Recruitment Marketing Resolutions You’ll Want to Keep in 2017

Chances are you’ve heard of buyer’s remorse, but have you ever heard of “holiday remorse?”

According to US News & World Report, holiday remorse is “the guilt driven-response you have to holiday excess that becomes the catalyst for those New Year's resolutions and intentions.”

Before doing research for this article, I was completely unaware of the term used to describe the catalyst behind New Year’s resolutions. But it got me to thinking, “if overindulgence during the holidays is the driving factor for many resolutions, then what would be the catalyst for making, and sticking to recruitment marketing resolutions?”

Recruitment Marketing Remorse

The answer must be recruitment marketing remorse--or the feeling of guilt you experience when you know how critically important recruitment marketing is to your businesses success, but for whatever reason your HR or talent acquisition team was unable to hit its goals in the prior year.

Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Many are feeling recruitment marketing remorse at this time of the year, and the reasons as to why aren’t incredibly complicated.

Recruitment Marketing is Har

Then let’s address the 800-pound gorilla in the room--or the reason why you’re not accomplishing as much as you feel you should with recruitment marketing. Put into the simplest of terms, recruitment marketing is hard.

And it’s difficult because it demands a lot from HR and talent acquisition professionals. From budgeting, planning and strategizing, to execution and management, recruitment marketing is a full-time job--that at times can require a fully-staffed team. Without the proper planning, tools and personnel, recruitment marketing could risk stretching your department thin, leading to lower productivity and greater costs.

But there’s a way to make it easy, and these New Year’s resolutions can help get you started on a path towards recruitment marketing success.

Recruitment Marketing Resolutions to Keep in 2017

Before getting into the resolutions, there’s one last point that needs to be made. Studies show that only about 8 percent of those who make New Year’s resolutions actually follow through to a point of success. Those who do succeed, do so because of careful planning that recognizes achievable results.

Like any other resolution, you’ll benefit from these most when pairing them with the necessary preparation. That said, let’s take a look at some Recruitment Marketing Resolutions you’ll actually want to keep in the year ahead:

• Think of recruitment as marketing: The unemployment rate at the end of 2016 sits right at 4.7 percent and, despite fluctuations, it’s a number that has consistently dropped over the last five years. This means it’s getting more difficult to make hires as talent pools shrink, but jobs continue to be added to the economy. With fewer opportunities to make hires, it’s important to look at recruitment as one of many marketing campaigns. In doing so, you’ll be marketing your brand to both active and passive candidates and therefore increasing your chances of landing top talent when those opportunities present themselves.
  

• Make more data-driven decisions: One of the main reasons recruitment marketing strategies fail is because they lack the analytics and reporting needed to make decisions based on data rather than intuition. In the year ahead, you should consider adding necessary reporting and analytics tools to your strategy for two reasons. First and foremost, data-driven recruitment marketing can help you distill your efforts into a science that can be measurable, predictable and repeatable. Second, the ability to effectively measure your efforts against your goals will help you stay on tasks with these recruitment marketing resolutions.

• Better understand your full recruitment funnel: For many corporations and staffing agencies, one major obstacle they face is a broken recruitment funnel. Data for the top of the funnel comes from the jobs you advertise online, and therefore normally lives in those vendors’ dashboards. Bottom-of-the-funnel data normally lives within your company’s applicant tracking system (ATS). In connecting the top and bottom of your funnel with your advertising spend, you’ll be able to get a more holistic view of how your recruitment marketing strategy is really performing. It can also help you unearth some incredibly important insights, like your current cost-per-quality-applicant or cost-per-hire/placement.

As you reflect on 2016, remember that it’s OK to feel some recruitment marketing remorse. It shows that you understand the importance of this business driver and are ready to take the next steps needed to turn it into a major success.

If, after reading this blog, you’ve decided that you need some help with taking next steps, we can help.

Contact Recruitics today to speak with one of our in-house recruitment marketing experts about your recruitment marketing resolutions for 2017.