A holiday countdown of talent acquisition’s top tips to improve your employer branding, social recruiting, recruitment advertising, and more!
‘Tis the season of giving, and we would like to gift you with some recruitment marketing cheer. We asked our talent acquisition experts a variety of questions we often hear from clients, and they responded with insightful best practices, must-dos, don’ts, and more!
These tips cover a range of topics from employer branding and recruitment advertising to social recruiting and recruitment media plans. Without further ado, dive into the 12 days of recruitment marketing tips to learn how to kick off the new year attracting top talent:
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“Every TA leader I speak with tells me the same thing: we need quality, NOT quantity.”
- Ryan Christoi, EVP of Client Strategy, West 
TRANSCRIPT: One of the key metrics that we've been helping customers define and measure is quality applicants. Every TA leader I speak with tells me the same thing: we need quality, not quantity. So the best organizations have been picking a disposition in their hiring process and defining that candidate as a quality applicant. An example would be a candidate who makes it to a hiring manager review or one that is brought in for an interview. It’s going to look different in every organization, but the point is to put a stake in the ground and to measure against that. It allows us as the marketing partner to then figure out which sources are getting us the greatest yield in terms of quality application flow and then double down on those tactics. We’d love to talk to you about defining quality applications in your organization.
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“To be able to take control of your brand and to have that kind of visibility in front of a large, diverse audience is very important.”
- Kelley Powers, VP of Marketing Strategy
TRANSCRIPT: So, one element that I think all recruitment media plans should have is a Glassdoor profile. I know that sounds really specific. But I also firmly believe it's important because I think to be able to take control of your brand and to have that kind of visibility in front of a very large, very diverse audience is very important, and super inexpensive. Having a profile allows you to take control of the narrative around your story in terms of who you are as a brand and as an employer, and it allows you to respond to sentiment that might not agree with what you believe your company has for values and the truth that they hold forth, and it also allows you to feed jobs in and get in front of a job seeker and a whole new audience that in large part might not be looking for jobs on indeed. So, get your Glassdoor profile.
“I always encourage my clients to respond to employee reviews online because it serves as another opportunity for you to engage with your current, former, and prospective employees.”
- Melissa Van Dyke, Social Marketing Strategist
TRANSCRIPT: I always encourage my clients to respond to employee reviews online, because it serves as another opportunity for you to engage with your current, former, and your prospective employees. Your employees may leave you good feedback, bad feedback, ugly feedback, but the point here is that you're able to take a stance when you respond. It's really great to respond to these positive employee reviews because you're able to thank your employee for taking the time to leave your review, you're able to highlight their accomplishments, and really showcase the value that your employees bring to your company. Responding to these negative reviews gives you a chance to tell your side of the story. Try not to be too defensive here, but you're able to maybe give a little bit more light on the subject or to be able to share ways in which your company is working to improve the situation and improve the workplace environment for all.
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“Programmatic job advertising is using a rule set to put the right job in front of the right job seeker.”
- Jonathan Zila, EVP of Client Strategy, East
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“We work with a variety of vendors that will tap into their own internal database and provide SMS messages and email marketing and other vehicles to get people to come to your event.”
- Jenny Skundrich, SVP of Client Strategy
TRANSCRIPT: One recruitment marketing tip for high-volume hiring clients is to look at event promotions for hiring events. These are really great cost-effective ways to have vendors do all the legwork and outreach for you. We work with a variety of vendors that will tap into their own internal database and provide SMS messages and email marketing and other vehicles to get people to actually come to your event. Generally, an event promotion starts anywhere from about 10 to 14 days before the event, and these are really, really great for your customer service call center type roles. We've also had really good success with nursing jobs as well. So I would certainly recommend doing some things around event promotion for your types of high-volume needs.
“We’ve used ‘jobs with no experience’ and ‘training provided’ in the ad copy for [Google search] and have had great success.”
- Kat Guseva, Paid Search Strategist
TRANSCRIPT: I've been helping various clients over the years to hire recent graduates and college students, and I've been writing Google search compliance for them. A few keywords that we used that had great success were: “jobs with no experience” and “training provided” mentioned in the ad copy. I think this is very important when advertising jobs for recent college graduates because they might be feeling uncomfortable applying for a job where they’re not sure if experience is required or not. So this reassurance is important for them, and these might be the keywords that they could be using while searching for a job, so it's very important to capture them as well in the search.
