Recruitment Marketing: What is it and why do I need it?

The process of discovering and being discovered by great people and convincing them to apply for your jobs is complex and requires a team-wide effort. It’s actually quite similar to how marketers attract and convert clients. That’s where Recruitment Marketing comes into play.

Today’s candidates discover, explore and consider employers the same way consumers find products, hotels and restaurants. Much of the insight candidates gain into your company is acquired long before they actively apply for your job. As a result, you need to engage with them much earlier in the job-seeking process. Before there even is a job-seeking process. Recruitment Marketing is the strategy and process that you have to complete before a candidate applies for your job.

Imagine a talent acquisition funnel that looks like this:

The end-to-end process is talent acquisition. Recruitment Marketing covers the first half of this process in which by communicating your Employer Brand and Employee Value Proposition more of your target audience will apply for your open jobs.

‍DISCOVER - involves moving candidates from ‘I’ve never heard of them’ to ‘they sound interesting’

‍EXPLORE - moving candidates from ‘they sound interesting’ to ‘they could be for me’

‍CONSIDER - moving candidates from ‘they could be for me’ to ‘I’m going to apply’’

What is the difference between recruiting and Recruitment Marketing?

As an aside…Today’s recruiters must have marketing skills to find and engage candidates. At some companies the marketing department provides talent acquisition with Recruitment Marketing support such as branding and design, careers page management, social media management and content creation. Other companies invest in Recruitment Marketing services from a specialist Recruitment Marketing agency. Others still will have a dedicated Recruitment Marketing Manager, a profession which is forecast to have significant growth in the next ten years.

Back to the funnel!

The second half of the funnel is managed by a Recruiter and the handshake with Recruitment Marketing takes place at the moment of application. Recruitment Marketing is different from recruiting in the sense that recruitment marketers are not directly responsible for filling jobs. Rather, they complement recruiters by telling the employer brand story and, as a result, generate more quality applicants for open roles to help recruiters fill jobs faster and easier. They also help build and nurture a pipeline of interested candidates for recruiters to contact for jobs today and in the future. One way to look at the difference between recruiting and Recruitment Marketing is that recruiting attracts talent to jobs whereas Recruitment Marketing attracts talent to employers. Recruitment Marketing develops an array of employer brand content through a multitude of channels in order to create awareness, build followers, capture leads, encourage employee referrals as well as to generate job applicants.

Creating content is one of the essential skills of every Recruitment Marketing practitioner. Creating a recruitment content plan for every stage in the candidate journey and ensuring your content directly addresses their needs and questions during their job search will greatly enhance candidate experience.

What’s the difference between marketing and Recruitment Marketing?

Recruitment marketing adopts the methodology of traditional marketing for hiring purposes: to attract candidates, not customers and to promote the employer brand of the company, not the commercial one.

In traditional marketing, companies craft strategies in order to tell their company story, promote their products or services and reach out to potential customers. In Recruitment Marketing, companies craft strategies in order to tell their culture story, promote their workplace and employees and reach top talent.

The ultimate goal when building your own Recruitment Marketing strategy, is to boost awareness around your employer brand, communicate your values externally and attract like-minded people.

Recruitment Marketers are dedicated to brand awareness, reputation management, social engagement, email, text and chat communication, event management and lead generation. Recruitment marketers know how to authentically tell the company’s story as a great place to work to attract qualified candidates.

What’s the difference between employer branding and Recruitment Marketing?

Clearly, the two are closely linked, but there are differences and the two should not be used synonymously.There are two main differences.Employer branding comes first as you identify who you are as an employer. Employer brand is everything a company does to define and improve its reputation among current and future employees. Recruitment Marketing comes after you’ve defined your employer brand and start communicating it externally to potential future employees with the ultimate goal of getting them to apply for your future roles.

Secondly, employer branding is more internally focussed as you try to improve and fix your company culture, whereas Recruitment Marketing is externally focused as it’s about how you tell your company story to potential candidates.

If you would like to understand how Haystack’s tech insights and careers platform can move techies through the Recruitment Marketing journey of DISCOVER ➡️ EXPLORE ➡️ CONSIDER and increase awareness of your company to your target audience of techies, hit “find out more” below 👇