Recruitment marketing is a marketing effort that combines branding, marketing strategies, internal- communications and precise messages for one goal: recruiting high-quality employees in a talent market.
We all know the story: a young group of entrepreneurs dreams big.
They spend days and nights on development, recruiting investors, hiring more employees who are young and as hungry as they are, fulfilling the Israeli dream and becoming a company worth millions of dollars.
But after a decade or two, the romance is gone, and the company that was once a synonym for innovation is suddenly in the category of a veteran player – still excellent, but it’s been a long time since it made the headlines as a company that excites the younger generation of potential employees in the market.
Many strong companies that are pillars of the high-tech world suddenly discover that it’s hard for them to recruit talented employees, and they need to reinvent themselves and rebrand themselves as a desirable workplace.
Coping with this reality led to the invention of the term “Employer Branding”: marketing strategies and tactics whose goal is to identify and attract potential employees and encourage the best among them to work at the company.
These are not the familiar tools of recruitment ads, referral programs, or career fairs. Employer branding, when done right, creates an awareness to the company as an employer in the talent market increases potential employees’ interest in the company’s activities and gets them to take action by applying for a position at the company.
The courtship rituals of employers and employees
In the complex dance of enticing potential employees to the company, it’s important to emphasize employer branding.
Through the right marketing language, precise and to the point, that highlights your clear advantages, you can turn your company into a magnet for brilliant young minds who are starting out in the high-tech market.
Employer branding is an important tool that has enormous significance in the Israeli and global markets.
It’s the basis for all recruitment marketing efforts. The brand needs to be at the heart of all the activities described below.
It’s important that the existing staff of employees also take part in the branding effort. Include them in the process of designing the company’s central message, and make sure they’re familiar with the ideas that are the basis of the employer branding.
At the end of the day, your existing employees are your best ambassadors when it comes to recruiting new employees.
The next stage, as with any marketing process, is getting to know your target audience and the personas within it.
For each position at your company, you need to create a suitable candidate profile and understand what attracts and interests that candidate.
Define exactly who you want to entice and invest time in getting to know their motivations.
Turning your workplace into a brand
Now it’s time to fully design your brand.
Your three pillars are content, interaction and analysis. The content that you create is the main attraction, the way to bring people to the website and your other digital assets, and interest them in the company.
Written content will help you achieve better search results and get your message out. Visual content will unify your brand under an easy-to-identify and attractive appearance.
Also invest in paid promotion of your content so it is seen by as many eyes as possible – taking precise aim at your target audience, of course.
If the content is the bait to attract suitable candidates, the interaction with them is the fishing line that will draw them up to the fishing rod and lead them to look for work at your company.
Create platforms on social media that enable candidates to interact with you directly. Update the career pages on the company’s website in order to provide relevant information and create forms for keeping in touch with potential candidates.
Allow candidates to leave their contact information in order to receive alerts about future jobs or make it even easier for them via push notifications with updates from the website.
Your communication with candidates is part of your brand, and it will help you create a positive impression for the company.
Finally, remember that employer branding, like any marketing process, is an ongoing task. Invest in information processing and analysis tools that will help you understand how your potential candidates see you, what works, and what needs improvement.
Even if you have initial success, don’t rest on your laurels, otherwise you could discover that your branding has become out of date and unattractive after a year or two.
Branding as an investment
The ability to recruit new and talented employees is an important metric for any company, and it is the basis of a company’s ability to grow.
In today’s world, a wide range of possibilities is open to employees, and they can choose from among plenty of companies that are competing for their attention.
Well-established companies also need to reinvent themselves in order to stand out and be an attractive option for the sea of candidates in the internet ocean.
Recruitment marketing, like any act of temptation, is a combination of art and science, and the solution will never be the same for every company.
Nonetheless, the steps in this article will help you build a strong employer brand that will attract leading candidates and enrich your company.