March 31, 2022
Last week, D&E held one of our Brainfood events – quarterly sessions focused on the latest trends and topics facing our clients – with this one focused on recruitment marketing. Our panel of experts representing various disciplines and focus areas (communications, HR and advertising) discussed how to approach attracting and retaining talent using best practices and expertise within their own organizations.
As I listened, a few themes emerged. I’ve outlined them below, including some actionable items that may help you improve your recruitment marketing efforts.
1. Crystallize and share your employee value proposition.
Nailing how you talk about why you are an employer of choice is key to attracting top talent and retaining those that might be looking. Now more than ever, potential candidates want an authentic and transparent look into your organization and want to know why your organization is different from the competition. Ideally, this should be a collaborative effort between HR, marketing, and communications departments – working as an integrated team means you have a better chance of sharpening and amplifying your message.
- With more organizations than ever looking for talent and/or labor, how do you stand out as an employer of choice?
- How can you show what life is like working for you? Are there ways to get creative with videos or offer more insight into life at your organization?
- Why do current employees stick around and how are these reasons better than what other companies are offering?
- How do you talk about world issues, like inflation, the war in Ukraine, return to office policies, parental leave, etc.?
2. Paint a picture of the ideal candidate you’re trying to attract.
Start first by determining the most important roles and the types of people you want to attract(e.g., folks just out of college, mid-career professionals, plant floor employees, specialized IT skills, etc.). Then determine what they are looking for in an employer so you can create unique propositions for different types of roles you are recruiting for. You can start by talking with your own employees.
- Figure out what benefits or cultural elements matter most to the types of people you want to hire – do you need to get your house in order first to accommodate what the job market is demanding?
- Figure out why people work for you, why they stay and what makes them leave.
- Pay attention to and follow up on this data so you can use it to address in your outbound messaging to job seekers.
3. Once you nail your employee value proposition (EVP), build a communication plan that best reaches your audience
With so many organizations vying for talent and with shortened attention spans in general, you have to have an impact immediately, which means using a strategic mix of paid, earned and owned media channels.
- Most recruitment messaging contains too much information and comes across as a cluttered classified ad instead of an engaging touchpoint.
- Out-of-home (OOH) ads – like billboards and bus shelters – should have no more than five to seven words, with imagery taking up about 75-80% of the asset space.
- Find ways to link your traditional messaging formats, such as print, OOH and TV to other platforms using QR codes, vanity URLs and vanity phone numbers so you can capture leads and traffic sources.
- As for digital extensions, don’t forget job posting sites and how they play with owned channels, like your website and SEO.
- Try A/B testing with messaging to see what messages resonate most with your prospects.
Taking time to nail these fundamentals will give you a better chance of coming out the other side of this turbulent moment in better shape than the competition. See the list of ways we can support your recruitment marketing program.
Want to connect to chat about recruitment marketing challenges you’re facing at your organization? Let’s talk about it.
