craft attractive job posts that draw inspiration from the organization’s culture while also highlighting the value of the job itself. When implemented properly, an effective recruitment strategy also helps to build strong candidate relationships.

Leveraging employer branding , an active presence on social media, and other engagement strategies enables employers to stay in contact with potential candidates and increases the chances of qualified individuals being attracted to jobs. Overall, an effective recruitment strategy is essential for any employer planning to hire top talent. By leveraging the proper keywords, properly describing the job, and utilizing various engagement strategies, employers can quickly source top-tier candidates and increase the chances of a successful talent acquisition. 

Conclusion  

Overall, making a successful recruitment marketing campaign is not a one-time thing. It should be an ongoing process. In order to keep up with the ever changing job market, companies need to use the latest tools and technologies available, while still keeping in mind the core principles: building relationships, utilizing effective communication, creating meaningful connections and content, targeting the right kind of candidates, and taking advantage of social media trends. By following these five strategies, companies will be able to attract top talent and successfully build their employer brand . 

Finding the right individuals for your specific field is never easy, but the automated candidate screening and candidate sourcing features from Hirebee make finding good applicants easier.  

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How to run effective recruitment marketing campaigns

Companies competing for talent in a candidate-driven market, in an era of minimal attention span have got it harder than ever..

It seems like the expectation for everyone to be a marketer grows every day. From eye-catching, creative campaigns to seamless, technology-led candidate journeys, a marketing-centric approach to talent attraction is becoming a top priority for anyone hoping to appeal to the best candidates.

Where do most people fall short?

A simple oversight made by many organisations, both large and small, is the failure to recognise the interdependence of the marketing and the recruitment process. Companies might have the most cutting-edge creative campaigns in the highest traffic areas but may not be able to get back to candidates applying within a reasonable time.

Businesses may have a conscientious team of people recruiting but they might not be reaching the right candidates.  There can be many reasons for this, including advertising roles on job boards to people who have little resemblance to their ideal candidate persona.

Understanding your audience

There will never be a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to recruiting, and nor should there be. Job fairs might not be right for your business, because they aren’t relevant to the type of candidate you’re hiring. For example, display stands at a job fair recruiting for experienced senior executives within financial services.

Having something in the way of a candidate persona can help guide marketing efforts and spend. If this is an area you’re unfamiliar with, you may consider outsourcing to a specialised agency, or teaming up your recruitment and marketing functions to consider how best to target your audience.

Delivering your message

Getting candidates’ attention is only the beginning. There are important stages in between getting the right message to the right person and making a hire.

Are the people you’re looking to hire more likely to listen to someone reaching out to them on LinkedIn? Are they busy, experienced contract executives who want a quick telephone conversation, or are they new graduates with a need for more guidance, and support?

A simple message is sometimes best, and while companies should look at a diverse range of media platforms, they should also not spread their message too thinly. Communicate your values and what you’re looking for clearly – a focused effort on the right medium for your organisation will have the most impact.

After all, why spend time posting your roles on Facebook when your company has a great employer brand presence on LinkedIn? Why post on a job board to recruit photographers when they’re more likely to use a platform like Instagram to showcase their work?

A little research goes a long way. Consider industry-specific job boards and forums, as well as industry events. Ahead of your next campaign, if you’re on the front line speaking to candidates, ask about where they’ve seen your advert or how they look for new opportunities. There’s always room for experimentation.

The candidate journey

An application process with a low-time commitment is likely to mean more applications, but also may require more manual checking of applicants than one with a lengthy form. If assessing a candidate’s telephone communication skills are more important than the amount of experience they have, that may not matter to your recruitment team.

If you have an applicant tracking system built into your website or careers page, you may find that a few highly engaged candidates are applying to your roles. However, you’re potentially missing out on those who are put off by a long application process, such as those in candidate-driven job markets. An example of this is people in roles highly in-demand such as software engineers and developers.

Beyond applications

Also, consider what happens once a candidate has applied – how long are they waiting before being contacted by the team? The impression you make on a candidate stretches far beyond an advertisement on a job board, or on social media. How they’re treated could mean the difference between them telling their peers about their negative candidate experience, versus them referring the ideal person.

Forgetting about things like this could ultimately increase your cost per hire as you’ll be wasting the money you’re spending whilst also diminishing the value of your employer brand, making it even more costly to reach potential candidates in the future.

Effective recruitment marketing campaigns are clear, concise and have been thought out from start to finish. Ultimately the success of a campaign will be just as dependent on how those qualified applicants are managed. Think holistically, and you’ll have the right people on board in no time.

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7 Steps to Launch a Great Recruitment Campaign

With unemployment rates at an all-time low at just 3.5% , employers need to get creative to attract the best talent. Gone are the days where this was optional. In this climate, it’s imperative.

That’s why companies across virtually every industry are coming up with recruitment campaigns to convince candidates to apply for their jobs. Some of these campaigns are successful, and some, well… aren’t. This begs the question, how can you launch a recruitment campaign that ultimately results in amazing new hires?

Luckily for you, we’re going to answer precisely that here in this article. Continue reading to find out more!

What’s in?

What’s a recruitment campaign.

In short, a recruitment campaign is a process undertaken by an employer to encourage a flow of top-notch candidates to apply for their vacancies. Just like a traditional marketing campaign, a recruitment campaign is also geared towards a specific target audience, communicates a crucial message, and is published on multiple channels, usually online.

How do you build a successful recruitment campaign?

So, now that we know what a recruitment campaign actually is, how do you go about launching a successful one?

1. Define your target audience

By ‘target audience,’ we mean, thinking about who your dream job applicants are. Who do you want to attract? Fresh grads, junior-level employees, or more senior candidates? What are your ideal candidate profiles ? Try to be specific but, at the same time, inclusive of different groups of people.

It’s always handy to create what we call a ‘ talent pool .’ 

This is a pool of candidates who might not be the right fit for your current vacancy but could be ideal for a future opportunity. 

The key takeaway: What we’re saying is, don’t be so blinkered by your ‘perfect candidate’ criteria that you pass up on talent you could rely on at some point during the future. 

Now we’ve clarified that, let’s circle back to your ideal ‘target candidate’ for a sec. Are you trying to hire Gen X, Gen Y, Millennials, Boomers, etc.? Are you recruiting for a particular skill or someone with specific experiences or education? Whoever you’re looking for, you’ll have to tailor the messaging and visuals in your campaign to suit your audience (but more on that in a sec!).

Let’s take a quick look at this consumer marketing example.

Lincoln hired a household name, Matthew McConaughey, to advertise its latest car. When you compare this to one of the ads Tesla launched at around the same time, you see these two car brands are targeting very different audiences. While Lincoln appeals to the ‘everyman,’ Tesla’s ad clearly attracts shoppers boasting more futuristic outlooks.

When defining your target audience, understand how different generations look for jobs online .

2. Do your research

Before you even think about launching a recruitment campaign, you need to do your research.

More specifically, it’s vital to get a feel for how people perceive your brand. For example, how prospects view you as an employer, and more importantly, how that compares with the way you want to be seen? 

A great example of this in action is Goldman Sachs . They did a fantastic job of researching potential candidates before launching their ‘day in the life’ recruitment ad. This campaign is a first-rate attempt at attracting the next generation of bankers.

Goldman Sachs got wind of the fact that an increasing number of young professionals didn’t want to work somewhere like Wall Street. This is what Amanda Rubin, Global Co-Head of Brand and Content Strategy, had to say about their campaign: “One of our primary objectives for brand marketing at Goldman Sachs is to showcase the firm as an employer of choice… We are highly focused on marketing’s role in attracting talent and showcasing the culture of the firm, which is what the new campaign aims to do.” 

The HR team at Goldman Sachs took the time to conduct extensive research to understand the public’s perception of their employer brand better. They used third-party surveys and a sample of more than 40,000 people to get an insight into a vast array of metrics, including:

• Favorability
• Job specifics

Goldman Sachs admits they didn’t always like the answers they received, but this data was 100% necessary to fuel their recruitment campaign. 

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3. Set goals for your campaign

In amongst positive feedback, they also had people describe the Goldman Sachs brand as “competitive,” “elitist,” and “cutthroat”. With this info at their disposal, they were then able to launch a kick-butt recruitment campaign to tackle some of these objections.

It almost goes without saying, you can’t evaluate the success of your campaign without setting goals. But, don’t reach for just any old target; instead, use SMART goals.

SMART goals stand for:

• Specific: Define a ‘specific’ goal you want to accomplish and outline why you must achieve it. 
• Measurable: Ensure the goal is quantifiable
• Achievable: The goal has to be feasible; otherwise, you’re setting you and your team up for failure. 
• Reasonable: Your goal has to be worth your time
• Time-based: Set a timeframe for reaching your goal

So, as you’ve probably gathered, your goals need to list a specific achievement that you can measure. This should include how long it’ll take for you to reach your target, and how you’ll achieve your goal.

Let’s look at an example. 

Say, you want to increase the number of qualified entry-level candidates that apply for your job vacancies. Perhaps last year, you drew in 100 applicants. In light of that, here’s one example of how you could use SMART goals to finetune your objectives:

“I want to attract 110 qualified entry-level candidates by the end of Summer 2020.”

• Specific : Attract 110 qualified entry-level candidates 
• Measurable: Yes, it’s a 10% increase
• Achievable: Yes
• Reasonable: Yes
• Time-based: End of Summer 2020. 

As you can see, using SMART goals, you now have a clear plan for your target. It obviously ticks all the boxes; it’s specific, measurable, achievable, worthwhile, and the time frame is suitable. See how exact it is? You and the rest of your HR team now have a concrete target to work towards.

The state of diversity recruiting in 2020

4. Research keywords

If you’re targeting applicants using Google Ads, you’ll need to conduct thorough keyword research. This is the only way to see what candidates are actually searching for on Google. 

As you can imagine, the keywords you optimize your ads for have a massive bearing on who’s exposed to your campaign. Think about whether you’re looking to recruit active or passive job seekers. The search terms applicants use will differ depending on how committed they are to finding a new job. 

Google determines which ad to show people based on the relevance and quality of your ad. This is why optimizing your campaign for the right search term is crucial to running a successful Google ad. 

As such, it’s usually easier to reach active job candidates with an ad containing a direct link to your online job application. Whereas, you’re more likely to intrigue passive candidates with informative content, say a blog post, or a whitepaper. So, bear that in mind while planning your ad campaign. 

Okay, so back to finding the best keywords for your ads. Head over to Google’s Keyword Planner, and plug in the kind of search terms you think your ideal candidates are looking for. Then, take a peek at the search volumes for all your potential keywords. This ensures the word or phrase has the potential to reach enough people to make the ad worth your while.

At the same time, you want to ensure the competition for your chosen keyword isn’t too high. The last thing you want to do is compete with loads of other companies who are all fighting for the same online space.

