4 Lessons Recruiters Can Learn About Attracting Talent From Marketers

As the economy improves and the job market shifts, so too should recruiters’ tactics. Job seekers these days are all mushy-gushy about company culture and career development. It’s no longer realistic to simply post on career pages and job boards and expect that to be enough to attract candidates to your company.

So, what shouldrecruiters do? The answer is simple: They should take a few tips from marketers if they want their candidate-seeking strategies to evolve along with the changing needs of job seekers.

Here are four ways recruiters can learn from marketers:

1. Do Your Market Research

When you’re selling any product, you need to do some research in order to understand your target market. Recruiters are selling open jobs, and their target markets are quality recruits.

The first thing any good marketer does is figure out why a consumer would want or need their product. Recruiters, too, need to figure out why candidates would want their roles.

When it comes to market research for recruiters, there are two main questions they need to answer:

– What are the needs and wants of job seekers? Understanding these needs and wants will help recruiters form value propositions that speak to the right kinds of candidates. There are a lot of resources out there that discuss the current trends and behaviors among job seekers. Recruiters should comb through all available information  in search of new ways to appeal to their desired candidate bases.

– What strategies are competitors using to attract talent? Recruiters need to find out what other companies are doing to reel in candidates so they can not only compete, but also modify their strategies to gain the upper hand.

2. Adjust Your Brand According to the Research

Once a recruiter has conducted research on the target market, they need to use the information they’ve gathered to make adjustments to their company’s employer brand.

Research from Glassdoor suggests that today’s job seekers – millennials especially – care mainly about things like company culture, benefits, and growth opportunities. So, when working on employer branding, recruiters should emphasize things like a company’s values and mission, the organizational culture, and opportunities for advancement at the company. Make it a point to let candidates know they will be valued at the company and that the company is a place where they can have a fulfilling career.

While we’re on this topic, it’s appropriate to mention that Glassdoor’s research found that 96 percent of job seekers say that it’s important to work for a company that embraces transparency and 65 percent of millennials say they are more skeptical of claims made by employers than they were in 2011.

The takeaway: Employers should always be honest about how they are marketing their brands. If a candidate finds out that the brand being marketed doesn’t align with the reality of the company, they will not be happy.

3. Engage in Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing  means bringing consumers – or candidates – to you, rather than going out and searching for them. Inbound marketing strategies make use of content marketing via social media, blogs, infographics, and podcasts to catch the attention of consumers (candidates) and draw them to the company.

To use inbound marketing to engage candidates, employers should utilize all the research and branding explored in points one and two above to create attractive, engaging content that is relevant to the company and its open positions. This content can be housed on a company’s “Careers” and “About Us” pages and spread via social media.

4. Reflect and Adapt

Because the market is always evolving, recruiters need to constantly monitor the effectiveness of their branding strategies. What speaks to candidates today may be outdated tomorrow!

Recruiters should take a look at the channels they are using to engage with candidates. Which ones are bringing in the most (and best) candidates? Invest further in these channels, and ditch the ones that don’t work.

Recruiters should also pay attention to their employer brands. Is the company still struggling to attract candidates, even after revamping the brand based on market research? Then it’s time to reevaluate the brand itself.

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Recruiting is a constant process, and what a company’s recruiting strategy looks like should depend on trends in the talent market. Recruiters would be wise to take some tips from the people in marketing – those men and women really know how to keep up with the market!