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“Landing pages are a critical part of recruitment marketing...If you have a diversity and inclusion initiative, having a landing page around this initiative to focus the candidates’ attention on it will give them an opportunity to learn exactly what you want them to know.”
- Adam Fudala, VP of Strategy
TRANSCRIPT: It's really hard to get candidates to do what you want them to do. So how do you make that easier? Landing pages are a critical part of recruitment marketing. So what is a landing page? A landing page is a place where you can give candidates information about specific objectives that you want them to take. For example, if you have a diversity and inclusion initiative, having a landing page around this initiative to focus the candidates’ attention on it will give them an opportunity to learn exactly what you want them to know.
“From the top level all the way down, you want to get everyone's input on why they chose to work there, why they stay there. Having that data and that valuable input will help you build a true authentic employer brand.”
- Michelle Sargent, VP of Sales
TRANSCRIPT: Hi, I'm Michelle, and today I would like to give you one tip for starting a successful employer branding project. It is so important that you are willing to do the research, the research that it takes to find out why your existing employee population has chosen to work for your organization. From the top-level all the way down, you want to get everyone's input on why they chose to work there, why they stay there. Having that data and that valuable input will help you build a true authentic employer brand.
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“When it comes to social advertising, one major tip is understanding your goal so that you can properly measure against a particular metric that supports that goal.”
- Emily Tanner, VP of Marketing
TRANSCRIPT: Okay, one social advertising tip. I would say one big tip when it comes to social advertising is understanding the goal of the advertising campaign. For instance, if the goal is to support employer brand awareness as an awareness initiative, your goal might be based on impressions and reach and maybe not about clicks and click-throughs. On the other hand, if your goal is engagement, you really do want to look at those clicks and click-throughs, maybe not so much Impressions and reach. Again, if your goal is around applicants and your advertising may be a specific job, then your metrics are going to be different. So when it comes to social advertising, one major tip is understanding your goal so that you can properly measure against a particular metric that supports that goal.
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“We have recently started running Gmail ads for a few of our hourly and retail clients...and we’ve seen really high click-through rates and good levels of engagement.”
- Kirsten Reeves, Client Strategist
TRANSCRIPT: We have recently started running Gmail ads for a few of our hourly and retail clients. What a Gmail ad looks like, is it pops up at the top of your inbox as a sponsored email and we've had great success with it so far. We’ve seen really high click-through rates, good levels of engagement. So we are excited to run a few more of those, continue optimizing, and also look at what other types of clients and what industries it might be a good fit for.
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“To be effective, the most important thing is to get all of your employees, not just the leadership, involved and excited and supporting programs that promote diversity and inclusion.”
- Jon Jewell, Regional Enterprise Sales Manager - SaaS
TRANSCRIPT: There's so much that goes into creating an effective diversity and inclusion program and it really shouldn't be seen as meeting a quota or checking a box. It's a culture. To be effective, the most important thing is to get all of your employees, not just the leadership involved and excited and supporting programs that promote diversity and inclusion. Many companies recognize milestones in civil rights, they have diversity hiring initiatives, but it's important that your people get involved in cultural events and pride parades and helping disabled veterans and combining your diversity initiatives with your social responsibility and projects. It's only then that you'll really have a true diversity and inclusion program and that makes your team feel more like a family instead of just being part of a company. It'll improve your culture not to mention your employer brand.
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“A site should always be Informative, Inviting, and Intuitive.”
- Adriana Kevill, SVP of Marketing
TRANSCRIPT: When I think about career sites and candidate experience, I think about the Triple-I. A site should always be informative, inviting, and intuitive. Let's think about it. Informative—all the information about what it's like to work for your company should be there, as well as, what the hiring process looks like. Intuitive—you should make it really easy for the visitors to know what you want them to do next and where to find the information. Inviting—this has to do with employer brand. Your EB should be very obvious and all over the place, and hopefully, your site should be sticky so the candidates would be curious to find new information throughout the site.
Check out (and share!) our 12 tips playlist here, or click the video below to watch them all:
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There you have it! We hope you enjoyed the 12 Days of Recruitment Marketing Tips and gained some valuable talent acquisition insights. Spread the recruitment cheer by sharing these best practices with your co-workers, boss, or posting them on social for the whole world of TA to enjoy.
Happy holidays from our recruitment marketing family to yours!
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