It’s only April and yet 2021 feels like it’s been going on for years. In these last 4 months, we’ve also seen a lot of movement in the world of recruitment. Vaccine rollout has brought some offices back to operating in person, there’s a huge talent grab ongoing right now as global economies pick up steam, and burned-out employees are trying to keep up with the break-neck speed of all of these changes.
Looking to recruitment marketing there have been a number of changes already to how employers are positioning themselves in the market. But many are struggling to keep up with the shifting, talent landscape out there. There are a lot of organizations that are still operating as if there is a surplus of available talent to reach out to still. This is no longer the case. In most parts of the world, highly skilled people have already returned to the world of work. In some countries like Canada and the United States, unemployment statistics have almost returned to where they were before the pandemic. The talent market has very rapidly returned back to being candidate-driven. This means employers need to work on their employer branding and utilize the best candidate attraction methods that they can, in order to make a successful hire.
Crafting your job description
When we think of excellent candidate attraction strategies the first thing to focus on is the job description. The job description is potentially the first time that an individual may learn of your organization. What are you telling them in that initial interaction? Are you giving them a long list of exhausting demands or are you actually giving them a reason to want to work with you? Maybe bullet point lists appeal to some people but in most instances, they usually cause readers to start skimming or to disengage. Your job description shouldn’t disengage applicants. It should make them excited about who you are as an organization and the journey that you’re on. It should also include as much information around salary and benefits as you can divulge at that time. I say this frequently, but benefits do very little to help you secure top talent if no one knows about your benefits until they’ve joined your organization. Right now, there are very few reasons to play your cards close to the chest when it comes to recruitment. Tell your candidates what they’ll get in return for working with you. Give them a reason to want to be part of the team.
Candidate attraction strategies
Armed with a compelling job description, you now need to get it in front of people. There is some benefit to just throwing your job description at the most popular job boards and hoping you get applications, but there is also a lot of competition on those job boards. There’s every chance that your job posting will be lost in the noise or out competed by another organization that’s paying more for a prime position on the job board. The way to beat the competition in the recruitment game is to go big. Post your job on a number of different job boards, some that are big, some that are geographically useful, and some that are specific to your industry or the skills that you’re looking for. Be creative in your posting and give yourself every chance to attract the person who is going to help your organization achieve great things. Take care as well with the geographic locations that you’re posting in, if you’re in a rural community you might have more luck with your recruitment if you post in a nearby urban area and offer relocation to the successful candidate.
Leveraging the passive market
Sometimes the best way to get your job description in front of your candidates is to go directly to them with that job description. This is where headhunting and the passive market comes into play. Using an online database like a LinkedIn Recruiter License or Indeed’s Resume Search, you can directly talk to people with the skills you need about your available role. The downside here is that accessing these valuable, online databases can be expensive and headhunting people effectively is a skill that needs to be refined. If you’re not recruiting frequently this may not be a financially realistic avenue to go down when looking for candidates. However, working with a recruitment organization, like ourselves here at Scout Talent, is often a very effective way of accessing these candidates.
The key takeaway when it comes to recruitment marketing is that there is no imaginary lineup of candidates waiting to join your organization. If you want the best people for your role then you’re going to need to appeal to them and you’re going to have to do everything you can to put your job description before them. Invest time and effort into your candidate attraction strategies, use them to secure the next excellent hire for your organization.
If you’d like to learn more about recruitment marketing, please do reach out to us here and one of our learning specialists would be happy to answer any questions you might have.
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