There’s a balance to making changes with any aspect of your marketing – too often and you’re adjusting the recipe too much and can’t learn any real takeaways. But if it’s too slow, then the market has passed you by and you’re behind the times.
No perfect answer exists – but the halfway point in the calendar year provides a natural break to look at the four pillars of recruitment marketing for your company. In this article, we’ll look at career sites, job advertising, social recruiting and employer branding – providing an area to look at in each area and how to know if you should adjust or leave it alone.
Career Sites – How Easy Can Candidates Convert?
At Haley Marketing, we’ve talked about conversion rate optimization during the past few years. Simply put – how easy is it for a visitor on each page of your website to convert?
If your business needs applications – how easy is it on the home page for candidates to get to your career site and apply to jobs? How many scrolls do they have to take? Is the text in the buttons quick and easy to understand? On the candidate application, how many fields do you really require for a candidate to complete the form?
The last thing any staffing agency should do on its website is make it difficult (at all) for candidates to convert. The best candidates will just move on to the next option in their minds and forget about applying to your jobs.
Look at each page of your website and make sure it has a conversion path that is simple and clear for visitors to understand.
(If your business needs new clients, the same questions apply; they just might apply to different pages on the site.)
Job Advertising – How Much Are Your Costs Increasing?
Everything is more expensive – that’s no surprise. But do you know how much your job advertising costs are increasing, and does that increase allow your company to drive the gross margin you need to be profitable?
For example, at Haley Marketing, we saw the average cost of application increase in June to $3.09 after averaging $2.64/application during the first five months of the year. That’s a sudden increase of 17% when our team didn’t do anything differently.
Knowing those cost changes is vital – does it still fit your business model? Are you now overspending on certain jobs? Does the budget need to increase? Are you seeing runaway spend because of too many clicks, and now it’s eating up even more of your budget?
Being on top of your spend is important – it’s one of the areas in this article that needs to be constantly monitored. Maybe not adjusting the day-to-day, but looking at your data on a weekly or monthly basis will lead to the best data-driven decisions possible.
Social Recruiting – Be a Human
This pillar might feature a dramatic title, but it gets back to doing what social media was meant for – people helping people.
Right now, let’s not even focus on posting your original content. Let’s think about how you can help other people:
- Jump into communities / groups and share helpful information.
- Comment with your real thoughts; don’t just post jobs.
- Be empathetic for people who have just experienced bad news and celebratory for people who have experienced awesome news.
The best social media accounts provide value for other people. They aren’t about getting status or clout but are about sharing the information that’s valuable to the audience.
Focus on a niche. Focus on something you’re passionate about. It’s much easier to consistently post that great content when you love the content and can focus on small areas.
Employer Branding – Connect With the Right Candidates
Repeat after me – it’s OK to not accept every job order and attract every job candidate.
We define recruitment marketing as “the right candidate for the right job.” The 180-degree way to look at that –”the wrong candidate for the wrong job.”
Everyone who has made a hiring decision has made a mistake. For whatever reason, it was the wrong candidate for the wrong job.
With your employer branding, are you attracting the right candidates for your company and for your clients? Look at your website’s copy and images. Go through your testimonials. Read your social posts. Scan your job advertisements.
That’s a limited list, but do each of those areas portray the branding you want for your company? Is it going to attract the candidates who will have a great chance of being successful for your clients?
Employer branding isn’t a hard-and-fast tactic, but you know good employer branding when you see it. So do your candidates!
Download Our Smart Recruiting Checklist
If you’re looking for actionable takeaways with your recruitment marketing, download our Smart Recruiting Checklist. Featuring more than 190 ideas, our Smart Recruiting Checklist helps you examine your own recruitment marketing at your company.
