Recruitment marketing: The ultimate guide for 2024

Over the last 30 years, recruitment hasn’t changed that much.

Sure, you can reach candidates on LinkedIn instead of calling your way through. Sure, there is a ton of technology to support you in that. But the fundamental process has stayed very much the same.

Recruitment marketing is on its way to significantly change that. In this article, we will walk you through what recruitment marketing in 2024 means, and what you need to understand to be successful at attracting talent.

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What is recruitment marketing?

Recruitment marketing is the strategic and tactical approach used to attract, engage, and nurture talent before they apply for a job. Unlike traditional recruiting, which is reactive and kicks in after a candidate applies, recruitment marketing is proactive. 

It's all about building a strong employer brand and creating a compelling Employee Value Proposition (EVP) to attract the right candidates to your organisation.

In the Wonderkind Recruitment Marketing Loop discussed later on in this article, this involves a dynamic, candidate-centric model that focuses on continuous engagement at various stages—awareness, consideration, action, and even re-consideration. 

The aim is to not just fill roles but to build a community of engaged, satisfied candidates who could be your next star employees whenever you need them.

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What are the main methods of recruitment marketing?

Recruitment marketing is a multifaceted discipline that employs various methods to attract and engage candidates. 

Here are some of the main methods, particularly in the context of the Wonderkind Recruitment Marketing Loop:

1. Employer branding

This involves creating and promoting a compelling employer brand that resonates with your target candidates. It includes showcasing your company culture, values, and benefits through various channels like your career site, social media, and even job descriptions.

2. Content marketing

Creating valuable and engaging content is crucial for attracting candidates. This can range from blog posts about your industry to employee testimonials and behind-the-scenes videos that give candidates an inside look at your company culture.

3. Social media recruiting

Platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and TikTok offer unique opportunities to reach candidates where they already spend their time. You can share job openings, company news, and other engaging content to attract and interact with potential candidates. Best of all: you can even automate social media recruiting. 

4. SEO and SEM

Search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) can help increase the visibility of your job postings and career pages. By optimising for relevant keywords, you can attract more organic traffic and even run targeted ad campaigns to reach more candidates.

5. Programmatic advertising

Programmatic job advertising involves using data and algorithms to automate the distribution of job ads across various online platforms. It allows you to target specific demographics, ensuring your ads are seen by the candidates who are most likely to be a good fit.

6. Email campaigns

Nurturing candidates through email campaigns can keep them engaged and informed. Whether it's a monthly newsletter or a series of automated emails for new subscribers, email is a powerful tool for building relationships.

7. Virtual and in-person events

Job fairs, webinars, and other recruitment events offer opportunities to interact directly with candidates. They also allow you to showcase your employer brand in a more personal setting.

8. Chat/conversational interfaces

In a candidate-first world, removing friction from the application process is crucial. Traditional lengthy forms are a significant source of such friction. 

Chat interfaces can replace these cumbersome forms with interactive, real-time conversations that guide the candidate through the application process, making it user-friendly and engaging.

9. In-app lead forms

Platforms like Facebook offer in-app lead forms that allow you to easily capture information from interested candidates without requiring them to leave the app. 

This reduces friction in the application process and increases the likelihood that a candidate will complete the form.

10. Nurturing through email campaigns and gamification

Once you've captured leads through chat interfaces or in-app forms, you can nurture these potential candidates through targeted email campaigns or even gamification. 

Email campaigns can provide more information, share relevant job openings, or offer valuable content. 

Gamification can involve challenges, quizzes, or interactive content that educates the candidate about your company culture and roles, all while keeping them engaged.

11. Analytics and data-driven decision-making

Using analytics tools, you can track key performance indicators (KPIs) like source of hire, time to fill, and candidate engagement levels. 

This data can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of your recruitment marketing strategies, allowing you to make informed decisions.

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What does a recruitment marketing strategist do?

A recruitment marketing strategist is responsible for planning, executing, and optimising an organisation's recruitment marketing efforts. 

They work at the intersection of HR, marketing, and technology, leveraging various recruitment marketing tools and platforms to attract and engage potential candidates.