Last but not least, consider whether you want to bid on “broad matches.” This refers to search terms that Google thinks fulfill the prospect’s same intention as your chosen keyword. Or, are you just going to bid on “phrase matches”? As you may have already gathered, this is where you only bid on searches that use the exact phrase you’ve opted for.

Really, it’s swings and roundabouts. Broad matches tend to expose your ad to a wider audience. But, there’s a higher chance you’ll pay for ads that don’t reach your ideal job applicants. So, we suggest doing some testing to see what works best for you.

Shorter job titles get more clicks . Take it into consideration when doing your keyword research and deciding on the job title.

5. Select your media

Selecting the type of media for your recruitment campaign isn’t as simple as it sounds. First off, you need to consider where you’ll publish your campaign – different social media platforms, display advertising, your website, etc.? 

Then, you need to ensure your ads are tailored to suit the medium you’re planning on using.

The key takeaway: Start with your advertising platform, and then select the format for your ad, not vice versa.

6. Refine your messaging 

Your message should be clear to your target audience. They must see what you want them to see. 

So, consider the following questions:

• What does your ideal applicant want to hear? 
• What differentiates you from your competitors?
• What do you have to offer?
• Do you have particular employee benefits? 
• Does your company give new hires lots of responsibility?
• Has your brand won any awards?

Think about these questions and use the answers to fuel the key messages in your ad. 

This may seem obvious, but don’t exaggerate the truth. It only leads to problems further down the road. 

But, whatever it is that you’ve got to brag about, make it clear from the outset. This works wonders for attracting high-quality candidates with a genuine interest in working with you.

of job ad clicks happen on a mobile device.

Source: Appcast

A lot of job seekers click on the job ads on their mobile device and almost half of candidates also apply on mobile. Keep that in mind when designing your campaign and make it easy for your potential applicants to get more information.

7. Track your results

How’s your campaign doing? Have you reached your SMART goals? What can you learn from this campaign to help improve future campaigns? If it’s doing well on a particular medium and not so well on another, take note. Then check how you can optimize it and/or adjust your spending. 

Analytics and data are at the heart of every successful marketing campaign, and recruitment is no exception. 

You need to pay attention to the data and let the numbers guide your strategy. This means continually measuring your marketing efforts. For example, if you see your best candidates are continuously coming from Facebook, focus your money and time honing in on that channel and, consequently, you should enjoy a higher ROI. 

Get help. It doesn’t matter whether it’s from your marketing department, an external consultant, or an agency, they have the knowledge you might lack. Don’t be afraid to utilize that to help you execute a top-notch campaign.

Recruitment marketing investment is forecast to reach

Source: SmashFly

Companies are spending more and more money on recruitment marketing, so in order to stay competitive, you need all the help you can get.

Ready to launch a high-converting recruitment campaign?

In a nutshell, to enjoy the fruits of a successful recruitment campaign, you need to understand what you want to achieve from your job ads and then find the correct means of doing so. 

This means doing your research, tailoring your messaging to your target audience, and studying your campaign analytics. Last but not least, don’t be afraid of optimizing things on the go!

• Harver Team

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How to Present Your Recruitment Marketing Campaign (Template Included!)

Gaining buy-in for your Recruitment Marketing campaign ideas can be challenging — even for seasoned practitioners. The secret to winning the support of talent acquisition leaders and hiring managers is in how you present your plan. Get expert tips and examples in this blog post, plus download our latest template!

Getting buy-in for your Recruitment Marketing campaign ideas can be challenging — even for seasoned practitioners. You might be proposing a new Recruitment Marketing strategy that your company hasn’t tried before, maybe that you haven’t tried before! The secret to winning the support of talent acquisition leadership and hiring managers is in how you present your plan.

In this blog post, we’ll show you how to create and present a campaign using a professional Recruitment Marketing Campaign Template and a data-driven approach . Even if you face a few skeptics, they’ll be persuaded by the substance of your ideas, the discipline of your strategy and the analysis of your results. It won’t take long for you to earn their confidence and more budget so that you can keep bringing effective Recruitment Marketing strategies to your company.

Setting and Managing Expectations

When presenting your Recruitment Marketing campaign plan to talent leaders and hiring managers, a good place to start is to set their expectations up front about the steps you will take and when results will be delivered. It demonstrates that there is a method behind your proposal, and that you are clear on what’s needed to be successful. It can also help correct a stakeholder’s notion that there’s a “quick fix” to a recruiting challenge. (If only there were!)

An effective way to set and manage expectations is using a visual timeline that walks your stakeholders through each stage required to plan and execute a Recruitment Marketing campaign. For hiring managers that are used to simply posting to job boards or traditional sourcing methods, they may not understand how a Recruitment Marketing campaign is different and why you need certain information in order to be successful. Show them a projected timeline from beginning to end, use it to explain your methodology, outline where you’ll need their input and let them know when you’ll provide them with progress updates. At the very least, seeing a timeline may help change their perception that — while you fully expect the campaign to be effective — it will take weeks or months (not days) to implement.

Aligning Business Needs to Campaign Goals

Typically, a Recruitment Marketing campaign is created to support a hiring initiative, which could be a large-scale hiring initiative like opening a new business unit or office location, or a focused hiring initiative to recruit for a hard-to-fill role or next semester’s internship program. Your stakeholders may only be thinking in terms of the number of hires that they need to make. But a successful Recruitment Marketing campaign can produce many benefits to the business, both short term and long term, and both quantitatively and qualitatively.

For example, your company may need to staff up a new customer service unit. The hiring manager needs to make 20 hires by the end of March. But you uncover that there is also a need to build a talent pipeline of qualified applicants to support rapid expansion later in the year. In addition, many of the customer service representatives at your company progress to other roles within their first year of employment, therefore it’s important to hire for potential. And finally, the campaign must attract candidates who are a culture fit and who align with the organization’s core values, diverse team and inclusive culture.

In our Recruitment Marketing Campaign Template (free download) , we recommend synthesizing the top 4 business needs on one slide, followed by a numbers-based slide that states the quantifiable goals. Showing business needs aligned to campaign goals in this way communicates to your key stakeholders that you understand their talent acquisition objective, which ultimately is to fill jobs. But at the same time, you’re also conveying that your Recruitment Marketing efforts will benefit the company in other ways that should receive credit, so that the full return on investment (ROI) of your campaign can be measured.

Agreeing on a Recruitment Marketing Strategy and Budget

There are so many digital marketing strategies and tactics now available in recruiting. There’s a good chance that many of the strategies you’ll be proposing are new to how your company recruits. Heck, you may be trying out a new marketing tactic or recruiting channel! Getting buy-in from key stakeholders to use a strategy that’s unfamiliar to them isn’t easy, especially when you’re asking for budget. So when you present your campaign strategy, take the opportunity to educate talent leaders and hiring managers on the rationale for your proposal.

For example, if your company is staffing up a customer service unit and the roles will be remote for the foreseeable future, your strategy may be to attract and recruit talent from the new Work Anywhere Workforce (WAWF) while leveraging your prior investments to build social followers and a talent network. Here’s how you might present your strategy in a way that both explains the “what” and the “why”:

Campaign Strategy: A multi-channel Recruitment Marketing campaign to attract new talent using programmatic job advertising, and to convert existing talent from our social media followers and talent network.

• The customer service unit will operate virtually. Therefore, we can attract and recruit our target candidate persona from across the U.S. and Canada. This will open up the pool of qualified talent and enable us to take advantage of the new Work Anywhere Workforce trend. We will use programmatic job advertising to leverage AI technology to put our jobs in front of the right talent, at the lowest cost.
• We will leverage previous investments to build awareness of our employer brand by using sponsored social media posts to target our current followers, presenting them with relevant job ads that drive them to apply.
• We will host a virtual career event on Facebook and use targeted emails and text messaging to invite previous applicants in our ATS talent network to the event. This nearly zero-cost strategy will leverage the ongoing candidate nurture efforts we’ve been using to keep our employer brand top of mind with silver medalists.

As you take your stakeholders through the rationale of your strategy and get their input and feedback, it’s also a good idea to present recruiting KPIs (key performance indicators) for the role that you’re hiring for. For example, you should present the typical cost per click, cost per apply, cost per qualified applicant and cost per hire for advertising this role. This will help provide a reference for your budget request.

As you present the budget, show a slide that breaks out the main components of your campaign. In our example, the main tactics used will be programmatic job advertising , sponsored social media posts and a virtual event for your talent network. But don’t forget to show that a portion of the budget will be spent on creative, such as copywriting and graphics. Even more compelling is if you can show the creative that you plan to use (even if a mock-up) and what messaging you believe will resonate with your candidate personas and how this compares to what your talent competitors are doing.

Demonstrating Results and Business Outcomes

Once you’ve executed your campaign, it’s time to present your final results, key learnings and recommendations to talent leadership and hiring managers. This is an important step that is often overlooked! Remember that a powerful way to build credibility (and gain support for future campaigns) is to tell your stakeholders what you’re going to do and when, to make it happen on time and on budget, and then to show them the results that you delivered for them.

This is where you can demonstrate to your stakeholders that you’re in control of your budget and that you’re data-driven! In our Recruitment Marketing Campaign Template, the results of each strategy are presented side by side using donut charts for each key metric, so that stakeholders can easily see if that tactic met or exceeded expectations, or if the tactic under-performed.

We recommend re-using your campaign goals slide (which will be familiar to them from your initial presentation) and show the final numbers with up/down arrows to reflect the percentage difference of target versus actual results. Follow up the numbers with the narrative by explaining the key learnings from your campaign, what worked and what didn’t and your recommendations to talent leaders and to the business unit for future hiring initiatives and how you can support them going forward. Remember, not every tactic will work or will work exactly how you expected. This is the nature of good marketing — we should always be testing and optimizing and getting smarter and better!

———-

Congratulations for executing on your Recruitment Marketing campaign and for presenting your plan and results in a professional, data-driven way to your key stakeholders. Spending a bit of time to focus on how you’ll present your ideas will go a long way to gaining the confidence from talent leaders and hiring managers to support your next big idea and invest in new Recruitment Marketing strategies in 2021. #yougotthis

About the Author

Lori Sylvia

Recruitment Marketing evangelist and community builder. Founder of Rally.

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Expert Tips for High-Volume Recruitment Marketing

12 Creative Recruitment Campaign Ideas to Inspire You

A great recruitment campaign idea can significantly improve a brand’s attractiveness in the talent market. And the good news is that it doesn’t always need a crazy budget!

Now is the time to inject some creativity and fun into your recruitment campaigns and shake up those boring, overused recruitment tactics that typically start with posting on job boards (boring).

When your talent team starts creating original, engaging campaign ideas that tie into and strengthen your overall recruitment strategy, you’ll quickly discover how to attract the best and brightest candidates.

