Changing jobs or careers is one of the most stressful things a person can do.
Job seekers go through a meticulous, and often lengthy consideration process before deciding to make the jump. When thinking about the interview process, we often put all the power with the interviewer, meanwhile the interviewee has more leverage than ever when considering professional changes.
If your company hasn't developed a solid employer brand and inbound recruiting strategy, you could be missing out on high-quality talent - which can cost your brand a lot of time and money in the long run.
Using inbound marketing, you can attract and recruit top talent that can make a positive impact for your business and customers.
But before we talk about how you can use inbound marketing to recruit talent, we must understand the digital job seeker. Here are some great stats:
- 2/3 of employees say that their employer doesn't leverage social media to promote openings
- 79% of job seekers use social media in their job search
- 45% of job seekers use their mobile device to search for jobs at least once per day
- 69% of job seekers wouldn't take a job with a company that has a bad reputation - even if they were unemployed.
- Only 33% of companies ask employees to share company news/content on social media
There's a disconnect between what job seekers are looking for and what employers are doing to attract them. Inbound marketing can bridge that gap and help ensure that you're attracting the right person to the right job that will stay with your company for the long haul.
Here are some key tips.
1. Create Candidate Personas
The idea of creating consumer personas isn't a new concept, however sometimes we forget that to effectively target an audience, we must have a clear picture of who that audience is.
To create this persona, ask yourself a few questions:
- What type of education/training do they need?
- What skills do they need?
- How many years' experience do they have?
- What professional groups do they belong to?
- Where do they spend time online?
- What are some concerns they have when choosing an employer?
Essentially, you need to make your job requisition come to life in the form of a candidate persona. This helps you get a good idea of what kind of content to create to get the attention of the right candidate.
2. Fill the Funnel
The modern (digital) job seeker cares very much about where they are applying - brands are tasked with making sure they're constantly attracting job seekers and teasing their interest in open positions.
This is all about relationships - what can you do to provide value to the job seeker? Value creates trust, trust creates additional interest and that interest will ultimately lead to an application.
Easier said than done, right?
The idea is to produce content that speaks to each stage of jobseekers' consideration process to create a pipeline of always-engaged applicants.
3. Create Opportunities to Convert
Not every person that comes across your content or website is ready to apply for a position.
Some people are curious, passively seeing what opportunities are out there or simply researching, and this is precisely why it's important for you to create and publish as many useful content types as possible to support them.
White papers, eBooks, webinars and other great content pieces provide a ton of great value for people who come across your website and/or career content. But, don't let them get all the good stuff for free.
Be sure to gate content and ask for something in return, such as an email address, so you can extend the relationship with those who engage with your brand through your downloadable content. You may not have a ton of time or resources to create these content pieces, however you might be surprised how an inbound content strategy can create multiple opportunities for both active and passive job seekers to convert into applicants.
4. Turn Leads into Applicants
Creating conversion points and gathering email addresses are only the beginning when it comes to attracting top talent with inbound marketing.
After you capture a jobseeker's attention and data, what will you do with it? You need to find ways to nurture these people and build enough confidence in your organization that they apply.
In most cases, email is a great way to do this - studies show that email marketing is up to 40x more effective than Facebook and Twitter for applicant acquisition. While social channels have their place, email is a great way to present real-time job opportunities to people who you've already connected with.
Keep candidates in the loop with company events, culture, hot jobs and other exciting happenings that might trigger them to apply for a specific role.
At the end of the day, we're trying to take all those email addresses we acquired and create a constantly full applicant pool so you aren't left hanging when a hard to fill role becomes available. Remember, aim to provide value.
5. Optimize
If you can't track it, you don't know if it's working.
Using inbound marketing for digital recruiting encompasses a range of different marketing channels, and you absolutely must have a process or platform to pull all of this data together.
You'll want to know how your activity - from your website, blogs, email, social media and SEO - is coming together to help stimulate applicant flow. Applicant tracking systems can provide a lot of information about applicants once they're in the system, but what about beforehand?
Do yourself a favor and leverage social insights, Google Analytics and any other reporting software to validate if your digital recruiting efforts are working.
Are you ready to get more out of your money when it comes to digital recruiting? Follow the above steps to attract top talent with inbound marketing.
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