Does your recruitment campaign strategy need some work? The answer is “yes.” Surprised? There is no “maybe” here, and there is no exception. You see, even the best recruitment campaign strategy needs work.
Whether you are just starting, working off an undefined recruiting strategy, or have a current strategy you think is great, read on to up your ante.
Did you know a good strategy involves using our free applicant tracking system for small business recruiting and hiring? Recruiteze makes finding and acquiring talent easy. Click here to use it for free.
What is a Recruitment Campaign
A recruitment campaign is a strategy that employers use in order to attract and encourage the right people to join their companies.
This type of campaign works just like any other marketing campaign. Its purpose is to differentiate your business from the competitors and attract your target audience, which is a perfect employee for your company.
To do so, you must have a unique and creative recruitment campaign that speaks to your target audience. Without further ado, let’s dive into the basics of a successful recruitment campaign strategy!
The Basics of A Successful Recruitment Campaign Strategy
A recruitment campaign strategy consists of more than sending out mass emails and scanning resumes. You need to set goals for yourself and create habits that help you work smarter rather than harder so you can find and attract the most qualified candidates.
Here is a quick overview of what makes the excellent recruitment campaign:
- Clearly defined goals
- Good research of the company
- Well defined target audience, i.e., optimized candidate profiling
- Networking
- Getting the most out of marketing
- Having a good message
- Evaluation
- Using social media
- Aim for the greatness
Define goals
Goals help us accomplish tasks quicker and more efficiently.
With them, we create actionable, intelligent plans that keep us both productive and motivated. It can take you a long time to make progress without goals because you haven’t strategically planned a way to succeed, and you overlook potential areas for improvement as readily as you could. But when you have set goals, you can have your recruitment strategy working like a finely tuned machine, succeeding and adapting as needed.
If you are just starting out with recruitment goals, try:
- Matching candidates to positions they’ll stay in for a certain length of time
- Increasing the number of candidates who are satisfied with their new position
- Setting a time to try out and master a new onboarding tactic
When doing so, make sure that your goals are SMART. Here is an example of a SMART goal:
“Attract 10 qualified candidates for the content specialist position by the end of the second quarter of 2021.”
- Specific: 10 qualified candidates
- Measurable: Yes
- Achievable: Yes
- Reasonable: Yes, based on the market size, you can attract that many qualified candidates
- TIme-based: Yes, end of the second quarter of 2021.
Once you have defined a SMART goal, it is time to get down to research and creating tactics for making it happen.
Compile relevant information on the company
Your number one priority as a recruiter is to have a comprehensive understanding of your client or the company you work for.
Many recruiters fall for the mistaken impression that you only need to know a limited number of factors to make a hire, such as a salary and job requirements. While these are essential pieces of the recruiting puzzle, they are only a tiny segment of all you need to know.
Think of your work history. How happy and productive have you been at your jobs? What percentage of that happiness came from the salary and what from your job requirements and overall work environment.
Suppose the hours are impossible, the culture utterly incompatible with your work methods, or the company’s long-term objectives nothing like your aspirations. In that case, you aren’t going to thrive in that environment. And what’s the point in hiring someone and putting the client through the cost of a new hire if they won’t stay and be productive for the company?
There isn’t one.
It’s a waste of everyone’s time. The recruiter becomes Sisyphus rolling that rock up the hill, mindlessly throwing hires at jobs without making any real progress for anyone.
Make sure to determine points such as:
- The client’s short and long term objectives
- The company’s culture
- Which employees are already thriving in that environment and why
Optimize candidate profiling
It is all too common for recruiters to mindlessly scour job candidates’ resumes and social media profiles and churn out cookie-cutter emails that wind up in spam folders.
This tactic seems to save you time because it requires less thought, but it is sucking up your valuable time in reality. Imagine trying to shoot hoops with your eyes closed. You’re going to waste a lot of time and energy throwing wild shots into the wind. You might have gotten that shot the first time with your eyes open.
With recruiting, you’ll have your eyes open when you have a well-defined candidate target profile (link to post titled, How Recruiters Can Hone Their Candidate Target Profile).
Create a targeted candidate profile by:
- Taking the information you gather on the client
- Considering what goals the client wants to fill with the position
- Using information you have on which employees are most successful at that client/in that position
- Getting to know the candidates
- Personality
- Approach to goals and challenges
- Preferred management style
- Aspirations
Using our free applicant tracking system for small business recruiting and hiring can also help. Recruiteze is number one in online recruiting software. Keep reading to learn more.
Collect candidate relationships
Build up relationships with potential candidates on an ongoing basis. You may not be able to hire that person for this particular job, but they may be perfect for another client or two down the road.
Clients like recruiters who have a network of viable candidates to choose from. While no one wants to knock being very adept at searching for candidates(it is a rare skill in itself), you can make yourself indispensable if you have this thriving network at your disposal.
Improve candidate relationships by:
- Staying on the lookout for all exciting candidates
- Maintaining periodic contact with promising candidates
- Telling candidates why they weren’t accepted for the current position so they can improve
Apply advertising techniques
Recruiting is very similar to advertising a product or service. You have to know who your target audience is and how to appeal to that audience. Use all the avenues open to you as a means to attract potential job candidates to you.
If you do this correctly, you’ll save a ton of time scouring the internet for candidates because they will come to you! You’ll also be able to use your advertising to weed out the poorer matches.
How to use advertising techniques in recruiting:
- Discover where your target audience is already talking and how they like to communicate
- Go where they are and appeal to their “language.”
- Tailor job advertisements to this market
There are numerous marketing channels you can use in order to get to your target audience. These will vary based on the industry and the type of the job.
Having a good message
Regardless of the industry you are working for; your message must be clear to the target audience. They need to have a clear understanding of what your offer is and why they should choose you and not the competitors.
In order to nail the messaging and convey your value proposition, make sure you answer and consider the following questions:
- Why should they work with you?
- What differentiates your company from other competing companies?
- What do you offer that others don’t?
- Are there some unique benefits that you give to your employees, like healthcare insurance, covered maternity/paternity leave, flexible work hours, work from home? If yes, mention it.
- Did the company win any awards? What is the reputation, CSR? If they have, then make sure to mention that as well.
This is very important to keep in mind if you want your recruitment campaign strategy to work.
Evaluate
No plan is so good that it doesn’t need adapting or growth. There is always something that has been missed and times change so old methods no longer work as well. Designate time to evaluate your recruitment campaign strategy so you can quickly discover room for improvement.
When to evaluate your recruitment campaign strategy:
- After the first few hires with your new strategy
- If you notice a negative pattern
- Every year
- When the job market changes
Keep your evaluations organized by using Recruiteze, the top applicant tracking system for small business recruiting and hiring. Click here to start recruiting online for free.