4 things you need to know to create an effective recruitment marketing campaign

You have finally posted the job ad to fill that vacant position. Now all you have to do is sit and wait. After a few days, weeks, probably even months from now, all you get is a group of applicants who just doesn’t seem to fit the criteria. You start to wonder, what went wrong? Was your job description not clear enough? Or are there just not enough right talent out there?

Historically, posting up job ads is an effective recruiting method. However, job ads only target the active candidates. What about your passive candidates? If you focus solely on job ads, you could be missing out on some great talent among the passive candidates.

Recruiters need to work harder to harness the talent that exists within passive candidates. The key is to create a good recruitment marketing campaign to unleash the flow of great talents using traditional marketing methods as your framework.

Similar to any marketing campaign, you’ll first need to do your market research and identify your target audience. Are you targeting the Baby Boomers? Or maybe you are looking for Gen-X or Gen-Y? You’ll need to learn to reach out to these different demographics.

For example, Baby Boomers are still receptive to direct marketing technique compared to Gen-X or Gen-Y. In this case, they still prefer talking to real people when it comes to job hunting. So don’t be shy to pick up that phone or to set up an appointment with them just for a casual chit-chat – you’ll never know where that could lead you to.

One of Gen-Y’s distinctive features is that it is the most technologically savvy generation. Immersed with the digital world since young, they are driven by the need to stay connected or plugged on. Interestingly, this allows them to be more socially-driven compared to Gen-X and Baby Boomers. In return, Gen-Y expects their work to accommodate to their personal life and would prefer meaningful work that is fulfilling hence work-life balance is very important.

Now that you have your target audience, what are your key messages? Similar to brands with slogans or taglines, your recruitment marketing campaign should have a few key recruiting messages too. What differentiates you from your competitors? How are you unique? Consider doing something different and make an impact.

For example, AirAsia defines their employees as ‘Allstars’ and all employees are valuable to the company up to the point where everyone, even the errand boys, has Tony Fernandes’ contact number. The management makes it a point to allow all staff to contact Tony directly to solve their problems without the hassle of bureaucratic layers.

Your messages also need to fulfil the value of search engine optimization (SEO) for your websites in order for it to make conversions. Just like how customers would use keywords to search for their products online, candidates are also using keywords to search for job vacancies. You’ll need to be able to identify what are the targeted and specific keywords for your respective vacancies.

There are many ways to distribute your messages to reach out to your target candidates. Don’t just stop at publishing your job post on newspapers. Start utilising technology by pushing your recruitment efforts through multiple distribution channels such as social media, your career site, internal and external sources as well as assigning this task to a recruitment agency who could assist to take your recruitment campaign to the next level.

Consider adopting marketing techniques that are creative and out-of-the-box. For example, IKEA initiated a brilliant recruitment campaign by placing career instructions (job descriptions for open positions) in every product box sold. This simple and cost-efficient method allows the company to target customers who are already familiar with their brand and convert them into valuable employees.

You’ll need to evaluate the effectiveness of these methods or key messages that have been delivered. This is where your data analytics come in. You will have to identify which distribution channel works best and where your target candidates usually ‘hang out’. It is also important to analyse and take note on what sort of messages or interests that could relate and attract these talents.

For example, companies can monitor what are the comments or negative remarks made by candidates during their interview sessions or application process on the internet. Use this to your advantage by addressing the existing problems and this would also encourage employees to write positive reviews. By measuring your process, you’ll be able to increase the Return on Investment (ROI) of your campaign and ultimately ease the talent acquisition process. The job scene today is changing ever so drastically as different approaches are required to attract talent from both active and passive candidates, resulting in an intense competition for talent. To run a successful campaign, you will need to devote your resources – time, people and money and finally, track all your progress to identify what works best and how to further improve your campaign. By executing all these key methods, you’ll be attracting top talent for your open positions soon enough.

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