Top 8 Recruitment Marketing Strategies for Attracting the Best Talent in 2024

If you have been in the recruitment space for more than a year, you would know acquiring talent needs sales and marketing aspects now. Top candidates are hard to spot, the demand for quality talent is huge and the people you hire define your organization’s trajectory. Over 69% of employers are having difficulty in filling jobs, the highest in two decades. Attracting talent through recruitment marketing strategies and employer brand is clearly the way forward. 

Modern-day recruitment is primarily candidate-centric. Engaging candidates effectively and staying at the top of the competition through employer brand is what organizations need now. Identifying, attracting and pulling qualified candidates towards the bottom of the recruitment funnel is not a destination, but a continuous journey driven by a strategic marketing approach. 

Let’s be honest – there’s no industry without severe competition today. Businesses have grown exponentially after the technology boom and this has allowed candidates to choose between a flood of companies to work in. Add up to that the access to brief information about every organization - its work culture, employee benefits, interview processes and more on job sites, and social media. 

What makes you stand out as an employer today? Brownie points for getting it right – employer brand. But how to build and maintain a solid employer brand? How to ‘sell’ your roles effectively to the best candidates in the workforce? How to attract and acquire top talent with recruitment marketing? If you have all these questions in mind – you’re at the right place. We will cover the top 8 recruitment marketing strategies to help you hire the best candidates out there, and trigger your growth.

What is Recruitment Marketing? A Recall

Employers use marketing tactics to promote their job openings, establish brand awareness and attract candidates to apply for their open roles. This practice is referred to as recruitment marketing. While earlier, this was all about management – posting jobs to various job boards and distributing the information across offline and online channels– it has now become a full-fledged function of persuasion and marketing. The advent of technology and social media in the past two decades has transformed the recruitment landscape no one anticipated. 

Just like brands aim to target the right consumers with their campaigns – recruiters in the job market strive to reach a large number of good candidates and hire the best among them. Now unlike the consumer market where demand is continuous and supply is in control, the recruitment space doesn’t have any control over the supply. The demand is rapidly increasing and supply is significantly lagging behind.

So, recruiters today have to work exceptionally hard to acquire great talent. Here’s where recruitment marketing and employer brand come into the picture.

Recruitment marketing strategies are aimed at establishing the structure of your employer's brand and boosting brand awareness. It also plays an important role in retaining talent for companies, which is often less talked about – but is vital for growth. Additionally, recruitment marketing should not only help you find people who are searching for jobs. The global workforce consists of only 30% of active candidates. That should clearly show you why attracting and engaging passive candidates – almost three-fourths of the workforce is crucial too.

For a detailed overview of what recruiter marketing is and why it is vital today: Also read Recruiter Marketing 101. 

Now that you are aware of what recruitment marketing is, and why is it vital in the talent acquisition space today, let’s dive straight into the strategies you can utilize for hiring top talent. 

The 8 Best Strategies for Effective Recruitment Marketing

To establish a successful recruitment marketing strategy, you need to take care of numerous dynamics. From different distribution channels, and forms of content to balance between organic and paid campaigns – it needs more analysis than you would think. However, regardless of your industry and hiring requirements, here’s a list of the top 8 recruitment marketing strategies that will help you attract, engage and acquire top talent.

#1 Website Career Page with SEO 

Your website is the primary destination of all the visitors of your business, no matter if they’re customers or candidates. For job searchers, your website should be concisely able to convey what you do, your company mission, the problem you’re solving, who you serve to, work culture and more relevant information. 

A dedicated landing page for careers doesn’t only act as a centralized space for all your candidates but also gives you an opportunity to work on SEO. How? Well, your website career page can be leveraged to attract high traffic by optimizing it for keywords related to employment in your industry. Once you rank among the top few results for specific keywords, candidates searching for jobs would know you’re hiring and hence, you will have more applicants. 

#2 Build Your Employer Brand on Social Media

58.4% of the world's population uses social media. The average daily usage is 2 hours and 27 minutes. Now you know why social media platforms should be the priority in your go-to strategy for recruitment marketing and building a prolific employer brand. It’s the preferred place for candidates to learn more about your organization’s hiring updates, work culture, employee stories, accomplishments, news updates, internal opportunities, events and more. 

Social media platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook have proven to be effective in attracting employees. Over 57% of job seekers search for opportunities on LinkedIn. Especially when it comes to engaging passive candidates , nothing is more effective than organic social media marketing. 

#3 Maintain Positive Brand on Review Sites

Glassdoor, a popular job review site has over 50 million reviews and insights for over 1 million companies. It’s evident that modern job seekers do their research and due diligence before taking up any job. Additionally, 75% of them are likely to apply for a job if the employer actively manages their employer brand. 

As a recruiter, you need to manage your reviews and insights on review sites effectively. A complete profile listing, and active response to reviews on various job listings and social media help in building a positive employer brand.

#4 Maximize Your Reach with Facebook Ads

Facebook is undoubtedly the most powerful platform for paid campaigns. Regardless of your aim to run ads, Facebook helps you reach many people and make them aware of your offering. In the case of recruitment, as a large chunk of candidates hangs out daily on Facebook and Instagram – this can be a great strategy to boost awareness of your recruitment by reaching fresh new audiences.

