Infographic: When talent acquisition draws inspiration from marketing and lead generation techniques (lead nurturing, inbound marketing, etc.)
The line between client acquisition and talent hiring is increasingly fine as new marketing-inspired tools and recruiting practices take on a central role. Talent acquisition practices are changing, and seeking out candidates and hiring them can be as difficult as seeking out new clients. Let’s explore how marketing practices apply to recruiting.
For years, recruiters have been using marketing techniques without really knowing it. Sharing a job vacancy is already a form of marketing in some sense. But for a few years now, these advertising-related practices have been supported by other marketing techniques that are fully compatible with talent acquisition strategies.
What do we mean by “recruiting marketing”, “inbound recruiting”, and “talent nurturing”?
Before getting down to the nitty-gritty part of this article, let’s take a look at some of the terminology you might come across in the industry. Different types of techniques can contribute to improving talent acquisition strategies. Although they are all intertwined, it’s worth picking through them to understand what they mean and how they are implemented.
Embrace recruitment marketing to communicate your company culture
Recruitment marketing aims to convince talent to take interest in your company and, ideally, submit an application. Your company’s employer brand and the way your employer brand is presented to (potential) candidates are important aspects of recruitment marketing.
According to a Glassdoor study, 69% of candidates say they wouldn’t accept a position in a company that they consider badly reputed, which is why it is essential for companies to look after their image by communicating on their identity, culture, values, commitments, etc.
Recruitment marketing is therefore primarily focused on value-added content production to convince candidates that your company might be able to offer them what they’re looking for. Recruitment marketing also takes into account the way this content is distributed, through social media platforms or career sites, for example.
Leverage inbound recruiting to attract and turn talent into candidates
Inbound recruiting is to talent acquisition what inbound marketing is to customer acquisition. In addition to attracting talent through appealing brand content, inbound recruiting takes care of the next stage of the process, i.e. converting talent into candidates. To achieve this, content production still plays a crucial role.
But inbound recruiting is more about sharing useful content regularly with talents at key moments, via the right communication channels. To succeed, it is essential to have extensive knowledge of your target audience and segment them according to profile type (for example).
The ultimate goal is to offer each talent personalised content. Nowadays, this is one of the only ways you’ll manage to convince a talent they are appreciated for who they are and get them to submit an application.
Inbound recruiting involves the following stages:
- Attract (strangers/visitors)
- Convert (candidates)
- Hire (employees)
- Retain (ambassadors)
Loyal employees play an important role in talent acquisition strategies because they can become ambassadors to your company.
Adopt talent nurturing to look after your candidate relationships
Talent nurturing is a sub-technique of inbound recruiting. It includes actions which contribute to building relationships with candidates and looking after these relationships until the candidates become employees.
According to Forrester Research, the decision to submit an application is considered to have been influenced where a candidate receives positive exposure to the brand 8 times.
Nowadays, people’s attention span is increasingly short, both in their private and professional lives. As consumers, this is also true, which is why it is important to break down your strategy into several steps.
And that’s just what talent nurturing allows you to do. Talent nurturing helps you design candidate journeys in order to offer quality experiences thanks to:
- Meaningful content sent in the form of sequential emails based on the person’s profile;
- Invitations to attend webinars or relevant job fairs;
- Fun contests aimed at presenting what the company does;
- Ambassador programmes to highlight employees and their career journey and showcase the company’s assets;
- Etc.
Talent nurturing works best if you make sure you’ve already sorted your talent profiles within your candidate pool. For instance, your talent pool may contain categories that gather candidates:
- Who share the same profession;
- Whose application was turned down for a previous job vacancy despite being of good quality;
- Whose studies end in a year’s time meaning they will be available to hire (for a placement or an internship);
- Who paid a visit to the company at an industry-specific job fair;
- Etc.
This segmentation increases the relevance of the different subjects that will be raised with each candidate.
And the proof is in the numbers in showing that inbound marketing strategies that push quality content are more likely to attract and retain.
