Marketing and HR, the face of any firm, is perceived to be very distinguished aspects of the organization. The ever so important departments though are hardly ever thought of being associated with each other.
Even though the two verticals might not always be working together from the outset, the interrelation and interdependency are inevitable. They, together help in developing and maintaining the overall principles and the expectations, be it on the employee level or the customer perception level.
By introducing the term Markruiting (Marketing + Recruiting), there is an attempt to recognize and establish a direct connection between the two, and project identify relevant opportunities.
Interestingly, over time, there has been an introduction of certain processes that not only help in establishing a direct connection between the two but also helps in achieving enhanced and optimized results. One such process that has picked up in the last decade or so is recruitment marketing.
What do we achieve through this?
The main purpose of this process is to not only position the organization as a “preferred employer” to all the prospective employees, but also to target the candidate that is best suited per the organization policies, principles, and the expected role. Especially in the current times of the pandemic where there is an increased focus on mitigating the damage caused to the employer due to pay cuts and layoffs, there is an increased need to focus on hiring and marketing right.
Let’s look at some of the trends and techniques firms can and are adopting in order to dominate the recruitment marketing space:
Employer Branding
With the uncertainty of every nature at its peak, especially with the slow down in the job markets, the concern among the job candidates about who their employer is, what their narrative and mission is, and how they might fit into the organization, has become a major decision point. The employer branding concept tries to address this concern with respect to the organization, by trying and communicating to the prospective candidates about their beliefs and employee-centric policies to lure them.
Here, there is a need to develop a consistent brand voice. Marketing techniques play a pivotal role here. It must be made sure that whatever channel of communication is chosen, internal of the company or external, the messaging must be consistent. There is no need to alter the message depending on the target audience.
Some of the techniques that can be used are
- Employee’s Testimonials
- Showcasing office and workplace environment
- Highlighting perks and benefits
- Company events and awards
What better example to have, when we have Google itself running innovative employer branding techniques every now and then, thereby building a strong value proposition. With over 3 million applicants every year, the quantifiable and non-quantifiable benefits have been exemplary. They even went to the extent of collaborating with Hollywood and producing a film that glorified their employee culture and broke several myths that had been going around. (The Internship – starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson)
Automating and Standardizing application channels
Building a common and easy to use dashboard for all the prospective candidate is necessary. You may have breakthrough marketing channels and campaigns for your employee branding and might even do you a world of good in terms of spreading the positive word about your brand. However, all these efforts might end up in vain, if the organization has multiple and unregulated channels for application, which might add several levels to the process and make the entire process non-optimal and tedious.
Automating the various channels of communication, without losing the personal touch, shall be crucial for recruiters in the upcoming times. This can be in terms of
- Automated email replies
- Robust email marketing,
- Chatbots for new prospects,
- Automated schedulers.
This will make sure that the engagement and the communication between the job seeker and the employer will be quicker, easier, and efficient and might even lead to a reduction in time to hire.
One of the best automated recruitment tools that are being used by various companies are
RUN (powered by ADP) – allows users to seek assistance from ADP’s recruitment experts for every type of candidate: contractors, part-time, or full-time. The tool also helps recruiters gather market insights and analyze compensation data in real-time to make competitive offers.
Shareability of Candidate experience
Encouraging current or even prospective candidates to engage on common employee reviewing platforms like Glassdoor, Indeed, etc. should be a much more widely adopted practice. Through this way, employees and candidates can anonymously share their experience after verifying their details and share their reviews about the process or the firm in general. This will help establish a feedback mechanism process, where the trends of the reviews can be analyzed to identify the good and the pain points of the employees and the candidates, and the respective corrective measures can be taken.
Did you know that over 60% of job seekers have had a negative candidate experience, while 72% of them decided to voice their dissatisfaction publicly? The candidate experience you provide is the indicator of your corporate culture. As such, it represents a notable decision-making factor. Namely, 83% of candidates emphasize that negative experiences can hurt their perceptions of an employer.
For you as an employer, greater candidate churn means lots of bad publicity, as well as greater financial losses. Let’s take an example of Virgin Media that was losing over $5.4 million annually due to poor candidate experiences.
Effective openings emails
Even though this method might sound elementary, many firms have not been able to leverage the potential of this channel of communication effectively. An effective structure and formatting can increase the readability and the chances of conversion manifolds. Effective email marketing strategies can be applied in emails offering a new position.
For instance, creating a benefit-driven ad that is fun to read and reflect your brand might catch more attention and interest the user. It is important to highlight and tell the employees and the prospective candidates “what’s in it for them”.
Different variety of media should also be used to keep them engaged and intrigued. Incorporating images and videos about employees sharing their experience has reportedly shown a 40 % increase in the conversion rate or even higher.
Social Media Push
One of the most obvious and currently one of the effective ways to market a brand. With the abundance of detailed and accurate data available nowadays on consumer behaviour at low cost, there is ample opportunity for the firms to identify their prospective candidates and understand their current job roles and need, and target them at lower costs.
Marriott, a leading lodging enterprise, has an awesome Instagram page called Marriott Careers. They use it to publish the photos of their employees, share their insights, and emphasize why they appreciate them as a part of their team.
Recruitment marketing is slowly becoming a process which is inevitable as firms are realizing that –
“ If the reputation of a company’s products and services is its face, the talent brand is its heart and soul”
– Hank Stringer & Rusty Rueff
Written By
Utsav Mittal
Under the tutelage of The HR Club
IMI-New Delhi
HR Panorama 