The recruitment landscape is changing, and our marketing strategies need to change with it. We no longer have the luxury of cherry-picking from pools of active candidates; candidates choose us when they're ready. So, anything you can do to make sure you’re in the right places, building up your credibility and providing value to the right people is key to any modern recruitment process.
We’ve pulled together a definitive list of marketing channels you need to include in your recruitment strategy if you want to attract candidates in 2022.
1. Google for Jobs
You’ve probably noticed the Google for Jobs blue box now totally dominates the result page for any job searches on Google.
If your job pages aren’t optimised for Google For Jobs, you’ll be missing out on a huge pool of candidates who’ll be heading straight to your competitor’s website instead.
Adding G4J to your recruitment marketing strategy for 2021 will help you attract more candidates, increase traffic to your website and create a better candidate experience overall.
2. Your recruitment website
It’s crazy how much money businesses spend on sending traffic to other websites instead of their own. How much of your marketing budget goes towards job board spend?
If you focus your strategy on pulling candidates into your own website, you’ll have the opportunity to capture their data and your recruitment software will help you begin nurturing them into placements using email, job alerts, etc. so you can track and convert them into placements.
3. Email and job alerts
Encouraging candidates to register or subscribe to your job alerts if your current roles aren’t relevant to them gives you the opportunity to keep them warm and engaged until the right opportunity comes up.
So think about what you’re doing to encourage candidates to subscribe on your website and consider what else you can do to boost your subscribers in 2021. For example, a ‘Send your CV’ button on your homepage is a great way to capture data for candidates who are still looking for the right role.
4. Employer branding
Did you know 75% of jobseekers research a company’s brand before they’ll even consider hitting the ‘apply’ button?
Whether you’re hiring for your own company or on behalf of a client, give your candidates insights into what it’s like to work for a potential new employer by sharing good company culture content like photos of recent team events, getting testimonials from happy employees or writing a blog post to put a spotlight on the department that’s hiring.
Content like this gives candidates insight into what the company is like to work for and makes you memorable. That way, even if a candidate isn’t looking for a new role right now, when they do start looking, it’s you they’ll think of first.
5. Job boards
Job boards remain to be an important tool for boosting visibility of our job ads and should still be part of your marketing strategy in 2021. However, as an industry we rely on them too heavily, even when they’re not producing results.
This year, your job board marketing strategy should be all about analysing the right data, seeing which one are actually making you placements and frequently adapting your strategy as you go along.
Job boards should be used as a tool for boosting reach on roles you feel need that extra online presence, not your first port of call every time you have a job on!
6. Employee advocacy
Candidates trust other candidates and currently employees more than any form of employer branding you splash the cash on. Which is why companies who have an employee advocacy strategy in place are 58% more likely to attract and 20% more likely to retain top talent!
Studies have shown that employee social media profiles have 10 times more engagement than company pages – using current employees as recruiting tools will be all the rage in 2021.
7. LinkedIn
We couldn’t have a list of recruitment marketing tools and not include LinkedIn, could we? LinkedIn has become the backbone of most recruiters’ engagement strategies and when used right, it can make sourcing the right candidates a breeze.
Keep your LinkedIn strategy for 2021 innovative and influential so you stand out from the crowd and attract the hard-to-reach candidates no one else can find.
8. Facebook
Facebook gets 20 billion more visitors per month than LinkedIn, making it a great platform to reach hard-to-find candidates – but only for certain industries.
It has a strong audience for certain markets and demographics (e.g. blue-collar workers and Baby Boomers) and unlike LinkedIn, people are still really engaged with Facebook groups, making it a great channel to find candidates with niche skills.
9. Reddit
With 430 million monthly active users, Reddit’s userbase is massive, but it’s still relatively unknown within the recruitment community. It’s a firm favourite with Gen Z (our youngest candidates who are just starting to enter the workforce) which is usually an indication that a platform is about to blow up as the rest of us catch on.
If you have no idea where to start with Reddit, check out our Beginner’s guide to recruiting on Reddit. It has everything you need to know to start navigating the platform - including the all-important dos and don’ts.
Every good marketing strategy has a solid marketing plan behind it. Download our free guide below - including a marketing plan template for you to use too.
