“Recruitment Marketing” is another one of those phrases you’re probably hearing about more often lately. It’s the concept that in order to recruit and to hire, you need to market to candidates.
It’s the kind of idea that seems obvious in retrospect. I’ve already written about how job boards can help their customers create great candidate experiences by thinking about job seekers as customers, and recruitment marketing fits right in with that.
If the candidate is the customer, then the employer (or the job they are hiring for) is the product you’re selling to them. In order to sell it to them, you have to market to them. Marketing a job or an employer encompasses a variety of components, including:
The Job Post: Is it clear, concise, and easy to read? Or is it a wall of text, with over five thousand words of duties and required skills and certifications? Here are some resources to help your job ads and descriptions better market to candidates:
- Anatomy of a Job Post – Infographic (made by yours truly) breaking down the basic components of job descriptions
- How to write a great job post via GitHub – Nice outline for attracting programmers/developers, but the structure and advice given works for a wide variety of jobs
- How to Write Job Ads Top Candidates Can’t Resist via Inc Magazine – Ideas for writing a job post like an advertisement.
Job boards can support employers and recruiters who post jobs by offering resources and advice on writing great job posts, and some may decide to offer job ad writing services as an upsell.
Employer Branding: This is a popular one, and with good reason. An organization’s brand as an employer is the overall image, impression, and reputation they have as someone to work for. If I ask you what you think it would be like to work at Google versus a popular fast food chain, knowing what you already know about those companies, you probably have already been exposed to their branding as companies and reputation as employers.
You don’t have to be a large company to develop an employer brand. Employer branding can be an extension of overall corporate branding efforts, including the values, goals, and accomplishments of an organization. Taking the time to outline hiring policies (e.g. “we’re an equal opportunity employer”), things like benefits, work environment, and company culture help nail down for candidates what an organization is like to work for.
A job board that lets an employer create a profile with a description, logo, and their open jobs, can help maintain branding consistency. And again, a job board that makes applying for jobs easy and enjoyable for candidates help employers create a good candidate experience.
Content Marketing:
Content marketing is very closely tied with inbound marketing. It’s the idea that by making content (blog posts, news articles, videos, infographics, etc) freely available to people whose business you want, they will come to you. It’s the inverse of marketing and advertising that interrupts your customer’s time and space, like a pop-up ad.
Producing quality content that is valuable to your audience (the job seekers and employers you want using your site) will give them more reasons to return to your board, help you build credibility as a trusted resource for them, and help improve your SEO.
But beware, churning out tons of content void of any real substance or value for your job seekers or employers can have the opposite effect. If all you can manage is one great blog post a month, then stick to that. In a year, you’ll have 12 pieces of great content that you can continue to promote and share with your audience to help attract new users or customers.
Social Media:
Social media is a given for marketing any business, and your job board is no exception. Social media is a great way to connect with both job seekers and employers, and increase exposure to your board’s jobs and content.
Having a consistent social media presence helps build and maintain your credibility, and creates another channel of regular contact with your users and customers, keeping you on their radar, and being useful to them.
Design and Visual Branding:
It’s the last on this list, but it’s the first thing anyone notices. Ugly, difficult to use websites make for poor experiences, for both a job board’s paying customers and the candidates. When a good candidate experience is part of the equation of a great hire, the chosen venue for advertising a job reflects back on the employer.
Again, it’s important to remember the goal of marketing to the candidate. Your job board communicates what kind of employers you engage with, and what kind of candidates they can expect to find. Non-mobile responsive sites can make you lose candidates right in their google search, before they even decide to check you out. Old fashioned and unattractive job boards signal to employers and candidates a myriad of cons before they can even look for the pros of using your board.
Being consistent with good, functional design and clear branding across you website, content, and social media makes it easier to be remembered, found, and to encourage returning users and customers, as well as new ones.