How Marketing Can Help Recruiting Attract Talent

You finally find the perfect candidate for an open position that you need to fill.  

BUT…

Your competitors offer the candidate the same exact offer you have.  

How do to stand out these days? With a little help from marketing down the hall!

I’ve had the opportunity to interview 32 professional recruiters to see how recruiting and marketing best work together to attract talent. Here is what I found so far: 

Takeaways: 

1. Companies Need to do More to Stand Out 
2. Recruiting Welcomes Help from Marketing 
3. Employee Ambassadors are Crucial to Recruiting 
4. A Strong Employer Brand Helps Attract Talent
5. Emphasize Employer Brand on Job Posts and Review Sites 

1 – Companies Need to do More to Stand Out

Over 90% of the recruiters I interviewed said that it is difficult to gain the attention of candidates due to the competition in the job market.  

This makes sense for many reasons. A big one is the fact that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate held at 3.5% in December 2019.  

Another reason is that the bar for being an employer of choice is higher, and includes factors you may not be considering. Is it clear your company has a purpose beyond making money? Do candidates find social proof that validates your commitment? 

Are employees online reinforcing your employee value proposition (EVP) with stories to prove it?  Or is it only recruiters trying to break through the digital noise? 

This indicates investing in employer branding is important to stand out. Why? According to Kununu, 75% of job seekers consider an employer’s brand before even applying for a job.  

It’s clear candidates now have more options, and higher bar for getting their attention. Companies need to be more creative to stand out from the competition.

2 – Recruiting Welcomes Help from Marketing 

78% of recruiters I interviewed said that marketing is extremely helpful for recruiting.  Then I asked the question - What can marketing do to help recruiting become more successful?

Their answers: Being more on active social media to create awareness and sharing evidence of the employer brand and employee experience.  Candidates want to know what your company is about, and marketing teams have complementary skills that can help recruiting.  

If you are not present – and actively sharing stories – it can signal to candidates, whether accurate or not, that you are not focused on the employee experience. 

With so many online platforms out there, candidates now have access to an abundance of information and reviews.  According to BuiltIn’s article, Understand Recruiting 3.0,  the average candidate will read about six reviews about your company before deciding if they’ll apply. 

With all the research tools they have access too, you need a strong online presence that tells an accurate story of the brand.

So where can recruiting and marketing get content that accurately tells the story of their brand?

Employees!

3 – Employee Ambassadors are Crucial to Recruiting

94% of recruiters I interviewed agreed that having employee ambassadors are very important for recruiting today.  Why? Because it helps them get access to more employee referrals.  

Then I asked what employees could do more to help recruiting. One common answer is being knowledgeable about open positions and sharing them in their personal networks. Marketing can help capture content by and about employees and the impact they make on your company. They are more likely to share this content, and when they do, everybody wins! 

According to CareerArc, Job seekers rank current employees as the most trusted source for information about a company. Why not supplement your outreach with employee ambassadors? 

Something you can do if you can’t give them access to employees, consider letting ambassadors share personal success stories associated with the employee experience.  

Take a look at page 27 on how Enterprise Rent-A-Car is using employee referral programs and content to attract top talent. GoodSeeker 100% agrees that employee stories paint a picture of what success looks like at a company. There are lots of ways to make collecting authentic employee generated content for recruiting and employee referrals easy.

4 – A Strong Employer Brand Helps Attract Talent 

A company with a good culture and strong employer brand can attract new employees faster and even reduce marketing and recruiting costs. Companies with positive employer brands can get up A company with a good culture and strong employer brand can attract new employees faster and even reduce marketing and recruiting costs. Companies with positive employer brands can get up to TWICE as many applications compared to companies with negative brands.  69% of candidates wouldn’t take a job at a bad company, even if they were unemployed.  

Benefits of having a positive employer brand: 

• Help retain employees and recruit new ones 
• Reduce costs 
• Your employees become your ambassadors 
• Improves employee engagement

One way to build the employer brand is to capture and showcase all the great things your employees do at work, especially small things that align with the values and behaviors that are important to your culture. They happen every day at work.  

You’ve really got to share more examples of what makes your company unique if you want to appeal to candidates these days.  

According to 93% of recruiters I spoke with, showing all the positive things your employees do is very valuable because it helps promote the brand, showcase company culture, earn business from clients, and get more employee referrals (aka The Holy Grail of Recruiting). 

Show off all the success your company has accomplished - from the inside out!

5 – Emphasize Employer Brand on Job Posts and Review Sites

40% of recruiters I spoke with want hiring managers to give them a clearer understanding of positions and the value prop they can offer in order to market positions better.  

Consider communicating employer brand stories in job postings and share employee success stories on review sites and your careers page. It’s a great way to stand out from competitors.

However, you MUST already have a healthy company culture in order for it to work.  You want to be transparent and have the messaging aligned with what your brand represents. 

Here is an awesome article on 5 tips to help build a winning employer brand by Kathy Steele, Forbes Council Member.

Final Thoughts

Attracting talent is hard these days due to the competitive job market. The abundance of data also leads candidates to form a solid opinion of your employer brand before you ever talk.

Marketing can help recruiting break through the noise by raising awareness of the employer brand.  With marketing and recruiting working together, your chances of success will increase. 

“Your employer brand is primarily tied to the experiences of your workers and what they have to say about your organization.” quoted from an article written by Sarah Lybrand.  People want to work with people that are similar to them.  Having a positive employer brand will get you ambassadors leading to more referrals. 

With that, I want to thank all the recruiters who helped me put this together.  Your insight and knowledge are important for all companies to know to help the business to grow in the long-term.  At the end of the day, the employees are the ones that get it done.