Key responsibilities:

• Employer branding: Develop and promote an attractive employer brand, aligned with the company's values, culture, and goals.
• Content strategy: Create compelling content that resonates with the target audience, including blog posts, social media updates, and audio-visual job ads.
• Candidate experience: Optimise the candidate journey, from the first touchpoint to the application process, ensuring it's seamless and engaging.
• Data analysis: Use analytics to measure the effectiveness of recruitment marketing strategies, making data-driven decisions to improve ROI.
• Technology utilisation: Leverage modern technology like Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), programmatic recruiting, and AI-driven analytics to automate and optimise recruitment efforts.
• Community building: Engage with potential candidates through social media, email campaigns, and events, nurturing these relationships to create a pool of interested and qualified candidates.

In the context of the Wonderkind Recruitment Marketing Loop (more on that below), the strategist ensures that candidates remain engaged at every stage of the loop, leveraging technology and data analytics to offer value and build long-lasting relationships.

By understanding what recruitment marketing is and what a recruitment marketing strategist does, you're well on your way to:

• Modernising your recruitment efforts 
• Attracting top talent
• Building a workforce that aligns with your organisational goals

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Biggest benefits of getting started with recruitment marketing

1. Competitive edge in a reactive market

Most companies still follow an ad hoc approach to recruitment, only starting the hiring process once a position opens up. This reactive strategy can lead to longer time-to-hire periods and may not always yield the best candidates. 

Recruitment marketing offers a proactive solution, giving both staffing firms and direct employers a competitive edge. 

By building a strong employer brand and engaging with potential candidates before a position even opens, you can ensure roles are filled with high-quality candidates in the shortest time possible.

2. Importance for company growth

Unfilled positions can lead to stagnation in company growth, a situation that becomes even more critical in an uncertain economy. 

Recruitment marketing helps you build a robust talent pipeline, ensuring that you have a pool of qualified candidates ready to consider for future roles. This proactive approach is essential for both staffing firms and direct employers aiming for sustainable growth.

Especially in a fluctuating economic landscape, the importance of a streamlined, efficient recruitment process is often overlooked. Companies may not realise the long-term impact of unfilled roles or a misaligned hiring strategy until it's too late. 

Recruitment marketing serves as a strategic safeguard, allowing you to adapt quickly to market changes and keep your growth plans on track.

3. Increased candidate engagement

Through methods like content marketing, social media recruiting, and email campaigns, you can keep potential candidates engaged with your brand, even if they're not actively looking for a job right now.

4. Improved candidate experience

By leveraging modern technology like chat interfaces and in-app lead forms, you can offer a seamless, frictionless application process that candidates will love. This enhances the candidate experience, increasing the likelihood of attracting top talent.

5. Data-driven decision-making

Recruitment marketing allows you to collect valuable data on candidate behaviour and campaign effectiveness. This enables you to make informed decisions, optimising your strategies for better results.

6. Cost-effectiveness

Programmatic advertising and other automated methods can make your recruitment efforts more cost-effective, ensuring you get the best return on your investment.

7. Strong talent pipeline

Effective recruitment marketing helps you build a robust talent pipeline. This means you'll have a pool of qualified candidates ready to consider for future roles, reducing time-to-hire and recruitment costs in the long run.

8. Employee advocacy

A well-executed recruitment marketing strategy can turn your current employees into brand ambassadors. Through employee referral programs, you can tap into their networks to find high-quality candidates more efficiently.

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Why the traditional recruitment marketing funnel is dead

The illusion of the linear journey

Traditional recruitment funnels have often been linear, mimicking the AIDA model of Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action. But let's be real, the candidate journey is anything but linear, especially in today's digital age.

If ecommerce has taught us anything, it's that the consumer now holds the power. We've shifted from a company-centric model to a consumer-centric one, where life-changing decisions are made with a click of a button. 

The shift from company-centric to talent-centric recruitment marketing

Ecommerce has been a game-changer in showing us the shift from a company-centric to a consumer-centric model. 

Today, you can buy anything from sneakers to Teslas with a single click, all because these industries have successfully removed friction from the buying process. 

