Recruitment Marketing: When HR & Marketing Join Forces

Recruiting and retaining the right talent is a tough job, and it’s only been made tougher in recent years. As HR departments grapple with how to effectively communicate a need to prospective employees they’ve been leaning a bit more on their colleagues in the Marketing department for help.

If you’re one of those marketing colleagues, we’ve got you covered.

Our marketing and strategy team has been tasked by a few different clients to help with their recruitment marketing efforts on digital platforms over the past year or two. We noticed that despite having their own unique needs, some of the hurdles they were facing were fairly similar. They fell into two big categories:

• Message
• Experience

Let’s take a closer look at what was going on and how to avoid falling into these habits in your own digital HR marketing efforts.

Create Job Posts that Get Noticed
One of our manufacturing clients wasn’t sure why they weren’t receiving many inquiries on their LinkedIn posts about jobs. They were rated a great place to work, had competitive salaries and benefits, flexible schedules, even offered signing bonuses. All of these things should make hiring easy, right?

Well, it would if it wasn’t pretty much the same thing everyone else was saying, too.

We decided to treat this hiring initiative like we would any other advertising campaign. That meant thinking about the audience — in this case prospective employees — and what their pain points are. What would make them want to work for our client? How can we show them the client’s culture is different without just saying it? How can we make these posts a true extension of the overall brand experience?

With a little bit of research and creative thinking, our team landed on a campaign that would definitely get the attention of job seekers.

Bold. Honest. Gets at the heart of why someone is job searching. Definitely not a boilerplate “we’re hiring” post.

We’re not saying this exact campaign should be your campaign. But we are encouraging you to put yourself in your prospective employee’s place and consider their needs and how your company’s culture, brand, and values align with them. That’s where you’ll find a message that resonates.

Post Where Candidates Spend Time
Like any ad campaign, placement matters. Where is your audience likely to encounter your message? There are the usual job posting sites like Glassdoor or Indeed, but think beyond that when it makes sense. (And remember to keep using copy that differentiates you there, too.)

Our team relies on LinkedIn advertising a lot for recruitment campaigns because that’s another place where people are focused on work and their careers. We’ve also used PPC ads, Facebook and Instagram depending on the client and audience. Navigating some of the audience restrictions can be a little tricky (obviously you can’t exclude groups from your job posts), but it’s definitely doable and worth exploring.

We’ve recommended using radio or streaming ads on Spotify in instances where a job prospect might not be looking at their phone or computer all day. For a client interested in recruiting busy IT professionals, we challenged them to consider using airport advertising to supplement the rest of their efforts.

Just as you lean into empathy when you develop your message, lean into it when thinking about placement.

Evaluate the Candidate’s Application Experience
Have you ever tried to apply for a job on your site? Unfortunately, this is often where a candidate who has seen your ads and been intrigued enough to click through to your site ends their journey.

We know that sometimes, for a variety of reasons, software has been tacked on to sites for collecting applications. This software is sometimes, well, let’s just say it’s clunky and bad. There may not be much you as a marketer can do about that part of the user experience, but you can control the experience that a user has on your site’s careers page.

When a client faced a similar hurdle, we worked with them to make the page as user-friendly and easy to navigate as possible. Right up at the top is a CTA button that gets right down to business with an “Easy Apply Now” message.

As they move down the page the user can learn more about the company, open jobs, and what it’s like working there thanks to quotes from real employees. Take a look at what’s happening on your company’s career page:

• Are there opportunities to show off your company culture a little more?
• Is the language and tone on the page consistent with the language and tone of your ads?
• Are the job listings themselves in need of some copy revisions?
• Is your brand well represented?

Putting care into this part of a prospective employee’s experience is a small but significant way to show them how your company treats its people, not to mention creating a seamless journey from ad to application.

Recruitment marketing is a big topic, and we just scratched the surface of it here. But just changing your approach and refreshing what you already have is a great place to start.

Lean into your marketing know-how and take the opportunity to work with your HR colleagues. That way you are both ensuring your company is putting its best face forward to find amazing talent. Finally, don't be afraid to push yourselves out of your comfort zone here! This is where you can get more creative and bring your brand to life in another way.

You don’t have to do all your HR marketing yourself. Hire CID to help!