Learn how digital marketing recruitment can give you a competitive advantage in hiring
The focus of recruitment marketing and hiring has always been on managing the process. In the world of the big job boards where large numbers of resumes are delivered quickly, the challenge used to be sorting through all the resumes to filter out the ones that didn't fit to find the gem in the list.
But that has all changed in a scarce labor market. Now instead of relying on an ATS to manage the crowd, the need for filtering has been replaced by the need for better recruitment marketing.
In a scarce employee market, the biggest problem with that pile of resumes is that they are also being sent to your competitors, making your job offer, pay, and benefits a commodity to be shopped by prospects.
Standing out is not an option if you want to build a competitive hiring process.
Our alternative go-to's have been hampered by all the changes that began in 2020 (job fairs, in-person networking), and strategies like hiring events are not viable. Direct recruiting is the most expensive way to find and hire new employees.
With the digital acceleration that began in 2020, and with only 7% of the U.S population who aren't on the internet, job seekers are starting their search online and often finishing it with a virtual meeting.
It is widely believed that the adoption of online tools was advanced by 10 years in only 3 months during 2020.
While the job boards want to own this space entirely and force you to rely only on their services, competing digitally for recruiting is a key to building a hiring advantage.
A digital approach to recruitment allows you to reach those that others do not
A large percentage of the potential hires are not in the active job market. Everything that happens in a big job board is focused on 3%-10% of job seekers. The other 60% who are viable prospects (and often the best hires) have to be reached some other way.
The ability to reach those that others cannot reach digitally makes your recruitment highly competitive and can move you out of the "job as commodity" world of job listings into efficient recruiting. Efficient digital recruiting is far more cost-effective than traditional recruiting and reaches beyond even the use of social media by recruiters.
Recruiting has to be profitable too. You can easily overspend on recruiting and sacrifice the profit that your company needs.
Even the word-of-mouth process has gone digital
When someone hears from a co-worker that your company is a good place to work, the search then moves digital. Jobseekers check reviews, inquire in their social network, look at the LinkedIn profile of leadership and inevitably end up on the company website. Unfortunately, most company websites have emulated job boards and don't have much of an employer brand story to tell online.
If the only way that your company seems to stand out is with a single referral, you'll fall back into hiring invisibility amidst the sea of other companies and job listings.
Standing out online as a company isn't optional. It's survival in a scarce job market.
Standing out depends on the right digital marketing recruitment strategy
If your approach to digital marketing is simply to add your pitch alongside all of the others who pay for ads or special listing placements, the outcome will be an increase in the level of noise to your prospects.
Increasing numbers of digital ad recruiting and "pay to play" approaches are making all of those who participate less visible by increasing the digital volume until it is almost deafening to the prospect.
When everyone is making claims about wonderful culture and great support, those claims become meaningless to the job seeker because everyone is making them, and prospects cease to believe they actually mean anything.
It is virtually impossible for a staffing-focused company to grow profitably unless they stand out digitally as an employer.
Digital marketing relies upon defining what makes you different, not doing what everyone else is doing. Standing out is not an option, but it is the essential ingredient that allows you to build a hiring advantage.
The heart of digital marketing recruitment
Digital marketing for recruitment requires that an employer brand story has been developed and that it is unique within its own market. You can get an education on sameness by visiting the career pages of multiple competitors to see just how many times the same company attributes and values are trumpeted.
If they are all saying it, then it's as if no one is saying it at all.
Important things like culture and values become something with little or no value because everyone can claim them. It's in the employer brand story that prospects find something credible to move them toward you instead of toward the ocean of other nondescript opportunities.
The opposite is true, too. If a company can get ahold of its own unique story, and learn to share it effectively, it provides a recruiting advantage that few others can compete with. Employer brand stories provide a competitive advantage when salary and benefits are all about the same.
