Nicholas Thomson presents his top seven tips for getting the most out of your recruitment marketing.

Marketing is all about raising awareness. In the context of recruitment, this means raising the awareness of your current positions. The most efficient routes for marketing will depend on your industry and the level of the position.

However, there are three major influences on the level of marketing which you have to take into account. They are brand awareness, employer reputation and recruitment reputation.

Brand awareness

The level of your company’s brand awareness will dictate how hard you have to work to generate interest in your positions. Having a high level of general brand awareness, either in your specific industry vertical or in the general public domain, will mean that you won’t need to spend as much as those with lower awareness in order to get your position noticed by potential applicants.

Employer reputation

If you are regarded as a quality employer who values and invests in their people then again you will naturally attract candidates to your business without having to advertise as heavily for your positions. Word-of-mouth is a very powerful medium, so be prepared if you have a poor employer reputation that you will have to work that bit harder in order to persuade candidates to apply for your positions.

Recruitment reputation

Too often the recruitment process can undo the great work of your marketing activity by generating negative associations if you have poor or inefficient recruitment processes. It is essential that all candidates who apply are treated well and are respected, irrespective of their skill level, in order to prevent potential applicants being discouraged from applying due to the experiences of others.

Here are seven top tips on recruitment marketing:

1. Consistent career site content and adverts
As part of your marketing effort you should be directing interested parties to your career site for further information. It is important that these adverts and the career sites themselves are in keeping with the overall marketing image of the firm. This can be as simple as the language in the adverts through to the imagery used. Keeping it consistent will prevent the candidates from thinking you are trying to pull the wool over their eyes.

2. Different content for different demographics
When marketing your positions, it is essential that candidates can access information about the roles they are applying for. Microsites are a great investment, which provide dedicated environments for your applicants to gain information about your positions. Traditionally organisations look at having one for general applications and one for graduates. However, in order to differentiate yourself, consider separating your jobs further, e.g. engineers, sales and senior management. In the eyes of the candidate, you are indicating your commitment to their job role by providing a dedicated environment and maintaining specific content.

3. Piggy back on corporate advertising
Following on from the above, wherever possible, attempt to piggy back on your corporate advertising, ensuring recruitment information, such as the address of your career sites are visible. This way, you benefit from a little free advertising! Just make sure you have decent content for the applicants when they get there.

4. Try to maintain a year round marketing presence
Depending on your recruitment requirement, wherever possible it is better to avoid contingency marketing whereby you advertise only when you have a need. This is because it is the most expensive marketing approach. Wherever possible try to establish a year-round recruitment marketing presence and to build a talent bank. If you can achieve this, you will see your cost and time per hires tumble.

5. Thinking outside of the box
Think about other alternative areas where you could advertise your positions other than just the standard job boards and newspapers. Other options to consider could be using Google advertising, putting online banner advertising on local information websites or even speaking at careers’ events.

6. Getting the balance right
It is key to ensure that you balance the marketing options based upon your budget and resources. The more diversity you have to your marketing approach, the greater your ability to rationalise which sources are the most cost-effective and therefore identify which of them justify further investment.

7. Job alerting
If you are looking at investing in recruitment software, look for technology which allows you to utilise job alerting on your website. This is a cheap and an inexpensive way of driving traffic to your career site while allowing you to build a talent bank from which to recruit more cost-effectively.

Following the above simple rules should result in you getting more out of your recruitment marketing, therefore adding more value to your organisation.

Nicholas Thomson is solutions development director at Ceridian UK.