In the current job market, recruiting is proving to be especially challenging for many employers. Today’s employment marketplace spans a variety of platforms on and offline, and the competition for talent is stiff. Employers are turning more and more to digital marketing to boost their recruiting efforts and target the best candidates for their open positions. Here are a few things to consider if you’re looking to up your recruiting game.
Find The Right Platform
There are so many platforms where employers can reach potential new hires, it can be hard to decide which ones are the best for your candidate search. Platforms range from specific job boards such as Indeed and ZipRecruiter to the social media giants like Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as dozens of specialized career sites, some with paid registration or membership required, some free. The first step towards a successful digital recruitment campaign, particularly when looking at paid platforms, is to identify which platforms have the best chance of reaching your next great employee. To determine the right platform, you’ll want to evaluate if the people you’re hoping to target are actively looking for work or could they simply be passively watching for a new opportunity. Knowing where your next hire is and how they’re seeking a new role is the perfect place to start before you determine your next strategy.
Hit That Target
Once you identify which platforms are right for the jobs you’re posting, it’s helpful to understand how their advertising works, for example, how much is the minimum daily spend and how can you optimize that spend to target the specific candidates that would be the best fit for the job you’re advertising. This will also help determine how much of the overall paid digital marketing recruitment spend should go towards building awareness about your company on the chosen platforms or the position available at the top of the funnel, and how much to spend to target the bottom of the funnel for the active candidates who are ready to apply.
Both LinkedIn and Facebook have targeting capabilities for geographic regions, industries, and interests to help streamline the paid digital recruitment effort. When targeting specific audiences in LinkedIn, for example, you can optimize by job title, function, industry, company size, and experience levels. On Facebook, you can detail targeting by including relocation in the overall budget for the paid campaign, which would limit targeting to a certain geographical area, or specify that the position is entry-level to post to a younger demographic. However, it’s important to be aware of the job posting guidelines, and follow them closely, for social platforms as any violations can potentially alter your posting permissions.
Get Creative
For your paid campaign to be truly effective, it needs to also connect with the potential employee in a way that compels them to act and apply for the position. It’s best to have a dedicated landing page to which the paid ad can link that’s not only clear, and concise, but also creative and communicative as well. The landing page that will convert to leads and applications will also be creative in visuals and copy, and clearly outline the benefits of working for your company in a way that’s enticing. This is where you can make your company and the role you’re looking to fill truly shine! The more you can share about your company culture and the tangible and intangible benefits of the job you’re promoting, the more inclined those individuals will be to connect.
Other Tactics
Most online job seekers are savvy enough to seek out information on your company and the position you’re offering in other ways beyond paid platforms. In tandem with social ads, it’s wise to maintain a robust organic presence as well. The content on your website and social platforms can paint a strong picture of who you are as an organization and what it might be like for a new hire to join your team. Further, you can boost your general awareness with additional paid advertising strategies that cast a wider net such as pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns for general search rather than platform restricted targeting. Another way to digitally reach job seekers is through your own database via email marketing that highlights referral programs and incentives for employees to assist with your company recruiting efforts. Additionally, ensuring your team is ready to manage the intake of leads, and handle the communication with those leads, either directly or through email automation, can help further your success through the decision-making process when attracting and hiring the best candidates.
Test and Track
Once you have your overall strategy outlined, and your digital marketing in place, it’s important to test, measure, and adjust your campaigns based on results to maximize your efforts. Based on your desired goals, you can test creative approaches across chosen platforms early in the campaign to see which ones are producing the desired effect, such as raising awareness of your open positions, or prompting candidates to apply. Once you identify what’s working best with your digital ad strategy, adjust accordingly to get your best return on investment.
With a robust digital ad strategy for recruiting that combines paid efforts with complementary organic content and other digital touch points, you can cut through the online noise of your competition to find the best candidates for your organization.
At GRIT, we help clients from many different industries with their digital recruiting efforts. If you’d like to learn more about how we help our partners find the best candidates for their teams, reach out! We’d love to talk about developing a custom strategy for you.