Recruitment marketing: three conditions for success

At first sight, personnel policy and marketing may 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 a number of conditions are met. In this blog we explain why recruitment marketing is increasingly the future and how you can use it successfully.

Personnel policy as product marketing

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

Applying online is in. That's why job seekers are always online these days

Job seekers are always online

Seventy percent of job seekers search for vacancies online, among other things or exclusively. That is an international percentage, which you can assume is even 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 put their vacancies on their own website.

Online recruitment however, does not stop at posting your vacancies online. For example, can interested parties 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? search engines? These are all things to keep in mind when recruiting 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's the difference between randomly placing an ad in a magazine and running a targeted, audience-specific campaign. Every entrepreneur finds it logical to offer products and services to a specific target group, which is likely to be interested in the product or service. Why shouldn't that apply to recruitment?

For inbound recruitment it is necessary that you know who your target group is. Often these are latent job seekers; people with a job, who you want to make 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 candidates can obtain 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, et cetera) to make an offer that is as personalized as possible.

Is your HR department already using big data for recruitment marketing?

Everything is data driven

To be able to recruit well inbound, you need information. All parts of a modern company use (big) data to set policy, so why should your HR department be any different?

With software from HubSpot, for example, it is now relatively easy to recruitment marketing fine-tune to perfection. You get insight into how well your vacancies are found, which routes this takes and where you could make improvements. It especially helps you to reach that 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 consider how much time HR departments that don't use recruitment marketing spend perpetually sifting through resumes and letters from unsuitable candidates. Ultimately, recruitment marketing ensures high-quality applicants who perfectly match your vacancies. And isn't that what your HR department is by definition meant for?