What Is The Recruitment Marketing Flywheel?

Recruitment marketing has evolved beyond job listings and career fairs. The days of simply posting a position online, receiving applications, and bringing in candidates for interviews are over. Today’s candidates are more savvy than ever: they know what they want from employers, and they’re looking for ways to find that information as efficiently as possible.

Recruitment marketing is about understanding candidate behaviors—and creating the best experience for them throughout the entire hiring process.

What is Recruitment Marketing?

Recruitment marketing is about creating a compelling employer brand that attracts candidates throughout the entire hiring process. Recruitment marketing involves understanding candidate behaviors and how you can create the best experience for them at each stage in their journey with your organization: from awareness through application to hiring decision and beyond.

Candidate behavior is influenced by a variety of factors, including:

• Age
• Attitude toward job hunting and applying online
• Income level and education background
• Geographic location or proximity to your office/work site
• Interests
• Cultural alignment

How to Boost Recruitment Marketing

Know where your prospects hang out

Many outstanding candidates do not exclusively use LinkedIn—particularly people who are hard to hire, like engineers, designers, and writers. While many go-to-market and product people look at LinkedIn every day, others hang out on GitHub, Reddit, Stack Overflow, Twitter, Behance, and Medium. Candidates are also in Slack communities, attend meetups, go to niche career fairs, and make their way to conferences in their industry.

Your recruitment marketing strategy should be hitting all of these different channels. You never know where your perfect candidate might be hiding!

Nail Your Brand

When you reach out to a candidate and they haven’t heard of your company before, what do you think the first thing they do is? They Google it. If your brand doesn’t look appealing or you have poor reviews on Glassdoor, you can kiss that candidate goodbye. Work with the marketing team to make your careers page exciting.

Make it evident that your company is a great place to work. Play up funding and product announcements, showcase your amazing employees, and feature your unique benefits. Fill out your Glassdoor profile and monitor it regularly, responding respectfully to reviews.

Highlight the uniqueness of your brand in every communication you have with candidates. Remember these recruitment marketing efforts compound over time and help propel the hiring flywheel that will drive your company in years to come.

Reinforce Your Message

Your recruitment marketing message must be re-enforced consistently in your website copy, in your job descriptions and throughout your interview process. Just as your leadership must present a unified vision for why each candidate should desire to join, your hiring presentation and process must be unified and well structured.

A successful recruitment marketing strategy should focus on making connections between you and potential hires in an organic way by creating content that resonates with this new mindset on both sides of the hiring process.

Know Who Your Candidates Are and What They Want

Recruitment marketing is an ongoing process that requires you to keep up with the latest trends and technologies. It’s not just about advertising jobs; it’s also about creating a compelling employer brand and engaging with candidates throughout the entire hiring process. To get started with recruitment marketing, you need to know who your candidates are (and what they want).

Every job posting, sponsored event, email outreach, and interview question reflects the brand of your organization. One misstep can destroy it all. As you dial in this process, the flywheel begins to take hold. As word gets out that your growing company has a clear vision and runs a fair and selective process, great candidates will start knocking at your door.