TL;DR — Key Takeaways

• Creative recruitment campaigns are all about developing fun and engaging ways to attract good candidates to your brand and make a bigger impact on applicants.
• Examples include recruitment via a dating app, using a mysterious code to crack, hosting meet-ups, or enlisting the help of an immersive virtual tour.
• You can develop creative ideas for your recruitment campaign by assessing the issues your talent team has now, researching how other companies hook applicants, or brainstorming new ideas with your team.
• Three examples of organizations thinking outside the box include IKEA’s 3D-printed meatball campaign, Volvo’s S90 model vehicle that interviews its own technicians, and a really fun one by Deloitte—a zombie recruitment video (yes, you can’t miss out on that one, so read on).
• After launching your campaign, create skills tests in a jiffy to screen and shortlist applications with Toggl Hire . Your talent team can choose from our library of over 150 test templates to streamline and automate your hiring process.

What is a creative recruitment campaign?

Recruiters or talent acquisition teams that use original recruitment campaign ideas , such as games, crack-the-code tests, AI recruitment bots, or video content, connect directly with the hearts and minds of their target audience .

How do you know if your organization is using creative ideas in your strategy?

Well, has the talent team been using the same recruitment marketing approach for the last ten years? (Oh dear, hopefully not.) Why? Well, by following the same traditional tactics that everyone else uses, there’s no way your brand will stand out in the crowd.

When companies interact with candidates in a thoughtful, impactful way with their recruitment marketing, they’re more likely to attract the qualified people they’re looking for. Now, here’s how your team can start doing things differently.

How do companies think of creative recruitment campaigns?

It’s not too complicated. Let’s walk through the steps for creating successful, original recruitment marketing .

Step 1: Identify your team’s biggest blockers in acquiring top talent .

Step 2: Next, brainstorm ideas or tactics to overcome those challenges. Here are some tips:

• Get inspiration from other companies already thinking out of the box.
• Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and think of ways to communicate with them in a style and tone that will appeal to them, such as an animated video.
• Reach out to colleagues to gather ideas from a diverse group.
• Consider what your company values highly in its current employees.

Step 3: Bring all your ideas together and create your recruitment campaign strategy , including the channels you’ll use to publish it, such as social media and your careers website.

Step 4: Review your campaign cost and ensure you have the budget you need, or adjust your plan accordingly (keeping in the good stuff your target audience likes).

Step 5: Launch your campaign and hope your job advert and other campaign elements get widespread national, global, (or even viral!) attention.

Do we need to outsource specialized components of our recruitment campaigns?

Possibly. We know that not all companies have the resources to pull off every aspect of a creative project in-house. In that case, you might need to outsource specific components to an agency , such as:

• Designing social media or other digital ads
• Creating a video (that doesn’t look like your nephew stole your mobile phone)
• Creating a complex game or nerdy equation as a recruitment test

Ok, now for the fun stuff.

To help you win on this new path, we’ve pulled together some truly innovative recruiting ideas below. Companies that came up with some original or inventive attention grabbers to reel in great candidates.

12 creative and inspiring recruiting campaign examples

Let’s face it, many organizations are in need of a recruitment process makeover . Especially if they want to attract young, qualified candidates (and the company’s employer brand is as appealing to them as a 1970s movie).

The following companies (most of which you’ve likely heard of) also needed some fresh ideas for their recruitment marketing to jazz up their outdated image—and they all succeeded.

1. Deloitte Graduate Recruitment Campaign

What is the campaign trying to achieve?

• Problem : Recruiting sufficient numbers of junior staff for white-collar workplaces
• Recruitment strategy : Graduate recruitment
• Tactics : Student academy, vac work, graduate programs, internships, social media, ads, referrals

Their most original campaign idea was definitely their US zombie recruitment video —a Walking Dead-themed recruitment ad that ran during the show’s season finale. It may not have featured at any big international advertising festival, but it sure got people talking. And that’s what you want.

2. British Army — New Recruits Campaign

• Problem : Recruiting soldiers for dangerous professions like the army is becoming more difficult
• Recruitment strategy : Using pop-culture references to attract a wide range of ‘profiles’
• Tactics : TV adverts, social media, and other online platforms.

This campaign is unique because it uses the principles of good advertising or copywriting by appealing to what’s important to its specific target audience—communicating about their values and using their language.

3. Home Instead Recruitment Campaign

• Problem : The caregiving profession is currently highly undervalued and is also experiencing a rapid increase in demand post-pandemic
• Recruitment strategy: Using emotional and aspirational messaging to attract people whose values align with the company’s purpose
• Tactics: Ad campaign across TV, digital, print, radio, social, and direct mail

Recruiting for a job that is typically extremely under-appreciated definitely requires some extra creative juice. Home Instead decided to employ the services of a professional agency for this campaign to refresh their brand and hook exactly the right kind of people.

The agency created extremely emotive recruiting videos for this niche industry, which 100% hit the mark with their “can’t help but care” target audience.

4. IKEA Recruitment Campaign

• Problem : IKEA isn’t a tech career destination, and filling tech and digital jobs was a tough task
• Recruitment strategy : Using a major technology trend to join the conversation and boost their awareness in the tech talent circles
• Tactics : An experimental recruitment campaign using 3D-printed meatballs

Now, this is a truly original campaign run by the Swedish furniture manufacturer IKEA. To attract talent that thinks out of the box, they invited potential candidates for an interview over a dish of meatballs.

But not their traditional Swedish meatballs…these are 3D-printed meatballs, supporting their drive for more plant-based meals in their restaurants.

5. The American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) Recruitment Campaign

• Problem : Combatting massive labor shortages in hospitality post-Covid
• Recruitment strategy : Targeting unemployed, underemployed, and ready-to-work candidates looking to start their careers in hospitality by highlighting real-life examples of upward mobility
• Tactics : National ad campaign covering social media, digital display ads, radio, and press coverage

These guys are helping to fill a major pandemic-driven employment gap. In the US alone, the Bureau of Labor Statistics shared this eye-opening statistic:

The industry has regained 6.9 million jobs since April 2020. Despite these gains, employment is 1.3 million lower than in February 2020. Source

Their campaign makes potential newcomers aware of the vast array of benefits available with a career in hospitality and uses testimonials from current employees to bring home the message with real-life stories.

6. Atlassian Recruitment Campaign

• Problem : Hiring at scale , which, in this case, meant trying to attract 1,000 new employees over 12 months
• Recruitment strategy : Doubledown on promoting the ‘work from anywhere’ policy to attract tech talents who want to work remotely.
• Tactics : A physical recruitment drive in a branded Van

This one’s definitely another imaginative recruitment campaign that the software company, Atlassian, launched recently. The ‘AttlassiVan’ drove around Australia on a month-long recruitment road trip.

Their novel idea aligned well with their work-from-home policy that they were also ‘driving home’. And hopefully, their innovative thinking has helped them meet their Australian and global intake goals (from 9,000 to 25,000 by 2026).

7. BHP Recruitment Campaign

• Problem : A biased recruitment process and lack of gender diversity
• Recruitment strategy : Building a transgender and gender-diverse talent pool
• Tactics : Updated recruitment process

This campaign hit at the heart of the ongoing issue of gender equality in mining. Global mining giant BHP recently ran a successful, global-first (for BHP) initiative to help reduce hiring biases by refreshing their outdated recruitment processes.

8. EasyJet Recruitment Campaign

• Problem : Remedying crew shortages post-Covid
• Recruitment strategy : Targeting a very specific talent segment – empty nesters and over-45’s
• Tactics : Advertising campaign

Now, this is another campaign that’s thinking out of the box. After coming across a fascinating market insight that “around 78% of British parents aged 45 and over want to take on a new challenge once their children fly the nest”, EasyJet crafted a recruitment campaign targeting this specific talent pool.

Filling the crew shortages with candidates who are over 45, whose kids have finally flown the nest , and who are now looking for a new career adventure!

9. Volvo Recruitment Campaign

• Problem : Attracting 400 highly-qualified R&D engineers in 12 months
• Recruitment strategy : Grabbing audience attention at a renowned international motor show and establishing the brand as an emerging hub for automotive software engineering
• Tactics : Event PR

Now that’s turning your average recruitment campaign strategy on its head for sure! The team incorporated AI into the car’s pedestrian speech technology and car connect system to test the social and technical skills of those who hopped in for an interview! Nooooice.

• Problem : Attracting high-caliber passive candidates
• Recruitment strategy : Using an innovative, gamified approach to engage passive candidates & offering a free gift
• Tactics : Skills test was advertised on social media platforms

Our sister company, Toggl Track, wanted to hire an SEO manager and thought of a fun campaign that’d be a win-win scenario for all. We created a skills test challenge and advertised it across social media, offering a free t-shirt to applicants who achieved high scores.

Reaching passive candidates while spreading the word about our brand to other talented workers worldwide—it doesn’t get better than that.

11. Walmart eCommerce Recruitment Campaign

• Problem : Struggling to attract Millennials and Gen-Zers
• Recruitment strategy : Activating a new disruptive employer brand to attract graduates
• Tactics : Campus recruitment with an experiential VR tour, careers page overhaul, video series, redeveloping all in-store and campus recruiting visual assets

Walmart’s massive talent acquisition campaign was created by Nexus and helped give the brand a much-needed facelift (since the retailer may not have been top of many candidates’ favorite employer lists).

12. Lowe’s Canada Recruitment Campaign

• Problem : Attracting young recruits in the midst of a labor shortage
• Recruitment strategy : Tapping into a growing interest among young people in home renovation and crafting a compelling value proposition to set themselves apart from other employers
• Tactics : An exhibition, The Hall of Fail, that presents renovation fails recreated as works of art, out-of-home, web, and social media content

Intending to recruit some 5,000 people in a year amidst exceptional labor shortages, Lowe’s Canada was facing the monumental challenge of attracting younger workers. Partnering with a creative agency, the brand devised a recruitment campaign focusing on opportunities for growth and learning within its network.

They have also discovered that 88% of Gen Z students want to work for employers who give them access to training and growth opportunities.

Training is a priority for us, so we make sure to offer comprehensive training to everyone who joins our teams. Working in one of our stores is a great opportunity for people to gain knowledge that will benefit them all their lives. Nadine Chiasson, director, talent acquisition at Lowe’s Canada

Inspired by this insight, the brand launched a campaign and exhibition that builds on the desire to learn by showing compelling examples of renovation failures that young people can avoid by working and learning at one of the brand’s stores. Each of the exhibits had a QR code for applying directly for the various open positions.  

Thinking of your next original recruitment campaign strategy?

We hope this list has got you buzzing about your next recruitment campaign and how you can match those innovative companies to approach candidates.

Whatever the role, from grabbing up the best engineers to roping in the world’s greatest salesmen, your recruitment marketing efforts are sure to hit their hearts and minds if you use your imagination!

One easy way to add sparkle to your next recruitment campaign while making it fun and engaging for you and potential applicants is to start with skills tests . And, no, you don’t have to create tests from scratch. Our test library is brimming with role-specific questions developed by the experts.

Say goodbye to unsuitable candidates and the hours wasted screening CVs. Create a free Toggl Hire account today to see just how simple, fun, and fair hiring can be.

