The combination of the job market, inflation, and economy are just weird. Economic numbers say we should be in the middle of a full recession, but the job market continues to have millions of excess jobs vs. people looking for work.
At Haley Marketing, our theme during Q4 2022 has been “Preparing for Anything” and that’s what this article will try and accomplish today. We’ll look at the four pillars of recruitment marketing, walking through each pillar and how your company can get ready for 2023!
Career Site
It’s vital your career site converts as many jobseekers coming to your website. Here’s why it’s important in each economic climate:
- If it’s the continued difficult recruiting market, we must make it easy for candidates to navigate to the pages they want to view. They have a lot of choices for their next job. Reduce friction ane make it simple!
- If the job market flips, yes, it’s still important to make it easy for candidates to find the information they want, but your company will really be evaluating expenses. We must make sure to convert as many candidates as possible and don’t waste your recruiting/marketing expenses during a recession. You’re not going to want to see website stats that are getting a lot of visitors and not a lot of conversions.
What helps with getting the most out of your website? At Haley Marketing, we are focusing on conversion rate optimization. CRO makes sure all aspects of your website (layout, calls-to-action, etc.) are doing everything they can.
It’s vital to have the mindset that CRO is an event and not an event. Similar to a car, we have to perform routine maintenance to keep it running. The same mindset is there with your website and marketing!
Job Advertising
To reach your 2023 goals, do you know all of the metrics in job advertising that will get you to those 2023 goals? Let’s walk through an exercise:
- Our fictional staffing company wants to generate $100,000 additional revenue in each quarter.
- We know our application cost per placement is $250 and know it takes 25 applications to get one quality application. That means we have a $10 cost per application.
- Each placement has an average of $2,500 in revenue for our company. So, we need 40 additional placements to reach our revenue goal.
- To reach that goal, we need 1,000 applications and must spend $10,000.
That’s the exercise staffing companies must conduct to ensure they have SMART goals. What do you need to spend to reach those specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timebound goals for your company?
Making data-driven decisions is the best way to set your recruitment budget and answer the question we hear all the time “how much should my budget be and how many jobs should I sponsor?”
Social Recruiting
People are going to spend time on social media – that probably isn’t going to change. Do your social pages reflect what you want people to see from your company, whether they are active candidates or passive candidates?
Conduct an analysis of your social pages now – do you like what you see?
- For active candidates – are you sharing jobs? Is it easy to sign up for job alerts? What does your employer brand say for someone who wants to apply today?
- For passive candidates – are you sharing testimonials from your current employees? Are you continually posting helpful content to stay top of mind?
With active candidates – those visitors to your social media pages are ready to apply today. Make it simple to find what they want. With passive candidates – those visitors to your social media pages are need you to stay top of mind and provide helpful resources. When they’re ready to apply, you want them to think of your company!
Employer Branding
Continue to build that employer brand online, especially with your reputation management! Right now, with so many open jobs and not many jobseekers, the candidates are in control of the market. If you have a 4.2-star reputation, that’s going to help!
If the market flips to more candidates and fewer jobs, that star rating will help you top grade your talent bench and get better quality candidates to your team. Also, when the market flips, it’s important to have that strong base of positive testimonials because your negative testimonials are going to increase? Why? Because more candidates searching for jobs means more frustrated and unhappy candidates. When we are frustrated and have a (perceptively) negative experience, we leave negative reviews.
Don’t wait – build your online reputation now!
Bonus – Candidate Automation!
Here’s the best way to know when you should use candidate automation – automate the tasks that have no personal touch and spend more time having real relationships during the recruiting process.
Candidate automation software takes care of those repeatable tasks your team doesn’t have to be doing. Here’s a quick list of keeping your database active:
- Easily communicate your open jobs
- Reach out at the end of their assignment for feedback and to make sure you get their next assignment and not your competitor down the street.
- Ask for reviews!
- Make sure their contact info and professional history is up to date!
Haley Marketing Is Here to Help!
Do you need help with your recruitment strategy? We are here to help! Contact us today for a review of your recruitment strategy where our team reviews all four pillars of your recruitment marketing to help you have a plan for reaching your 2023 goals!
