Recruitment marketing is a key part of building your talent pipeline, especially for emerging growth and start-up companies. It’s a brand attraction strategy that complements other recruiting methods and helps get prospective employees interested in the advantages and benefits of working for your company.

Attract talent with intriguing and inspiring content

Recruitment marketing goes beyond help wanted postings and other talent acquisition tactics to use other means of marketing your business to find talent. It’s an ongoing, comprehensive approach to giving your business more exposure. You can build your brand presence through content like videos or webinars, for example, to attract people to your company. These could be educational webinars promoting the business or inspirational videos about what makes your company unique and a desirable place to work. Through those marketing efforts, your company is engaging with people who might be interested in what you do – and perhaps interested in working for you at some point.

Amplify your company brand and get noticed

For startups and emerging growth companies without the name recognition of larger or more established firms, recruitment marketing is especially important. Marketing tactics play a role in getting qualified candidates to notice the job you want to fill and the company you want them to join. In fact, 62% of job candidates rank employer brand — the company’s reputation as a great place to work — as the deciding factor when applying for a job, according to LinkedIn Talent Solutions.

Recruitment marketing techniques

You can get candidates’ attention by using a number of recruitment marketing techniques. For example, setting up a LinkedIn Career Page complements your existing Company Page and can deploy content including videos. The Society for Human Resource Management notes that a good career site should:

• Support your employer brand by sharing insights to your company culture,
• Sell your company to job candidates,
• Include creative media, such as pictures, graphics and video, and
• Focus on the applicant experience by being easy to use and informative.

Recruitment ads are another innovative opportunity to showcase your employer brand and corporate culture. An effective recruitment ad focuses on what the employee wants, uses easy-to-understand language, and shares your company’s culture, mission and values.

Startups and emerging growth companies need to deploy a comprehensive recruitment marketing strategy because it helps build the company brand by creating constant exposure. This inbound strategy attracts people interested in what you do, even before they need to apply for a job with you. For example, EBC Associates LLC is working with two new clients, Tagline 360 (an integrated marketing communications agency from the Philippines) and Skills Simplified (a newly established corporate training and eLearning company founded in New York). EBC is helping with the initial hiring and business expansion, putting together opportunities for the company to present credentials as part of their recruitment marketing.

“Tagline 360 is excited to bring Filipino creativity to the global market,” says Jovy Rabelas, CEO, Tagline360. “We realize the spending power of the fast-growing and rapidly rising Filipino market. Our dream is to help companies understand this market and be better equipped to serve them.”

“In today’s post-pandemic world, the acquisition of skills spells the difference between evolution or extinction,” says Francis Miranda, CEO & Founder. “We wanted to make the process of acquiring skills as easy as buying your favorite products in the supermarket. Skills Simplified, brings to the table customized training products delivered with creativity, knowledge and fun. We are excited to grow here in the United States and bring our unique style of learning to this market.” Recruitment marketing allows you to build interest in your company as you grow, before you need to hire.

An antidote to panic hiring

Even established companies can be panicked if a key employee leaves. Having a recruitment marketing strategy in place can alleviate that stress and panic because it means you’re continually attracting and engaging with people who are already interested in your company. However, be sure to craft your recruitment marketing strategy carefully. The Forbes Human Resources Council pinpoints three main reasons why most recruitment marketing efforts don’t work. The first reason is that the messaging lacks authenticity (for example, the promised employee experience doesn’t match the reality). The second is that some recruitment marketing messages fail to highlight your company’s unique strengths as an employer. Third, if the recruitment messaging doesn’t sound “human”, but instead more like legal jargon or corporate policy, candidates won’t feel as connected.

Use networking events to build talent pipelines

Don’t overlook networking events as a recruitment marketing opportunity, as these can give your business additional exposure to qualified job seekers and plant a seed of interest among those who aren’t looking for a job right now, but might, over time, become interested in working for or with your company. For start-ups and emerging growth companies, recruitment marketing can offer an advantage in the competition for talent.