Juste loves investigating through writing. A copywriter by trade, she spent the last ten years in startups, telling stories and building marketing teams. She works at Toggl Hire and writes about how businesses can recruit really great people.

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How to build a recruitment plan, step-by-step

• Recruitment Strategy

Job reqs are boom or bust, so you’re either scrambling to cover everything or worried about proving your team’s value. Every hiring manager has different expectations on compensation and time to hire, and when they change their mind, you always feel like the last to know.

To break the cycle, what you need is a robust recruitment planning process. A full recruitment plan should include an agreed-upon workforce plan, hiring approach, and marketing strategy. If you don’t have time for the full process, you can also do a quick-and-lite version if needed, though we recommend going through all the steps eventually.

A proactive recruitment plan is the first step to becoming a true strategic partner in the organization. You can get ahead of hiring manager requests, set clear expectations, and demonstrate how critical talent is for achieving the broader goals of the business.

We’ve asked our own recruitment team, as well as experienced recruiters from a range of industries, how they do recruitment planning. Here’s their step-by-step guide, along with the real templates they use every day as part of their recruitment strategy. 

Get your free recruitment planning template

Step 1: assess the situation, collect the headcount plan.

Ask each team to share the roles they plan to open this year, and how each role supports their team’s annual goals. For example, this can help you understand which roles must be hired by a certain date, and which roles are more flexible.

You need to understand what the company is trying to accomplish, how that rolls down to [each] department, and then how they see all these hires contributing to that. Mike Bradshaw, PHR Head of Talent Acquisition, Pinpoint

Review internal and external materials

Start by auditing your core metrics. Check internal reports and your ATS’s reporting for core hiring metrics, including:

• Time to hire
• Time to fill
• Average time in each interview stage

Candidate attraction

• Hires by source
• Candidates by source
• Offer acceptance rates
• Cost per hire
• Actual vs. budget
• Net Promoter Score
• Performance after hire
• Retention rates
• Candidates by demographic groups (race, gender, age, disability, veteran status, etc.)
• Hires by demographic groups
• Conversion rates on specific jobs by demographic groups

Then move on to qualitative materials, such as:

• Feedback from candidates (surveys, Glassdoor reviews, coffees with new hires)
• Feedback from hiring managers and leaders (surveys, performance reviews)
• Internal notes on what has and hasn’t worked before

And take a look at your current candidate experience, including:

• Careers site
• Job descriptions
• Communications sent to candidates

Ask for feedback

Have an open-ended conversation with your stakeholders about how they think hiring is going. Consider requesting feedback from:

• Recent hires
• Hiring managers
• Department leaders
• HR and recruiters 

Where do they see untapped potential? Where do they want to see improvements? What attracted them to the company and what was their candidate experience like?

Identify opportunities

As you review all this information, look for signs of issues and potential opportunities. It’s also helpful to write down your baseline in each area so you can track improvements over time. 

Typically, the opportunities you find will fall across three areas: Talent sourcing, employer brand, or new hire onboarding.

Finding talent: Are there untapped opportunities?

• Channels that work and don’t work, untested networks or tactics
• Channels that are delivering volume but aren’t delivering quality
• Channels that have delivered quality, but aren’t getting the attention they deserve

Branding: Are you selling your company?

• Is your employee value proposition (EVP) strong? How can it be improved?
• Is your messaging and branding cohesive across your careers site , branded emails , and job postings? 
• Is your EVP included in each job post?
• What are candidates saying about you in candidate surveys and review sites like Glassdoor?

Onboarding: What happens after a candidate accepts your offer?

• Are systems in place to give HR what they need to set up new hires for success?
• Is your onboarding process streamlined? 
• What’s the feedback from new hires and hiring managers about the onboarding process?

Step 2: Develop the headcount plan

Now that you have context, data, and feedback on previous hires, you can start planning for the future. The more an organization invests time into these exercises, the easier and more likely it will be to meet recruiting goals on time and within budget. 

Understand team goals and priorities at a high level

Organizational goals are driven by your employees. Meet with senior leadership and department heads to discuss company goals for the year. Is this a year of growth, or efficiency? Are there certain departments or regions we want to develop? Answering these questions will help your team to be aligned with leadership on the hiring mission and messaging. 

Design dream staff plans—then prioritize

Give department heads the opportunity to design their ideal team to reach that year’s goals, budget notwithstanding. This will grant you greater visibility into their vision for the department, and what skills they want on the team. 

Then, help department heads refine each job description and prioritize each role, based on actual needs and realistic expectations. Some roles may be less vital this year, or could be solved without a full-time hire. In these conversations, you can help shape the plan for each department, manage expectations around hiring, and avoid frustration later on. 

Get on the same page about levels

Internal alignment on levels ensures your hiring plan is both competitive and equitable. In a competitive labor market where remote work opens up more opportunities for employees, it is even more important to offer the right rate to hire the right person at the right level. 

At the same time, you want to avoid overpaying or overpromising. Not only will this impact your budget, but it could contribute to internal equity issues, which disproportionately affect women and people of color . 

Outline what is required at each level and define salary bands to mitigate the risk of some employees being unfairly valued. If it becomes harder to hire people at the right level because of pay, then it may be time to reassess trends in the market and adjust compensation levels accordingly.

Tip: Salary transparency attracts quality candidates. On Pinpoint, companies that include salaries in their job descriptions move 15% more applicants to the interview stage

Depending on the size of your organization, there are two ways to approach leveling: 

• Uniform leveling: Everyone across the company follows the same track (associate, manager, director, etc.)
• Functional leveling: Each department has a specialized and unique track. For example, the marketing team may have associates, managers, directors, etc., while the engineering team has engineer Is, engineer IIs, staff engineers, senior staff engineers, etc. 

Determine what makes sense for your organization based on your size and complexity. If developing levels from scratch, the process may take upwards of 9 months, but it will give your whole organization greater clarity.

Plan for backfills and promotions

In addition to new hires, you’ll also need to plan for people who are leaving their roles to minimize the impact of losing skills or capacity on the team. To anticipate backfills, consider past year attrition and industry benchmarks along with current economic factors (growth in the sector, recession, etc.). 

Then, look at your current team to understand who is at risk of leaving their role due to performance, attrition, or promotion. Meet with managers to understand who is on track to be promoted and when so you can plan for their backfill. Be conservative with your budget and resourcing plans so you aren’t surprised when the needs arise. 

Set realistic and fair budgets

With defined level expectations and a conservative hiring plan, it will be easier to set budgets for new hire compensation. To stay on top of industry trends and remain competitive, we recommend these resources:

• Comprehensive.io

Include a budget for the resourcing you will need to reach hiring goals. It can be difficult to anticipate how challenging it will be to hire certain roles, and your talent team may be impacted by attrition as well. It’s possible you will need to increase the capacity of your talent team with new hires or external support from contract recruiters, recruitment agencies, or recruitment process outsourcing provider (RPO).

Any budget proposal will inevitably result in pushback. By working through these steps, your plan should already be aligned with company priorities, but you can make your case even stronger by:

• Demonstrating past recruitment cost per hire and recruiting budgets as a reference, and reiterating how the organization wants to improve this year
• Leveraging leaders who are most invested in making good, fast hires to advocate for the budget
• Using research (benchmarks and models) to illustrate estimated return on investment of those hires for the company 

An iterative approach

A workforce plan will set you up for success, but won’t be set in stone. Shifting priorities, feedback from hiring managers and candidates, and macroeconomic factors will alter your plan over time. Regularly report on data, solicit feedback from stakeholders, and realign on goals to stay on top of these changes. How often you should check in on this plan will depend on your team size and existing processes, but here is an ideal cadence: 

• Weekly: Meet with hiring managers while you have active roles open
• Monthly: Meet with department heads if you are hiring for their teams
• Quarterly: Meet with all department heads to review goals, along with potential backfills and promotions

Step 3: Set realistic timelines

Manage expectations for your team and increase the likelihood of hiring people on schedule by setting estimated timelines. Outline the process for hiring managers and any other stakeholders to ensure they know what is required of them, like submitting requisitions in a timely fashion and allocating time in their schedules for interviews. When recruiters and hiring managers know what actions they need to take and when, your team will be able to respond quickly when strong applications come in. 

To set timelines, refer to historical hiring data along with industry benchmarks . Keep in mind that other economic factors may impact timelines. For example, post COVID-19 and the Great Resignation, more people have reevaluated their priorities and found that they could find better options that fit their values , meaning employers have had to act fast to land top talent. 

For hiring managers, the wait always feels long. Be upfront and provide a detailed timeline so they can see what is involved in the hiring process and feel assured that work is being done.

Example timeline from the Pinpoint Recruiting Team:

• Day 1: Job is posted
• Gather initial results from job posts and adjust accordingly (title, salary, location, etc.)
• Fine tune alignment on required skills and background with real world profiles
• Ramp up sourcing and screening
• Initial screening conversations with 5-10 candidates per week
• Hiring manager interviews with 3-5 qualified candidates per week
• Continue to fine tune alignment on job post and target profile
• Continue to source as needed to meet benchmarks for qualified candidates
• At Pinpoint, most roles can be filled in 60 days or less (time to accepted offer). Executive (Director and above), technical, or highly specialized roles could take up to 90 days to get to an accepted offer.

At Pinpoint, we dedicate a section of our internal communication tool to share documentation on the recruitment strategy and approach so the whole team has visibility. We also share reports from our ATS to keep hiring managers and senior leaders up-to-date on the status of open roles. 

If you still receive pushback, explain the value of having recruiters conduct a thorough, high-quality screen. With more time to vet applications, recruiters can protect hiring managers’ time and only forward the best candidates. If hiring managers become the bottlenecks, here are tips for staying on pace without adding more work to their plates:

• Ask hiring managers to share a sample of CVs or LinkedIn profiles that reflect the ideal candidate and align on what “great” looks like 
• Reserve interview blocks on interviewer calendars in advance 
• Bring in additional interviewers for various parts of the recruitment process
• Utilize automatic scheduling in your ATS to allow for one-click booking
• Align on the priority of roles to expedite those that are most immediately needed

Step 4: Launch the search

Search kickoffs are about identifying what kind of candidate you would like to hire, how you’ll get their attention, and how you’ll keep the search on track. 

Start by getting detailed information about what the hiring manager actually wants and needs via a Requisition form. It’s most helpful if they share this in advance so you can review it before the first conversation with them. You can then verify and expand upon this information when you meet.

While it can be tempting to publish open roles as quickly as possible, it’s worth investing time to customize job postings so they communicate your Employee Value Proposition and attract the right talent . This will allow you to bring in qualified, interested candidates more quickly. 

This also applies to marketing the role—collaborate with the hiring manager to think beyond your typical go-to job boards and identify if there’s anything new or different you can try for this particular search. 

