Recruitment marketing: three conditions for success

At first sight, personnel policy and marketing seem to have little to do with each other. Nevertheless, more and more HR departments and companies have become convinced in recent years that a sound marketing strategy can also be very valuable in the field of recruitment, provided that a number of conditions are met. In this blog we explain why recruitment marketing increasingly has the future and how you use it successfully.

Personnel policy as product marketing

With marketing you probably immediately and exclusively think of the way in which you market a product or service. Effective and profitable. For a number of years, however, more and more voices have been raised that ideal recruitment should just as well use sound marketing strategy. Especially in an improving economy, where few people are looking for work and many employers have difficulty filling their vacancies, it is wise to assume that you must also market your vacancies in a well-considered way. Simply post your vacancies at an employment agency and then sit back is a guarantee for few or unsuitable candidates today. How do you do it then?

Applying online is in. Job seekers are therefore always online these days

Job seekers are always online

Seventy percent of job seekers are looking for vacancies or only online. That is an international percentage, which you can assume is a little higher in the Netherlands. It sounds like a piece of cake to make your vacancies easy to find online, but you would be surprised how many companies do not even post their vacancies on their own website.

Online recruitment does not stop at posting your vacancies online. For example, can interested people easily apply online at your company? Are your vacancies also shared on social media? Do you mention them in your newsletter? Are they easy to find via search engines? All things to keep in mind when you recruit online.

Recruitment marketing is always inbound

The difference between inbound and outbound recruiting is the same as trying to recruit inbound and outbound customers. It is the difference between randomly placing an advertisement in a magazine and conducting a targeted, target group-specific campaign. Every entrepreneur thinks it is logical to offer products and services to a specific target group, which is likely to be interested in the product or service. Why should that not apply to recruitment?

For inbound recruitment you need to know who your target audience is. These are often latent job seekers; people with a job who want to make you aware that your vacancy is very interesting for them. After all, the best employees are generally not unemployed!

Make sure your company present online is. For example, offer a free assessment test online, with which you both collect information about a potential candidate and create awareness about a possible new job. Make sure that candidates can gather a lot of information about you. And if it comes to an application, use the knowledge you have of the applicant (home situation, current work and employment conditions, etc.) to make an offer that is as personalized as possible.

Does your HR department already use big data for recruitment marketing?

Everything is data driven

You need information to be able to recruit properly. All parts of a modern company use (big) data to set out policy, so why would your HR department be different?

With software from, for example, HubSpot, it is relatively easy for you these days recruitment marketing to fine tune to perfection. You get insight into how well your vacancies are found, through which routes that goes and where you could make improvements. It mainly helps you to reach the latent job seeker who is not unemployed but may be open to a new challenge.

It may sound like a lot of work, that online, inbound, data-driven recruiting. But think about how much time HR departments that do not use recruitment marketing have to spend on plowing through CVs and letters from unsuitable candidates. Recruitment marketing ultimately ensures high-quality applicants that perfectly match your vacancies. And isn't your HR department intended for that by definition?