It’s easy to plough through hundreds of applications and recruit the cream of the crop, right? What’s not so easy is actually getting hundreds of candidates to apply for your vacancies. This is where your recruitment advertising becomes absolutely fundamental.
Some may argue that your employer brand is what attracts your candidates, and that’s either good enough to do so, or it’s not. But, surely that would mean only a handful of organisations receive the best applicants?
As with everything – it’s about how you market it. It’s about how you package your vacancies. It’s easy to forget that recruitment is a two-way street and, whilst a lot of high-quality candidates will be automatically attracted to global organisations – any company can sell themselves to the best talent. However, you need to know how.
1. Ask yourself “so what?”
Okay, your organisation won an award – so what? How is that going to benefit your candidates if they choose to apply for your vacancy and, subsequently, join you? As I said before – it’s easy to forget that recruitment is a two-way street. Bragging about who you are, and the awards you’ve won, won’t attract the best candidates. Because, well – the award you won isn’t going to benefit them.
Whenever you’re writing job descriptions and summaries of your organisation – empathise with your ideal candidate. What will they want to gain by working in your Finance department? What skills will they acquire? Will they get involved with any important events?
2. Ask your current employees
If you asked all of your employees today what they’d tell their friends about working for your business – do you know what they’d say? Do you know what really wakes them up in the morning and drives them to get to the office early? Could you tell me what makes your employees not want to leave?
If your answer to any of the above is ‘no’ – go and ask them. You should especially ask any employees that are currently working in the role, or a similar role, that you’re in the process of recruiting for.
Doing so will help you to build an honest image of what it’s really like to work for you. This can then be communicated in all of your recruitment advertising.
3. Bring your business to life
To really make an impact with your recruitment advertising – you should be using it to tell a story. Bring your business to life by showcasing the employee culture. Using video as a medium of recruitment advertising shows a true reflection of who you are, and why other employees love working there.
You can use videos when recruiting any demographic. For Future Talent – why not record previous apprentices and graduates talking about their experiences, and why they’re glad they chose to work for you? The beautiful thing about video is that you can physically see emotion. This will engage your ideal candidates, because it gives them something to relate to.
4. Get Social
There are so many different forms of Social Media available nowadays, it can sometimes be quite difficult to choose which one is best for you. In short – they’re all the best for you.
Using a number of different Social Media platforms will help you to reach a much broader audience than if you’re selective with them. In the UK alone – Facebook has more than 32 million users; LinkedIn boasts over 21 million users, and; Twitter sustains a very strong user base of around 20 million people. You should be able to find your ideal candidates somewhere in there – surely?
You can use each and every platform to reach your audience. What’s more important is my next point…
5. Be Consistent
It’s absolutely imperative that you establish a clear message in your recruitment advertising. According to the Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association – “clear brand messages across all recruiting channels and methods helps recruiters match candidates with culture.” Everything about your business should be crystal clear from your brand message, and this should be maintained all of the time.
In some ways – it can be quite dangerous losing this consistency and changing your brand message. Why? Well, by pure coincidence – at the moment in time that the inconsistent message airs, it could be found by hundreds of potential applicants. And, to make matters worse – the majority of those candidates could be completely wrong for your business.
It’s not worth the risk. Maintain your consistency, and keep your brand message the same in all of your marketing.
It’s a lot more difficult than you think to attract your ideal candidate to apply for your role. In April of this year, according to Trading Economics – there were 770,000 jobs available. It’s highly likely that a fair amount of those will be looking for the exact same candidate you are. You need to be making yourself stand out – not just in your employer branding efforts, but in all of your recruitment marketing efforts.