Schedule an initial kickoff meeting with the hiring manager to establish your processes for working together. Identify a day and time to meet each week to check in on the search. Confirm the interview process early on so that everyone knows what to expect and this information can be shared with candidates, ideally in the job posting. 

Step 5: Coordinate the recruitment process

Once the search has started, recruiters will be overseeing a lot, including hiring managers. For them, hiring is essential, but it amounts to just a small percentage of their day. An ATS should make it easier for recruiters to keep the process moving without adding excessive work for hiring managers. Here’s advice from some of our customers on how they’ve been able to increase efficiency up to 70%, in part by collaborating better with hiring managers:

Hiring manager portals

The New York Public Library has about 400 managers who are involved with hiring, in addition to their many other responsibilities. The NYPL team set up a streamlined hiring manager view that made it easy for their team to comment, tag, rate, and share feedback on candidates all within Pinpoint. 

Hiring managers now have greater visibility and a more active role in the process, resulting in greater outcomes for everyone.

It’s really allowed us to coach our hiring managers to be better at creating a great experience for candidates. Craig Senecal Senior Director of Employee Experience, NYPL

Interview scheduling

Franklin Electric hires across a complex and international organization. Balancing people’s schedules and time zones can be a huge challenge. For them, the best solution was to find an ATS with automated interview scheduling . Hiring managers are thrilled to have the access and functionality to fill roles faster, without having to wait on HR.

It’s been a game-changer in terms of the impact and how easy it is. Amanda Hecht Corporate HR Manager, Franklin Electric

Icario is always looking for more data behind their hiring decisions, especially to keep track of their diversity and inclusion goals. After implementing Pinpoint, they began using candidate scorecards to standardize the feedback process and make more informed decisions. If your ATS doesn’t have built-in scorecard functionality, you can use this manual score sheet template .

It’s been really cool to see the type of metrics that we get, or that we can even get metrics in the first place! Rachel Todd Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist, Icario

Step 6: Report on progress

To track team goals, you’ll want to get a quick snapshot every week (or more likely everyday) of whether your search is on or off track. Your ATS should be your go-to source for data, with reports and dashboards that allow you to calculate key metrics. 

In some systems, you may need to create or download a report to get this information. If all else fails, you can also manually track this data outside your ATS (e.g. Google Sheets). 

Top 5 metrics to track during a search:

• # Days Open
• Average Number of Daily Applications
• # Candidates in Each Stage
• # Candidates Who Reached Each Stage (aka Historical Activity)
• Conversion Rates (aka Ratios)

These daily or weekly numbers are most useful when compared against benchmarks. You can establish benchmarks based on your own organization’s historical data or public information about the performance of organizations similar to yours. These benchmarks will vary based on industry, company brand recognition, company size, location, level of specialization, management level, and recruiter experience. 

Example: Benchmarks for Days Open

• By 21 days open, should be hitting goals for weekly candidates sourced, screened, and interviewed
• By 45 days open (for non-technical roles), should have 2-4 strong candidates in final stages
• By 60 days open (for technical roles), should have 2-4 strong candidates in final stages

Example: Benchmarks for Candidates in Each Stage

• 25-50 candidates receiving messages from sourcing outreach per week
• 5-10 candidates interviewing with the recruiter per week
• 3-5 candidates interviewing with the hiring manager per week

If you find yourself struggling to meet benchmarks as the search goes along, continue to revisit and ask questions about your sourcing and marketing plans. 

• Do you need to try new channels or new strategies to reach more candidates with the target profile?
• Has the target profile evolved?
• Are there enough people who fit your target profile to realistically fill the job in a reasonable amount of time? (E.g. if you’re looking for someone with niche technical skills within close proximity to a physical office, there may simply not be enough people in that target profile to find someone without providing relocation.)
• Should you try different messaging in outreach to candidates or in the job posting?
• Are you and the hiring manager both clear and aligned on what good and great candidates look like? 

Step 7: Improve year-over-year

The only constant in recruiting is change. Once you’ve devised your plan, be prepared to return to it repeatedly, iterating and improving on your recruitment strategy as you learn. 

With a hiring tracker and reports showing key metrics, your team will be more aware of what is working and can pivot quickly if needed. When you embed reporting into recruitment, your team will be able to see the forest through the trees and have more control over the process. 

And it’s never too late to start. Even if you are beginning this process mid-year, by the time you are planning for the next fiscal year, you will have more documented information to drive decision-making. 

By working directly with senior leadership, department heads, and hiring managers, you will also have greater visibility of the organization and more advocates on your side. With each subsequent year, you will be able to improve efficiency, collaboration, and the candidate experience. 

A final word of advice

As you’re going through the process, “ask a ton of questions and be selfish with your time,” says our own Head of Talent, Mike Bradshaw. When he took over the role—as the company’s first dedicated talent leader—he used a recruitment plan similar to the one outlined here to understand and prepare for upcoming hiring needs. 

Every one of us that's involved in recruitment—from leadership all the way down to individualized hiring managers—has improved the way that we think about talent as a result. Tom Hacquoil CEO Pinpoint

To get that kind of trust from the leadership team, don’t worry about asking a silly question; just focus on making sure you get all the information you need.

“Some people are sort of timid about asking questions, or asking them again, or asking for more time,” says Mike. It’s natural to want to look confident and autonomous, especially if you’re taking over a new role. 

“But then you end up making a lot of assumptions, and you might start running with something and find it doesn’t work out, and then you have to take a step back,” warns Mike. “Ask all the tough questions. Really try to understand what’s going on, good or bad.”

Further reading

Inbound recruiting vs. outbound recruiting, programmatic recruitment advertising: a recruiter’s guide.

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Launching a successful recruitment campaign: 7 steps to get it done

Are you finding it difficult to attract the right candidates to your business? You may need to work on your recruitment campaign. Sometimes even the best targeted recruitment campaign ideas need adjusting.

An effective campaign may take time to develop, but there are plenty of methods to ensure your efforts are rewarded. So, what are the seven steps for creating the best recruitment campaign strategies? How can you attract candidates with the perfect skills?

Table of contents

What is a recruitment campaign in employment, what is the objective of a recruitment campaign, what are some top recruitment campaign examples, google’s mathematical equation challenge, cisco’s employee-inclusive recruitment campaign, 7 steps to build a recruitment campaign, 1. consider your recruitment goals, 2. understand your organization , 3. prioritize candidate profiles, 4. build relationships with candidates, 5. treat job advertising like marketing, 6. use seo to attract candidates, 7. reassess your plan, what are 3 important recruitment methods, launch a successful recruitment campaign with testgorilla.

Recruitment campaigns are strategies that organizations use to attract candidates. A creative employment campaign may involve using recruitment marketing strategies with the help of recruitment tools and other methods. 

The primary objective of a recruitment campaign is to attract exceptional candidates and encourage them to apply for your open positions.

To achieve this objective, you must show potential applicants what makes your company an attractive proposition compared with your competitors. Amplifying your brand is also key: 84% of US job applicants check online reviews of an organization before applying to a vacancy there.

By sharing the value and advantages of working for your business with potential talent, you can achieve your main objective: attracting skilled candidates who want to work for your brand. Attracting the right candidates can be difficult, but your campaign can change this.

It’s not easy to create an effective recruitment campaign, but basing your ideas on successful campaign examples can help you decide on the best approach. Here are two examples of good recruitment campaigns you may want to consider:

Google’s mathematical equation challenge was not only clever but practical. To test problem-solving skills and attract candidates, Google presented a mathematical equation on a billboard for applicants to solve. 

Candidates who successfully figured out Google’s equation accessed a website with more equations that tested their mathematical skills. 

Applicants found the process interesting, and the company was able to discover which candidates had the required math skills . This unique, brand-appropriate, and exciting campaign helped Google find top applicants.

Through its recruitment campaign, Cisco acknowledged that workplace culture is a crucial factor that can attract candidates to vacancies. It created a video for applicants showing its employees and values. 

With several slogans to choose from, the company decided on “Be you, with us” to emphasize that it values unity and individuality. This slogan tells candidates that both teamwork and having the freedom to express oneself as an individual are important to Cisco.

Launching a successful recruitment campaign strategy involves several factors. Consider implementing the following steps to improve your recruitment campaign:

You should first consider the goals you want to achieve with a recruitment drive, such as: 

Matching your applicants to suitable long-term positions

Ensuring that new hires are content in their roles

Refining your onboarding process

Of course, you may have different objectives from those listed here, but aim for SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, reasonable, time-based) goals to ensure your campaign is realistic.

Next, you must ensure you understand your organization’s short- and long-term recruitment objectives, the culture of the business, and what makes your employees happy and motivated at work. By understanding these things, you can align the recruitment campaign with your objectives.

To understand your recruitment campaign goals better, ask yourself these questions:

What makes your employees happy?

How does the culture of the business appear to potential applicants?

How does the campaign align with your long-term hiring goals?

How should the job advertising process line up with your recruitment marketing goals ?

Now that you understand your organization’s objectives, you can focus on candidate profiling. This process may include checking your current employees’ data to determine which characteristics and skills make them successful in their roles. 

Determining whether your current employees’ profiles align with your candidates’ profiles is one way to avoid spending time looking through resumes. This approach can speed up your recruitment process and help you initiate a successful recruitment campaign.

Creating customized skills assessments with pre-employment tests that fit the role you’re hiring for is another great idea to ensure that candidates have the right skills. 

Part of launching a successful recruitment campaign involves nurturing ongoing relationships with candidates. The wider your network of applicants, the easier it is to attract suitable ones.

Here are some ways to build and nurture candidate relationships:

Stay in contact with skilled candidates in your network

Find ways to add new candidates to your network

Enhance your relationships with candidates by helping them improve their skills and giving feedback (even if you didn’t hire them for the job)

When it’s time to advertise a position, treating it like a marketing process can help. Ensure you know your target audience and the methods that best appeal to them. A few advertising techniques and marketing strategies can help you refine your job advertising process:

Find out which channels your potential candidates use, and advertise jobs there

Tailor your job ad to your audience

Use your company’s brand and values to appeal to potential candidates

Create a clear, well-written job description

Make it obvious why your company is an attractive place to work

Mention unique benefits, such as remote working, insurance, and flexible hours

You can use search engine optimization (SEO) in job postings and social media posts to attract applicants to your open roles. By using keywords and backlinks, you can optimize your job posting for search engines. 

SEO can help you promote the following:

Your organization’s website

Your company’s brand

If you lack technical SEO skills , a content agency that deals with SEO optimization can assist you with a long-term recruitment campaign.

Finally, ensure you reassess your plan and check whether there’s room for improvement. As your business grows and evolves, you may need to adjust your strategy to remain on track with your objectives. It’s best to reassess your plan when:

There are changes in the job market

You’ve hired a few candidates and need to ensure the strategy works

You notice there’s room to improve

Don’t forget to consider using different recruitment methods when formulating your recruitment campaign. Three effective recruitment methods you may use include:

Recruitment events : This strategy is ideal if your organization is growing. Attend job fair events, campus recruitment drives, or open days to attract new talent. 

