Tag Archives: Recruitment Marketing

Investing in Recruitment Marketing?

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“Over 70% of companies are planning to invest in solutions with recruitment marketing capabilities over the next 12 months.”

This is one of the opening quotes in Aptitude Research’s Recruitment Marketing Index 2017, a comprehensive review of the world of recruitment marketing. It’s fascinating.

The report, focused on providing essential information to enable the understanding of the recruitment marketing vendor space, doesn’t rank providers. Rather, it shines a light on the space and provides some organizing principles for understanding what’s happening in this dynamic and competitive space.

The report starts with an overview of the top 10 trends in recruitment marketing – and they may not be what you expect:

  1. The need for greater simplicity

  2. The opportunity in the mid-market

  3. The cost is justified

  4. Artificial intelligence is a must-have

  5. A different set of metrics

  6. ATS satisfaction increases with an RMP investment

  7. Services take two forms

  8. Recruitment marketing is an experience solution

  9. Companies want more use cases

  10. Inbound marketing is a differentiator

Early in the report, Madeline Laurano, Co-Founder & Chief Research Officer, defines a recruitment marketing platform as a platform that “manages outbound sourcing, inbound recruitment marketing, and employer branding. A recruitment marketing platform includes capabilities that maintain the employer brand, foster candidate relationships, and enhance messaging and communication efforts. The most critical capabilities in these systems include: Career Site, SEO, Employee Referrals, and Talent Communities/Networks.”

Simply put, it opens the top of the funnel and manages the interactions with talent in a robust and clear way that creates rather than destroys relationships.

The top four priorities of talent acquisition leaders when contemplating investments in their practices are these:

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So, providers need to ensure that these four bases are covered. Thanks to Aptitude’s research, you can clearly understand which providers offer which capabilities. It is not surprising that improving the candidate experience is the top of the wish list – and a capability that is no long a “nice-to-have” feature.

The report is hefty, at 90 pages, but it’s a primer on recruitment marketing. If hiring more people – and more people who fit your organization better – is part of your remit, this report will give you the foundation you need to begin to put your strategies and plans in place. As usual, the Aptitude Research team has done a great job of both analyzing a critical part of the market, as well as  educating the HR professional on providers to consider.

 

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Filed under Aptitude Research Partners, China Gorman, Data Point Tuesday, Madeline Laurano, Recruiting Technology, Recruitment Marketing

Underutilized Recruitment Marketing Tactics

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A recent SmashFly publication, the SmashFly Recruitment Marketing Report Card for the 2016 Fortune 500, came across my desk a couple of weeks ago. And if you’re involved at all in recruiting talent, you’ll find it interesting.

It’s easy to assume that the Fortune 500 are among the most effective recruitment marketers out there. But if you made that assumption, you’d be wrong! This report card is pretty interesting. SmashFly, the recruitment marketing automation software company, has pulled together some fascinating information and graded some of the most well-known employers in the U.S. on their recruitment marketing. It’s pretty fascinating stuff.

In addition to grading each of the employers – by the way, only 4% of the 500 received an A! – this analysis also provides an abundance of good and best practice examples from some of the most admired companies around. The three categories that caught my attention were Best Practices, Emerging Practices, and Untapped Practices.

The Untapped (used by less than 20% of the Fortune 500) Practices are fascinating:

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SmashFly points out that 20% of the Fortune 500 send regular communication to leads – but only 1% send content other than job alerts. The opportunity to build lasting relationships by sending other types of content – like company news, employee stories, and other valuable subjects – exists for all employers. An obvious quick win would be to automatically send email reminders to candidates who haven’t completed their applications. This simple automated outreach can enable a 15% increase in job applications!

The opportunities for greater recruitment success seem obvious, and include some of these:

  • Fortune 500 employers are doing well with SEO, but 51% (!) don’t optimize their job landing pages
  • 48% of the Fortune 500 never send an email to leads in their database after the initial confirmation email
  • Referral calls-to-action on job descriptions are under-utilized, missing big opportunities to drive referrals from both employees and candidates
  • Only 14% of Fortune 500 employers have a blog or other resources about their application processes

Examples of effective recruitment branding from employers that are highlighted in the report include companies like Exxon Mobil, Intel, Lockheed Martin, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Pepsico, HP, Marriott International, and Comcast.

This report contains recommendations that you can begin to implement today to increase your recruitment marketing success. You may not have the budget of a Fortune 500 recruitment department, but you can certainly begin to adopt best and untapped practices to become more effective and to have a wider choice of talent.

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Filed under China Gorman, Data Point Tuesday, Fortune 500, Hiring, Recruiting, Recruitment Marketing, Smashfly, Talent pipeline