Behaviour has evolved; people are willing to make significant life choices online. So why is the recruitment process lagging?

The digital age has empowered people to make significant life decisions with just a few clicks, yet the recruitment industry seems stuck in a time warp. 

Traditional hiring methods are still mired in employer-centric processes—lengthy application forms, obligatory motivation letters, and mandatory sign-ups for outdated ATS systems. 

These cumbersome steps are designed to unburden the recruitment organisation but do nothing to ease the candidate's journey. As a result, we're missing out on the chance to form lasting, meaningful relationships with potential hires. 

It's time for recruitment marketing to adapt and evolve, embracing a more dynamic, interconnected approach that puts the candidate—our 'consumer'—at the centre of the experience.

The infinite loop of candidate engagement

The conventional recruitment funnel is becoming increasingly outdated in today's fast-paced world, where community, career growth, and personal development are intertwined. 

Today's candidates don't simply start at the top and trickle down a linear path to employment. They enter, exit, and re-enter at various stages of their career journey, based on their individual needs and aspirations. 

Also, the traditional funnel often results in one-off hires, missing the opportunity to cultivate enduring, meaningful relationships with talent.

At Wonderkind, we're flipping the script. Instead of forcing candidates into a rigid, linear recruitment process, our success is built on empowering them. We tailor our strategies around their behaviours and needs, putting the power back into the candidates' hands. 

By doing so, we're not just filling roles; we're building communities of engaged, satisfied candidates who could be your organisation's next star performers.

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The Wonderkind Recruitment Marketing Loop

Overview

The Wonderkind Recruitment Marketing Loop is a dynamic, candidate-centric model that replaces the traditional recruitment funnel. 

Inspired by ecommerce strategies, this loop focuses on continuous engagement rather than a linear path, allowing candidates to enter, exit, and re-enter at various stages. Here's how it works:

The Recruitment Marketing Loop stages

Omnipresent awareness

In traditional models, awareness is the first step. But in our loop, awareness is a constant.

Whether it's a passive candidate watching a video about our vibrant company culture on LinkedIn or an active candidate reading an industry blog post we've shared, every touchpoint serves to increase awareness and keep candidates engaged in the loop.

Strategies:

• Share audio-visual job ads on non-traditional platforms like Facebook and TikTok.
• Regularly update blog posts and articles that resonate with your target audience.
• Use SEO strategies to make your content easily discoverable.

Consideration & re-consideration

Candidates may exit the loop for various reasons, such as receiving another offer or a change in career focus. However, if your brand has made a lasting impression, they are likely to re-enter the loop when circumstances change. This is the "re-consideration" stage.

Strategies:

• Retargeting campaigns to re-engage candidates who have interacted with your brand but not applied.
• Automated follow-up emails for candidates who started but didn't complete the application process.
• Personalised content that addresses the candidate's career goals and potential fit within your organisation.

Action, interaction, & reaction

When a candidate decides to apply, their journey is far from over. This action leads to various interactions and reactions, such as sharing their application experience online, referring a friend, or even becoming a part of your employer branding efforts.

Strategies:

• Streamline the application process to make it as frictionless as possible.
• Implement an employee referral program to encourage current employees to become brand ambassadors.
• Use automated surveys post-application to gather feedback and continuously improve the candidate experience.

Keeping the loop spinning

The key to the Wonderkind Recruitment Marketing Loop is continuous engagement. By leveraging modern technology like programmatic recruiting and AI-driven analytics, you can keep the loop spinning, offering value at every stage and building long-lasting relationships with candidates.

Tools to keep the loop spinning:

• Applicant Tracking System (ATS) for streamlined application and follow-up processes.
• Programmatic recruiting / Talent Attraction Technology for targeted job ad distribution.
• Recruitment marketing automation tools for efficient candidate nurturing and engagement.

By adopting the Wonderkind Recruitment Marketing Loop, you're not just filling roles; you're building a community of engaged, satisfied candidates who could be your next star employees.

Ready to ditch the linear recruitment marketing model and get started with modern Talent Attraction Technology and the Wonderkind Recruitment Marketing Loop? Get in touch and book a demo to meet Wonderkind, below.