Direct advertising : This involves posting job ads on your company website, a job board, or a social media site to promote your brand and attract applicants.

Employee referrals : Use this cost-effective recruitment campaign method to find promising candidates via existing staff in exchange for an incentive.

Once your recruitment campaign gets underway, evaluating your applicants’ skills is a must. This process can help you ensure your candidates have the specific skills needed for the job. Pre-employment testing with TestGorilla is the best method to round off your recruitment campaign and ensure your efforts don’t go to waste. 

TestGorilla is here to help you find the talent you need. Simply sign up for a free trial plan , create an assessment, and begin skills testing with our reliable platform. Visit our skills test library to find out how we complement a successful recruitment campaign.

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Learn How to Create an Innovative and Effective Recruitment Campaign

by Top Echelon | Dec 30, 2020 | Marketing , Top Echelon Blog

When it comes to your recruiting strategy , you might be inclined to stick to a tried-and-true method. Shaking things up may not be at the forefront of every recruiter’s to-do list, but a new recruitment campaign could lead to sourcing top notch candidates.

You probably shouldn’t hang posters around town. Instead of motivating the masses, you want to find the best candidates who meet your clients’ qualifications. To catch the attention of top notch applicants, you need an innovative recruitment campaign.

What is a recruitment campaign?

A recruitment campaign is a strategy that encourages a person to join a cause. There can be recruitment campaigns for businesses, schools, the military, or any organization. In job recruiting, a recruitment campaign is meant to attract qualified candidates and get them to apply for an open position at a company.

As a recruiter, it’s your responsibility to come up with creative and effective methods to source candidates.

Create a recruitment campaign that will attract both active and passive candidates. Active candidates are those actively searching for jobs. Passive candidates are people who are not searching for jobs. It’s your job to reach all talent with successful recruitment campaigns.

Recruitment campaign strategy

Use the following tips to help you develop creative recruitment campaigns that urge qualified candidates to apply.

1. Narrow down your target audience

When creating your recruitment campaign, you should understand every aspect of the job order . Once you understand the open position, you will know the kind of candidate your client needs.

Talk with your client about the qualifications the candidate must have. Then, find out what other qualifications your client would like the candidate to have. Draft a recruitment campaign message that highlights these qualifications.

The message should speak to the candidates your client needs. Make them want the job by differentiating your client’s open position from other companies that are hiring.

Put yourself in a potential job applicant’s shoes. What would you want to hear? What would get you to apply?

It probably isn’t just a high salary and competitive benefits. It might be things like job development and opportunities for growth, something that 87% of millennials want. When you know your target audience, you can craft a message that speaks to them.

2. Pick your platforms

Choose how you will send out your recruitment campaign. You should use platforms, like your recruiting website or email marketing, that have the most likelihood of reaching your target audience.

There are a few ways your recruitment campaign can reach active and passive candidates:

Social media: Recruiting on social media is a great way to let candidates know about open jobs. Your recruitment campaign might change based on your social media platform. For example, Twitter has a word limit. And, LinkedIn is a more professional channel.

Email marketing: With email marketing, you can send recruitment campaigns directly to candidates in your contact list. These might include candidates in your recruiting database or referrals.

Job boards: Job boards attract candidates actively looking for jobs. Typically, the job posting service lets you upload the full job description onto the job board. First, you need to get people to click on the job description. Create a snippet that will encourage candidates to learn more.

Depending on how you are reaching out to candidates, you might want to choose the most important parts of the job description to grab attention. For example, you might write a shorter message for social media than your email marketing campaign.

3. Get creative

Your recruitment campaign doesn’t have to be just words.Combine visuals and even audio to catch a potential candidate’s attention. Come up with fun recruitment campaign ideas that show off your client company’s culture.

There are endless possibilities when it comes to creating a recruitment campaign. For example, Amazon Web Services placed a recruitment campaign on a dating app called Tinder. Tinder users, who usually swipe right if they want to go on a date with someone, could swipe right if they were interested in applying for the job with Amazon.

Or, you can create puzzles as a fun way to recruit. Google made the news when they created billboards with math problems as a recruitment campaign strategy. This creative idea led those who could solve the problems to submit their resumes.

Though you might not be creating a recruitment campaign for a big, nationwide company, you can still come up with innovative and personal ideas that will attract top talent.

Some recruiters use videos for their recruitment campaigns. A recruiting video can be personal and show off your client’s company in new ways. Watching a video can be easier to absorb content and more engaging. Plus, you can include testimonials from employees who work at your client’s company.

4. Stay in contact

Your recruitment campaign is not complete if you don’t follow up with candidates. Make it easy for interested candidates to contact you with questions.

An effective recruitment campaign ends with qualified people submitting applications for the job. Your recruitment campaign is only the first step of the recruiting and hiring process , so provide your contact information (e.g., phone number and email address), and keep in touch with candidates with the help of recruitment software for agencies .

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Guest Article

10 Effective Recruitment Marketing Strategies for HR Pros

Recruiters face constant challenges in finding and retaining top talent. The job market is fiercely competitive, and many industries suffer from talent shortages. Technology evolves rapidly, making it harder for companies to keep up.

A recent survey revealed that 62% of recruiters believe finding quality candidates is more difficult now than it was five years ago .

This makes it crucial to stay up-to-date with the latest requirements and modify your recruitment strategies accordingly. In this blog, I will go through ten latest recruitment marketing strategies that can help companies boost their visibility, engage candidates more, and discover the best talent.

Let’s get started!

What is Recruitment Marketing?

Recruitment marketing is like putting out a giant “We’re hiring!” sign, but way cooler .

The process is about attracting talented people to your company by showing them why it’s a great workplace. It goes beyond simply advertising open positions.

Instead, it focuses on building a strong employer brand that highlights your company culture , values, and employee value proposition. This can involve creating content like blog posts, social media campaigns, or even employer branding videos.

By showcasing what makes your company unique and desirable as a workplace, recruitment marketing helps you build a pool of qualified candidates interested in working with you .

Now, let’s have a look at how exactly you can achieve the goal of attracting top talent to work for your organization.

10 Recruitment Marketing Strategies to Attract Top Talent

1. build a solid employer brand.

Companies need to have a good reputation as a great place to work to attract the best employees. This means showing off the company’s values, culture, how engaged your employees are and the work environment in a positive way.

You can do this by sharing stories from employees, talking about the company’s accomplishments, and posting behind-the-scenes stuff on your website and social media .

Employee engagement plays a crucial role here.

Engaged employees are likely to interact with the company’s social media pages which results in creating a strong employer brand .

For example, you can create a “Day in the Life” video series featuring different employees, or post on social media highlighting team successes or individual employee experience.

Also, make sure you always share the same message about your company and it fits with your overall business goals and values.

2. Increase Search Visibility Using SEO & PPC Ads

When aiming to maximize your website’s visibility to potential candidates, using both search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) is the way to go!

When these two marketing strategies complement each other, you can expect increased visibility, valuable data, heightened brand awareness, high-quality content, enhanced traffic, and more .

Make sure your career page and job descriptions have relevant keywords for job seekers. With PPC ads, you can even target specific demographics and job titles. For example, use keywords like “marketing jobs” and direct your PPC ads to marketing professionals.

Creating high-quality industry-related content such as blogs and articles can also improve your organic search rankings. This two-pronged approach boosts the likelihood of your job openings appearing at the top of search results, driving more qualified candidates.

3. Improve Candidate Experience With Mobile Recruiting

Make sure that when you’re hiring new people, the whole process works well on phones and tablets. Your company’s website where you advertise jobs and accept job applications should work smoothly on mobile devices.

It should load quickly and look good on any screen size. You can further simplify the process with shorter forms, easy resume uploads, and the ability to save progress. Using text messages to send interview reminders and updates is a good idea too .

When you’re advertising job openings, make sure the descriptions are easy to read on a phone and that it’s easy for people to apply for the job using their mobile devices. It’s also a good idea to do job interviews with video conferencing and flexible scheduling.

4. Create an Attractive Career Page

Your career page is often the first place potential candidates will explore, so make it engaging and informative. Highlight your company culture, values, and benefits, and share employee testimonials to give a personal touch.

Use visuals and videos to showcase your work environment and provide a glimpse into daily life at your company. Ensure the page is easy to navigate with clear sections for job listings, application instructions, and details about the hiring process .

An attractive and user-friendly career page can significantly boost candidate interest and applications by making a strong first impression and offering all the information they need in one place. Here’s an example of a simple yet engaging career page.

5. Setup Employee Referral Programs

Employee referrals are one of the most effective ways to find top talent. Your current employees can help identify and refer qualified candidates from their networks. To motivate them to refer more candidates you offer incentives and rewards in exchange for successful referrals.

You can set up a structured employee referral program using VIVAHR that can help you cut down your recruitment time by 50% and even make your hiring process more efficient .

This not only helps you find quality candidates but also increases employee engagement and satisfaction by involving them in the hiring process. It’s a win-win situation that can enhance your recruitment efforts and build a stronger team.

6. Use Social Recruiting

80% of candidates are considered passive job seekers, indicating that they are currently employed but open to considering better job offers if approached.

These candidates may not be actively searching through job boards, making social media a convenient avenue to connect with them .

By sharing job openings and engaging with your social media followers, you can capture the interest of potential candidates, streamlining and expediting the recruitment process.

You can use Vivahr’s Social Job Sharing feature to easily create a job posting URL that can be circulated among employees and partners for sharing. This URL can be used to post job openings on websites, social media, or anywhere else online.

7. Utilize Email Marketing to Nurture Candidates

Once you have got a list of interested candidates or some good leads, you can start using emails to nurture them. This is a great way to keep potential candidates engaged and maintain a talent pipeline.

Create a nurturing email campaign with the purpose of familiarizing them with the brand, keeping them posted about job openings, and eventually converting them. Try segmenting your email list to send personalized content to different groups, ensuring relevance and engagement .

Use subject lines that are to the point and use email tracking to check how your campaigns are performing. Be regular with emails to keep your company top-of-mind for candidates, increasing the likelihood of them applying when a suitable position arises.

8. Use Recruitment Chatbots

Recruiters are not always available to answer candidates’ questions immediately, but a chatbot can fill this gap. By employing a chatbot, you can ensure 24/7 availability and reduce a significant portion of your initial workload.

A chatbot provides swift and precise responses to common or frequently asked questions, such as inquiries about job descriptions, location, or essential job skills .

Moreover, recruitment chatbots are adept at conducting the initial screening of candidates. They can evaluate resumes and applications based on predetermined criteria, effectively identifying the most promising candidates.

This automated screening process saves considerable time and allows recruiters to concentrate on more detailed assessments.

9. Invest in the Right Hiring Tools

Investing in the right hiring tools can make a significant difference in your recruitment process. Tools like VIVAHR offer features for recruiting, candidate management, employee referrals, social recruiting, candidate qualification, and collaboration.