Performing paid campaigns by targeting job seekers based on their location, current professional role, experience, education and interests – enable precise targeting and helps you connect with professionals fitting well in your ideal candidate persona. 

#5 Leverage Email Marketing to Amplify Your Engagement

Why leave any marketing stones unturned when recruitment has become the driving force of your company? After collecting candidate information, you can directly add them to your email marketing campaign so that they keep hearing from you. Email marketing being 1:1 communication is a fantastic way to convey your message to candidates.

To decide on your email marketing –  identify and analyze what your candidates would be interested in. It can be your company formation or the founder’s story, your brand’s differentiator, achievements so far or growth stories. Once you establish a consistent and continuous email marketing system – prospective candidates would be willing to hear from you and the candidate experience metric will surely improve.

#6 Run Google PPC Ads 

A fascinating 70% of job searches start on Google. SEO is a long-term game. However, hiring requirements sometimes cannot wait for months. But you can still meet your candidates where they are. The best alternative for organic search engine traffic is Google PPC ads. They are fast as well as efficient because you don’t really need to work hard on developing a long-term SEO strategy to establish a brand presence and attract leads for your recruitment marketing.

Especially when you look at it from an ROI perspective, Google PPC ads are cost-efficient and there are high chances that you would get qualified leads through these campaigns. Additionally, it’s not something many employers are practising right now, so it can well prove to be a unique approach attracting numerous eyes.

#7 Video Marketing to Engage Audience 

We are well aware of the superiority of video content in today’s world. In fact, video makes up almost 82% of the overall internet traffic - which clearly tells you why your recruitment marketing should incorporate video too. The best way to convey your marketing message is through video, because of the deep connection that is established. When it comes to execution, you can present your organization's culture, what your company does, behind the scenes of working in your company, and more. The objective is to show your prospective candidates what would it be like while working with you. 

#8 Advertise on Job Boards                           

When people search for certain jobs on job sites, you can make your name show up at the top, in many websites. Promoting your open positions on job boards will help you attract a high number of qualified leads. While posting jobs is free on most sites, a majority of them do offer options to run paid ads on their platforms. Ensure you target the right keywords for your job posts as they will also be found directly through search engines.

Best Recruitment Marketing Examples

We discussed a great variety of recruitment marketing strategies. From video to social media and emails, one thing that brands always need while marketing is creativity. For you to get inspired, we handpicked 4 recruitment marketing campaigns that stood out globally. Let’s take a look.

1. Google’s Iconic Cryptic Billboard 

‍

Google is immensely popular for its complex problem-solving recruiting assessments and interviews. This campaign was carried out in 2004 in Silicon Valley and was aimed at directing qualified candidates who could solve this, where they were presented with another challenge. The completion note on this website was:

“Nice work. Well done. Mazel tov. You’ve made it to Google Labs and we’re glad you’re here. One thing we learned while building Google is that it’s easier to find what you’re looking for if it comes looking for you. What we’re looking for are the best engineers in the world. And here you are.”

It’s just mind-blowing how Google led this campaign to filter potential candidates even before they contacted them directly. The brand is also known for attracting exceptional problem solvers – this campaign highlighted this aspect amazingly.

2. IKEA’s Surprise Hidden in Furniture Boxes

IKEA Australia performed the unimaginable in their recruitment campaign placing secret job descriptions inside every pack of furniture sold. While employers keep worrying about ROI and think it’s necessary to invest for better recruitment, this campaign literally didn’t cost anything. And the results? 4285 applications and 280 new hires in just a few months.

3. Social Media Competition by MasterCard Canada

‍

MasterCard Canada wanted to hire interns, and they decided to go social with this recruitment campaign. They boosted a hashtag - #internswanted among the primary target audience which was college students. The application process needed an idea for a product, app or any other solution toward a cashless future. Applicants had to post their ideas on social media and the reactions, and retweets generated were part of the final consideration. The campaign received 532 qualified candidates, and MasterCard further continued this campaign even after the initial hiring plans were accomplished.

4. Oglivy Found the World’s Greatest Salesperson

The global renown advertisement agency - Ogilvy decided to break the bar with a recruitment marketing campaign no one anticipated. Oglivyone launched this campaign to find out the ‘World’s Greatest Salesperson’. They used a separate YouTube channel for inviting applicants to sell a brick! The campaign was promoted massively on social media to attract potential candidates. And if that wasn't enough – the standout contestants were given the opportunity to attend and pitch at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. 

‍

Boost Your Talent Sourcing with Recruitment Automation

When it comes to sourcing candidates and engaging with them – manual operations could stop you from scaling up and hence, driving growth for your company. Recruitment involves numerous mundane tasks such as continuously managing the talent pipeline, tracking candidate engagement status and monitoring progress analytics. Modern-day recruitment needs critical analysis and these repeated tasks only harm your productivity. 

‍Nurturebox solves your talent sourcing and engagement problem and helps you automate and scale multichannel outreach. It’s now easier than ever to recruit your dream candidate as all the mundane tasks of candidate sourcing management including engagement and progress tracking are covered by our Chrome extension. Get started now to scale your recruiting pipeline while maintaining quality talent sourcing with a personalized approach for candidates.