If you’re a recruiter or HR professional, one of your main goals is to attract qualified talent. You want people who apply to open positions to be experienced, passionate, and eager to join the team.
That’s why it can sometimes be helpful to think of this process from the perspective of a marketer. While marketing typically promotes a company in order to attract customers, HR specialists can also use marketing tactics to promote an employer’s brand to attract high quality candidates.
The following tips illustrate a few ways how. If you’re trying to find stronger applicants for vacant positions, keep them in mind.
Highlight the Company Culture on Social Media
Social media doesn’t just give brands a way to engage with their followers. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other channels can also be used to make the right impression on potential future employees.
For example, maybe you’re handling recruitment for a tech company with young employees, a collegial atmosphere, a wide range of unique office amenities, and the opportunity to attend frequent (fun!) company events.
Hopefully your employees will already be sharing their positive experiences at the company on their own social media accounts. HR can help facilitate this by distributing “shareworthy” content. For instance, if the organization recently held a fun event for employees, you might later send a company-wide email featuring pictures from the event, letting people know it’s OK to share them on social media. There’s a good chance employees who enjoyed themselves will do so.
That said, you shouldn’t rely solely on employees to promote the company culture on social media. You can also directly share this type of content on the company’s own social media channels. When someone thinking about applying for a job at the organization researches it online, this content may help them better appreciate why they’d like to work for your company.
Determine Your Audience
Strong marketers always define their audience before launching campaigns. You need to know precisely who you are targeting in order to make the right impression on them.
This is another tactic recruiters and HR specialists can adopt to their advantage. Throughout the recruitment process, whether you’re drafting and posting job listings, interviewing candidates, or making job offers, think about the type of person you’re trying to attract.
For instance, maybe you’re filling an important managerial role, so you want to find a candidate who is ambitious and who will likely stay with the company for a number of years. In this case, you would make a point of highlighting growth opportunities. Every step of the way, when it makes sense to do so, let strong candidates know they will have chances to climb the ladder if they work hard and stay with the organization. This will help you impress the kinds of applicants you want to hire.
Entertain
It’s important to take the process of recruitment seriously. Obviously, you need to take it seriously because it’s among your top duties at work. However, it’s important for candidates to take the process seriously as well. If you’re too informal in your interactions with candidates, they may get the impression that your company doesn’t take its work seriously. This will drive away talented people who want to work for a growing, thriving company that has the edge on its competitors. A too-casual attitude may also attract people who may not be as hard-working.
That’s not to say you can’t have a little fun during recruitment. On the contrary, developing engaging recruitment content is another effective way to promote the company culture.
Consider the example of MailChimp. At one job fair, the company distributed cards that explained the duties and qualifications required for various jobs at the company.
However, these cards were unique. They weren’t simply bland summaries of roles. Instead, they were formatted to resemble baseball cards, providing job information in a fun way.
It’s not difficult to understand why this would be an effective strategy. Potential candidates attending job fairs often interact with many companies in a short period of time. MailChimp ensured those in attendance would likely remember them by putting a simple but unique twist on traditional job fair materials.
Explain the Process Easily
Candidates don’t want to be left in the dark about your recruitment process. They want some idea of how long it may take, when someone will follow up with them, and what steps are involved along the way. A very qualified candidate you’re ready to hire may have already taken a job elsewhere by the time you get back to them if they didn’t know to wait.
Luckily, providing this information can be easy if you think like a marketer. In job listings and recruitment materials, include infographics, videos, or similar content that breaks down the process in an easy-to-understand manner. Potential candidates will appreciate the added transparency.
As this blog has pointed out before, the role of HR professionals and recruiters is changing and expanding. For instance, it now may be necessary to think of yourself as a marketer for your company. These tips will help you feel more comfortable and capable in that role.