It also helps streamline workflows, improve collaboration, and provide valuable insights through analytics. By using these features, you can optimize your recruitment strategy, reduce time-to-hire, and attract top talent more effectively .

VIVAHR can help you manage the entire hiring process from start to finish, making it easier to find and hire the best candidates for your organization.

10. Host Killer Recruitment Events

Lastly, recruitment events are a good platform to spot and connect with potential candidates in a more personal and interactive setting. You can organize job fairs, open houses, webinars, and networking events to showcase your company and its opportunities.

In these events, try to provide valuable insights about your industry and career growth paths. You can even promote these events through social media, email marketing, and partnerships with industry organizations to expand your reach and get more people to join .

These events also give candidates a chance to learn more about your company and see firsthand what makes it a great place to work. Here’s how Spotify pulled up their recruitment event – Diversify

Spotify promoted the event through word-of-mouth advertising and achieved a 43% female and 57% male participant ratio, unseen before at tech events.

Recruitment Marketing Strategy For Your Organization

Attracting top talent involves a multifaceted approach. No matter which strategies you choose to promote your hiring campaigns, you must focus on showcasing your company culture authentically and consistently across all platforms.

Closely analyze the process to understand where your best candidates are coming from and double down on those channels. Also, make sure to create a seamless application process and maintain open, honest communication with candidates throughout .

And the final piece of advice for all recruiters – Don’t forget to engage with passive candidates – those who aren’t actively looking but might be open to new opportunities.

Sometimes the best talent is already employed but willing to make a move for the right opportunity. Keep them in mind and nurture those relationships !

Author Bio :

Pratik Shinde is a Founder at Growthbuzz Media , a Content Creator at Make SaaS Better , and an SEO enthusiast. He helps fast-paced B2B SaaS startups acquire customers through organic marketing efforts. He likes reading philosophy, writing non-fiction, thoughtful walking, running, and traveling.

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A recent survey revealed that 62% of recruiters believe finding quality candidates is more difficult now than it was five years ago. This makes it crucial to stay up-to-date with the latest requirements and modify your recruitment strategies accordingly…

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How to develop a recruitment plan

A recruitment plan is a strategic blueprint for hiring, outlining timelines, processes, and other elements to enhance efficiency. It guides recruiters and HR professionals throughout the hiring process, ensuring a streamlined approach to sourcing, interviewing, and onboarding candidates.

Nikoletta holds an MSc in HR management and has written extensively about all things HR and recruiting.

A successful recruitment plan is more than just numbers. Vacancies and recruiting budgets form the basis of recruitment plans, but employing good hiring practices can elevate them.

How to create a recruitment plan:

Revise your job descriptions.

Job duties can change over time. Talk to team leaders and ask them how their roles, and their team members’ roles, have changed. If your sales team now performs account management, update their job descriptions.

If you don’t have formal job descriptions yet, consider conducting a job analysis – a process to determine a job’s duties and requirements. Arrange interviews with staff to discuss their roles and responsibilities. You can also use job description templates , a convenient alternative to conducting a job analysis.

Conduct a skills gap analysis

Conducting a skills gap analysis is a systematic way to analyze your staff’s current skill level and identify skills you want in the future.

To conduct a skills gap analysis:

• Identify skills you’ll need in the future.
• Assess skills your company has already.
• Compare current with desired skills and plan to fill the gaps.

Identify future recruiting needs by talking to senior management and team leaders to understand existing skill levels. Find out how they plan to hit next year’s goals. Complement their insights with recent performance reviews or employee surveys. Rate each skill you’re looking for on a scale (most commonly a three- or five-point one.)

Prioritize any skills gaps you discover. You can also address gaps by creating training plans for your employees. When skills gaps are too big, consider hiring new people to fill them.

Align your hiring team

With Workable’s hiring plan, you’ll move out of the spreadsheets and into one centralized workspace, where info is always current and next steps are always clear.

Try our hiring plans

Visualize your hiring activity

A skills gap analysis will provide a general idea of how many new hires you’ll need to cover gaps, but there are other ways to predict hiring needs. You can use quantitative methods to forecast future hires in your recruitment plan . For example, companies may set daily sales targets to hit their revenue goals. They can use productivity metrics to find out if their current number of employees can achieve those goals. If not, they can calculate how many more people they need to hire.

Insight from hiring managers can also give you a good estimate of the number of people you need to hire. Schedule meetings with hiring managers to discuss your hiring plan and their staffing needs. Use the information to create a hiring plan spreadsheet with the number of expected new hires per quarter or month. Here’s an example:

Revamp your hiring process:

Review your past recruitment plans and hiring habits and ask yourself:

• Did hiring teams communicate well?
• Did hiring processes meet hiring managers’ requirements?
• How did new hires perform in their probationary periods?
• What was the new-hire turnover rate (new hires who left in their first three months)?
• Were there any legal issues with hiring processes or candidate experiences ? (e.g. consider  illegal interview questions  and their legal alternatives)
• Are any changes needed to your recruitment or hiring policy?

Answers to these questions will inform the way you hire and how much you’ll spend on doing it efficiently. For example, if you find that your hiring teams had problems communicating through email, you could opt for a more user-friendly hiring tool . If managers find that new hires lack some of the skills they expect, explore investing in pre-employment testing .

An improved hiring process begins with effective sourcing. Download our complete sourcing guide for free.

Create a hiring budget

If you have already planned your hiring activity, calculate your cost-per-hire  and recruiting yield ratio . Add all internal (for example,  referral program incentives and recruiter salaries) and external recruiting costs (for example, agency, job posting and background check fees) and divide the sum by the number of new hires. As part of your personnel budgeting process , forecast the amount you’ll pay to your future employees in personnel costs (salaries, benefits and fully burdened costs .)

Think in terms of hiring teams

Your hiring process shouldn’t just be efficient for each individual hire. It should build an effective team culture that lasts. Here’s how you can attract – and retain – better teams:

• Set diversity targets . Diverse teams perform better than their homogenous counterparts. Incorporate diversity goals into your hiring process and explore partnerships with organizations like Society of Women Engineers  and Ascend , a Pan-Asian organization for business professionals in North America.
• Train interviewers . Even experienced interviewers can be biased. Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) training can help interviewers follow legal guidelines. Vendors like Interview EDGE and The Lou Adler Group can help interviewers develop their skills. HR can also organize in-house training sessions.
• Use processes that reduce biases . Biases are often unconscious. Eliminating them isn’t easy, but by tweaking your processes, you can reduce them. Consider using  blind hiring  and  structured interview  techniques to reduce hiring biases.

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Education Marketing , International Recruitment , Online Student Recruitment , Blog

7 winning student recruitment strategies to drive results.

19 January 2022

Date posted: January 19, 2022

Understandably, the past few years have been unpredictable to say the least. Institutions across a wide range of industries have had to fundamentally change and revisit their business model and marketing tactics—including schools seeking to bolster their student recruitment strategies in the post-pandemic reality.

2022 holds the promise of a new start for schools. ICEF Monitor’s 2021 survey reveals that 53% of agents anticipate a recovery post-pandemic, with higher international student enrollments in light of new virtual and hybrid educational initiatives. Although it’s difficult to predict the future landscape of enrollment marketing, certain marketing tactics and student recruitment strategies are rising in popularity and are promising to be particularly effective in the year ahead. 

With the right strategy in place, you’ll be better positioned to understand, connect with, and discover new prospects to help your school boost its enrollment numbers. These approaches can even help you improve your school’s reputation and student retention efforts, leading to better brand awareness and loyalty. Read on to discover our insights and begin developing an effective student recruitment strategy to achieve your goals in 2022.

1. Embrace Virtual and Hybrid Events to Increase Student Engagement

It may be difficult to remember a time when virtual events were popular, but data shows that they have been steadily growing in demand even before the pandemic—now with an expected annual growth of 23.2% from 2020 to 2027. This growing demand for virtual and flexible options is also reflected in the education sector. According to Salesforce , 57% of surveyed staff say that their school is investing in new revenue streams to attract new students, including flexible learning options such as online, hybrid, and in-person.

The online factor is an effective way to appeal to a broad range of prospects, overcoming geographic and in-person limitations. In this way, your school can use virtual events as an opportunity to connect with more prospects—leveraging online student recruitment strategies to market your virtual or hybrid learning options, address student concerns, and showcase your institution’s flexibility and quick response.

Example : The Queen’s University Tours and Events page includes an “Online Events” section that lists a variety of outreach methods, from webinars and Instagram LIVE events to saved recordings and virtual experiences. This allows students, no matter where they are, to connect with Queen’s University and engage with the community in a more meaningful way.

Source: Queen’s University

Prospects interested in browsing webinars can click the link and register for different types of virtual events that cover key topics in admissions and recruitment, as seen below:

Your school can embrace this approach to make its team more readily available, allowing admissions to easily interact with interested prospects.

2. Personalize Your School’s Digital Marketing Strategy to Better Connect with Prospects

You have likely heard about the importance of personalization in your school’s digital marketing strategy , but did you know that personalization also has the potential to become an expectation among prospects during enrollment? If you’re wondering  how to recruit college students then personalization should be top of mind.

According to one marketing study , Gen Z wants deeper interaction with content and is seeking personalized targeted efforts. This desire to connect has been prevalent even during the pandemic. In fact, the previous Salesforce study shows that personalized messages made 77% of students feel that their school cares about their personal success.  

To create effective personalized messaging, your school will need to develop accurate student personas that delve into your prospect’s motivations and concerns. By understanding who your prospects are and analyzing their needs and interests, you’ll be able to better connect with them. The data you gather can help you craft key messages, proving to prospects that your school is committed to their growth and development. 

Example : Carleton University’s Carleton360 initiative is a great way to engage interested prospects, creating a virtual hub that keeps them informed. Here, prospects can tailor their own experience and view events and news that uniquely align with their specific interests.

Source: Carleton University

Focusing your efforts on prospects in their senior or junior year in high school can be a great way to boost student enrollment, but it’s important not to overlook other opportunities. Many younger students, even those who are just beginning high school, can be open to exploring their academic and professional future. Targeting these younger prospects with relevant personalized content can help you with lead nurturing—allowing you to establish brand loyalty, trust, and meaningful relationships that drive results.

Foster Deeper Relationships with Targeted Email Marketing Campaigns

Personalized marketing can take shape in a variety of ways, including targeted email campaigns. Despite social media’s popularity and the rise of new marketing tactics, email marketing continues to be one of the most effective and reliable communication channels for schools. Survey data even shows that 57% of students list email as their preferred channel, making it even more important for your school’s student recruitment strategies .

Your school can make full use of this channel by embracing automated email workflows that send prospects relevant information regarding their specific interests. When done right, these email campaigns can push prospects further down the funnel and encourage conversions. A powerful education CRM can help your school manage these relationships, equipping your admissions team with the tools they need for success.