Content marketing is 3 times more efficient in generating leads in addition to being 62% cheaper.* Applying content marketing to recruiting strategies is therefore an efficient way of improving recruiting processes and reducing hiring costs.
*according to a Demand Metric study
Talent nurturing involves cultivating both active and passive talent
Adopting a long-term “seduction” policy is what sits at the heart of lead nurturing, and the same applies to talent nurturing. Once contact has been made with a talent, or a profile has been identified as of potential interest (through talent acquisition tools, for example), you need to nurture and take care of them.
Recruiters can no longer just wait for applications to come in, in the same way as a company doesn’t simply wait around for customers to show up, without deploying any marketing strategies to attract them. You need to go after candidates and convince them. Above all, you mustn’t exclusively seek out active candidates.
Passive candidates make up a talent pool of high potential
As the name suggests, passive candidates are candidates that aren’t active job seekers. Seeing as they are already employed, they don’t keep an eye on job boards nor do they apply to job vacancies. But that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t leave their current employer should the right opportunity arise. It’s up to you as a company and recruiter to create this opportunity. And seize it!
According to LinkedIn, potential candidates considered by companies are made up to 79% of passive talents. 59% say they keep a tab on the job market. These figures show how importance it is to nurture these types of profiles in order to secure more candidates, especially in the wake of the current talent and labour shortages.
According to Clear Company, inbound recruiting (including through talent nurturing) can generate a 75% increase in passive candidate conversion rates.
Thanks to nurturing cycles involving several touchpoints, candidates are guided through every step of the way. Little by little, they get to know the company better, appreciate it and grow interest in it. Once a candidate is sure the company is right for them, they’ll be able to apply for a position as soon as a vacancy that suits their profile is published. The nurturing cycle often ends with an invitation to apply for one or several vacancies.
Regaining talent trust
Consumers have become increasingly wary of what they buy and the services they sign up for. This can also be said of talents and candidates on the labour market. Candidates often abandon recruiting processes. It’s a shame for recruiters to lose them on the way. This is why talent nurturing is so useful compared to one-off time-consuming actions that don’t carry any future prospects.
Talent nurturing also allows more time to explain and practice transparency in order to simplify recruiting processes and make people want to get involved.
Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) as the best tool for talent nurturing
Profile segmentation, nurturing cycles, events management, personalised email planning and sending, etc. – the management aspect of talent nurturing can seem complicated and time-consuming.
The first thing you need to know is that although the preparation involved in this type of strategy can be lengthy, once it is established, automation can save lots of time.
Even more so if you leverage useful tools that can help you deploy and automate all the nurturing actions you need. As far as recruiting is concerned, these tools are available in the form of CRM (Candidate Relationship Management) systems. The initialism “CRM” also applies to the field of lead acquisition, but the initials don’t stand for exactly the same concept. In marketing, the -C in CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management.
Tools like these make managing talent pools easier, help introduce automation into talent nurturing campaigns, and recruiters save time and increase productivity.
It’s worth noting that choosing the right tool for your company can be a decision for recruiters to make, based on their needs. Talent Operations in your HR Team may also be in a good position to make this decision because they’re the ones who will have assessed recruiters’ needs with performance in mind.
Find out more: 4 key takeaways on Talent Operations expertise
Prospect and talent journeys are practically the same
Recruiting-relevant marketing strategies that improve the candidate experience
All these techniques converge towards the ultimate goal of offering better candidate experiences.
In the same way as marketing and sales teams work hard to satisfy their customers, recruiters leverage techniques such as talent nurturing to offer more qualitative candidate experiences.
This can be achieved through:
- Consideration for the specificities of each profile to avoid inundating candidates with irrelevant information;
- Transparency with regard to the company and its recruiting processes by taking the time to explain;
- The image candidates will have of a company that goes the extra mile to care for them;
- The time recruiters save thanks to automation tools, reducing time-to-hire;
- Etc.
Candidate satisfaction is key, even for those who don’t end up joining the company, because in the case of long-term recruiting strategies that use marketing-inspired expertise, candidates who are initially turned down may be taken on as talented employees further down the line.
