Is It Time For Recruiters To Think Like Marketers?

The vital step in recruitment is to provide an exceptional candidate experience.

About 46% of recruiters acknowledge this by seeing recruitment more as marketing than an expansion endeavor. However, this also means that more than 50% of hiring managers are unaware of the benefits of recruitment marketing.

The employment market of today is highly reliant on digital platforms, with employee testimonials and overall company reviews making a big difference in hiring activities. About 75% of the workforce comprises passive job seekers, which makes marketing an essential recruitment strategy.

If your company is new, brand recognition is essential to generate maximum awareness among the candidates. The organizations realizing this fact are going the extra mile to convince potential employees about job prospects and job satisfaction. Regularly posting job perks, videos of company operations, and employee polls are thus increasing in popularity.

In today’s tech-savvy world, while looking for jobs, candidates have multiple options to shuffle. The COVID-19 may have stalled hiring activities temporarily, but things are going to change soon. If you want your company to be on the priority list of potential candidates, it is high time you start thinking like a marketer.

Let us explain all the benefits of this shift in attitude.

Also Read: Hiring Secrets of Most Successful Companies

Increase in brand visibility
Traditional recruiters often have to bear a lot of hassles to convince potential candidates to join the workforce. Even if your company has a good market reputation, how will the candidates know? When the recruiters start thinking like marketing professionals, they enhance the company’s brand visibility to earn genuine followers. These followers can then promote job vacancies to their references and create a chain of eligible candidates. You may also ask the hiring managers to develop a robust strategy and market the jobs as products to the potential candidates.

Better candidature
With proper marketing strategies, the recruiters are able to target the right audience for the jobs. They also do not have to go through random applications to find suitable ones. As the jobs get more visible mostly to the target audience, the hiring managers receive more applications from eligible candidates. The entire process gets faster, with lesser costs per hire. Further, the recruiters may be able to get effective leads by using marketing analytics tools. Hence, thinking like an efficient marketer can help streamline the hiring process and reduce time and costs to a great extent.

Improved candidate experience
About 79% of job seekers use social media. The recruiters should reach them where they are the most available. No marketing endeavor can succeed without social media, so the recruiters may make the most of it to fill the vacancies. It will reduce the efforts of the candidates, thus enhancing their job-seeking experience. When they get the job, you can rely on their word-of-mouth promotion in the future. Marketing the job as a product can help recruiters customize content and improve communication. It can further help build trust and develop stronger relationships between candidates and recruiters.

Employer branding benefits
People are more likely to apply to brands and not mere companies. Thereby, employer branding is an essential factor to attract and hire talent in the industry. If the job is regarded as a commodity, its promotion will take a front seat in the hiring process. Recruiters should focus on highlighting the perks of the job and the benefits of working in the company, thus enhancing employer branding. And with a recognized brand, the efforts of hiring are automatically reduced.

Enhanced diversity
There is little doubt that a diverse workforce is a more productive one. Besides, the organizations with a higher diversity make about 15 times more profit than their peers. By marketing the jobs to a large section of people on digital platforms, companies can increase their chances of building a diverse workforce. Hiring people from different ethnic and racial origins also improves employer reputation. It may help the company make its way up the job seekers’ priority list. And it is what every employer wants, right?

Measurable metrics
The marketing results are measured with the help of a range of tools and technologies. By considering the hiring activities as a marketing endeavor, recruiters can measure its success with those tools easily. It can help them create a recruitment budget by calculating the costs per hire. Hence, the time required for such necessary, but additional work, can be reduced.

Wrapping it up
Now is the time when the hiring managers need to treat the candidates as customers and ensure maximum satisfaction. Once the company grows a reputation as an amazing recruiter, finding the right talent gets easier and hassle-free. But a lot of steps need to be undertaken to achieve that goal. From creating a robust social media presence to involving existing employees to improve branding efforts, the recruiters should not leave any stone unturned.

Let the candidates decide who to choose, but as an efficient marketer, you can at least make them consider your offer through a transparent and honest approach. In the end, it is the impression you create that matters. Best of luck!