Example : The Toronto Film School sends relevant information as part of their email marketing campaign, introducing prospects to the Student Showreel as a way to showcase student talent and generate interest and engagement in the prospect’s program of choice. It should be noted that the message is made more personal by including the prospect’s name and program in the body of the email.

Source: Toronto Film School

Expand Your Reach through Student Ambassador Marketing 

Prospects are seeking connections with real people from your school, giving them an insider perspective on campus life and the student experience. This is where student-generated content, as well as student ambassador programs, can come in handy—allowing your school to support its current students while showcasing their personal experiences more authentically. 

Here, students can share their insights on life in residence, their program and class schedule, campus clubs and activities, and so much more. This type of student influencer marketing can help increase your visibility on social media platforms and portray your school in more open and positive light. Engaged members of your community can also share their activities, research, and other interests on social media while representing your school to draw in more interest, and expanding your reach online.

Example : Western Washington University has a dedicated Instagram page for its student ambassadors. Different posts introduce different members and their backgrounds, making the university and its community feel more approachable. In the post below, WWU supports one of its student ambassadors and generates buzz around a campus event:

Source: Instagram 

3. Promoting Transparency and Insightful Content as Student Recruitment Strategies 

It’s important to understand your prospects’ intentions and why they’re viewing your school’s content. Doing so allows you to embrace “intent marketing,” which focuses on consumer behaviour and intent instead of other factors like demographics in higher education recruitment . 

One key way to collect this information is by referring to the data gathered by your website’s search tool. Here, you can view the most common queries and create custom content that addresses each point comprehensively. This ensures that interested prospects have quick answers to their most burning questions—helping you better address their concerns and, consequently, secure more enrollments. 

Content development can also be applied to generate innovative recruitment methods . High-quality, insightful content that educates and delights prospects can serve to showcase the wide range of opportunities and experiences offered at your school. For example, your school can share educational content surrounding financial aid, career services, and even program-specific information (i.e. assignments, short lectures and workshops, curriculum, etc.).

Simon Fraser University (SFU) features an accessible page on how students can gain work experience while completing their studies. The page addresses prospects’ concerns regarding finding employment by listing the various services and resources that they can rely on when becoming students. 

Source: Simon Fraser University

On another page, SFU shares a list of community events that educate and engage prospects and current students—showcasing a vibrant community dedicated to the growth and success of its members. 

Another notable strategy to consider when recruiting college students is developing an active school blog to introduce your school’s campus, programs, services, events, and other relevant information. It can also be a great way to spotlight standout faculty, alumni, and current students. Through your blog, prospects can discover new insights and learn more about what makes your school different from other options. This can help encourage prospects to enroll, motivating them to become part of your school’s active community.   

Example : The John Cabot University blog can be filtered by different topics, ranging from academics and student life to student/club spotlight and career services. Here, prospects can read different types of posts and learn more about the school and its community through insider perspectives.

Source: John Cabot University

Focus on Storytelling to Showcase Your Community and its Successes

Storytelling marketing is a great way to connect with your prospects and show them what their future pathway can be, spurring them to follow in your students’ footsteps and enroll. According to the Search Engine Watch , storytelling can even increase conversion rates by 30%. 

The key here is to highlight student success and your school’s unique selling proposition (USP). These stories can be featured through student testimonials , paid advertising campaigns on social media, as well as other web and social media content. 

Example : The bottom of Victoria University’s website features a “Hear from Our Students” section, which spotlights three different student stories along with key information like the student’s name, their program, a direct quote, and an image. The featured stories serve as testimonials in their own right, making it easier for prospects to discover the advantages your school can provide. 

Source: Victoria University  

Another way to display your school’s stories is to feature a dedicated news page on your website. By presenting your school’s activities as “stories,” you can become better positioned to inspire prospects and motivate them to become a part of your active community. The University of Bristol takes this approach by highlighting “A Place of Amazing Stories,” where prospects can view different topics and be inspired by students’ research.

Source: University of Bristol 

Visual storytelling and video content can also be an effective student recruitment strategy, particularly when it tells your prospect’s story. Randolph-Macon Academy does this by presenting a prospect’s point of view in an engaging video, showing the prospect (the main character) searching online for ways to convince their parents why they should attend the school. A series of fun facts and interesting insights are then shared on-screen by actual students, making the video all the more engaging and effective.

Source: Randolph-Macon Academy

Use Social Media to Engage Prospects and Share Your School’s Story

Social media is a great place to share your school’s stories, especially on visual-heavy platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Research shows that teenagers frequently use social media platforms, with 95% going on YouTube and 67% going on TikTok while around six in ten teens use Instagram and Snapchat. This presents schools with a great opportunity to connect with their target audience and engage with prospects in their favourite spaces. 

Consider developing a social media strategy that is tailored to your school’s audience. You’ll want to choose channels that your prospects frequently visit and post consistently to gain their attention and entice them with your content. The key is to continuously engage your prospects and make them feel seen and appreciated. You can create polls and quizzes or offer giveaways to boost their interaction. This also gives you a chance to share your school’s mission and story in a more visually appealing way. 

4. Explore Higher Ed Conversational Marketing for Innovative Recruitment Methods 

More and more prospects are seeking personal connections with real-time interactions. According to this study , 42% of surveyed students say their school utilizes a chatbot–with three in five students evaluating those experiences positively. These positive experiences make conversational marketing more popular, allowing school admissions teams to be more accessible than ever before. 

Conversational marketing, typically through chatbot and live chat features, has been reportedly used by 47% of marketers in the past year. The ease of adding these features to websites and the rapid growth of artificial intelligence in marketing (increasing by 190% from 2018 to 2020) promises a lot of opportunities for schools seeking to improve and increase one-on-one interactions with their prospects.

Here, your school can include a live chat feature on its website to help prospects get immediate answers—which can play a part in helping them quickly understand and complete the admissions process. A chatbot can also be made available to guide prospects after work hours, giving your team a break while consistently providing prospects with a high-quality experience.

Example : University Canada West includes an exclusive “Chat with Students” page on its website, linking prospects to current students from different backgrounds taking different programs. Through filter options, prospects can find students who they relate to most—speaking with them to get instant answers that can affect their decision to enroll. The live chat service also connects prospects to the school’s staff, giving prospects different ways to connect with your school directly.   

Source: University Canada West

Host Live Events to Give Prospects Immediate Answers in a Community Setting

Your school can also adopt live events as effective strategies for increasing student enrollment . Live events allow your potential students to meet your school’s team alongside other interested prospects. This can give them an insight into their future community as well as how your school engages with its members. By hosting and marketing these events on social media, you can boost your engagement and reach a wider audience. 

The University of Nottingham announces its live Q&A event on Instagram to generate buzz, sharing the type of information they’ll be covering to better inform prospects during admissions.  

This way, students can get instant responses to their questions. You can also create livestream events on social media to generate engagement, answer more questions (open Q and A format), and boost brand awareness. This can be hosted by your school’s recruitment team (making them more responsive) as well as student ambassadors for a more authentic experience.

These events can be hosted by different departments and teams at your school to increase student engagement and brand awareness. You can also involve staff, faculty, and student ambassadors to differentiate events and draw in more hesitant prospects.

Pro Tip : Although you’re seeking to attract more students, it’s important to also consider improving your school’s parent outreach efforts. Parents are key decision-makers and appealing to their concerns and interests can help you boost overall enrollment numbers. Here, it may be helpful to host events specifically tailored to parents, giving them the resources and answers they need to feel more confident about their decision. 

5. Optimize Your School’s Website Content to Ensure Better Accessibility and Discoverability

Optimizing your school’s website can make it more discoverable on search engine results pages, making it even easier for prospects to find your school and learn about your programs. Search engine optimization (SEO) has been around for a while, yet it still manages to stay relevant in today’s digital marketing landscape.

Education SEO can include a broad range of factors, such as page architecture and domain authority to content quality and mobile friendliness. Each component can play a key role in improving your marketing and student recruitment strategy. To know where to start, your school can conduct an internal SEO audit and take active measures to improve your efforts.  

Some key things to focus on in 2022 include creating high-quality content specifically designed to answer your prospect’s most common queries. This is where Google’s E-A-T Principle comes in, which stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Creating web content that meets all three pillars, while also integrating semantically related keywords, can significantly improve your SEO strategy for student recruitment. More recent SEO best practices also include featuring videos to broaden your scope and impact.

Research shows that mobile internet traffic makes up 56.89% of the total global online traffic. As a result, your school should pay particular attention to its website’s mobile friendliness.

Consider focusing your efforts on improving accessibility, from ensuring a high-quality user experience on mobile to venturing into other areas to boost SEO—including adding voice commands (for better voice search discoverability) and virtual reality features (such as interactive campus tours).  

Example : The University of Reading’s website appears differently depending on the prospect’s device—with content rearranged in order to promote a positive user experience. Compared to the desktop view (first image), the mobile view of the page (second image) is more concise and compact for easier navigation on smaller screens.

Source: University of Reading

6. Increase Student Enrollment Numbers by Enhancing Your School’s Student Application Process 

Simplifying the student application process can help you retain prospects and encourage more enrollments. ICEF Monitor’s 2021 agent survey revealed that flexibility is a popular motivator among prospects seeking to enroll in language schools as well as those pursuing foundation, pathway programs, and undergraduate-level studies. 

Source: ICEF Monitor Survey

As seen in the charts above, flexibility in admission processing and requirements has been consistently cited in the top three motivating enrollment factors for both groups. By revising your admissions process and streamlining the experience, more students can be motivated to complete their application. Having an intuitive online application process that seeks to eliminate extra hurdles can be a particularly effective way to increase student recruitment post-pandemic. 

Example : Carleton University has actively worked to simplify its student application process. Through the Carleton360 platform, students can easily apply for internal degree transfers. Students can also use digital Third Party Release forms for multiple offices to eliminate additional paperwork. This approach can inspire other schools to revise their application process for better student recruiting and apply technology similarly to simplify admission processing for prospects.

7. Consider Relying on a Higher Education Marketing Agency to Boost Results 

Student recruitment is not always easy. It requires a great amount of effort, time, and experience in order for your team to be successful.  When applying any of these methods, it’s best to start with an assessment of your school’s current efforts and the development of SMART goals . By carefully outlining your goals and crafting your strategy, you’ll be better able to start on the right track and drive positive results. An experienced higher education marketing agency can help accelerate this process and infuse your strategy with industry-specific techniques. With their insight, you can better streamline your workflow and generate a higher return on investment.

At HEM,  we are dedicated to providing your school with everything it needs to boost digital student recruitment. Get in touch with our team today to schedule a free assessment and gain personalized insights for your school! 

Categories: Education Marketing , International Recruitment , Online Student Recruitment , Blog

Tags: strategies for increasing student enrollment • student recruitment • student recruitment strategies • online student recruitment • digital student recruitment • university student recruitment • education recruitment strategies • student recruitment funnel • innovative recruitment methods

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