According to a recent study with IDC and Cornerstone OnDemand, one of the biggest priorities for HR professionals this year is recruitment and talent development. This comes to no surprise since we are constantly informed of the disruptive technology which affects almost every aspect of our day-to-day lives – including our jobs. The fear surrounding the uncertainty of the future, employment competition and not knowing where technology will go has become a wakeup call for HR professionals and they are pressured to create innovative and impactful recruitment strategies for their organisations.

But these strategies require more than just using the latest technology or shifting around the senior team, they need to be smarter, proactive and make a long-lasting impact on your business. This means that HR professionals need to be thinking outside of the box and collaborating with other departments to ensure the business gains the best talent.

The marketer’s strategy

The primary goal for the marketing team is to develop and maintain the brand’s reputation, driving sales revenue. This is done by capturing the public’s attention with a purpose-driven message to show-off their product or service. Their expertise in reputation management are what brings in new customers and keeps them loyal to the brand – so why not use these skills to attract employees too?

Part of the recruitment process for HR professional’s when looking for new hires in the company is to sell the idea of working at their company, by communicating the right message about the job, the company and the culture. Even small HR communication materials such as job descriptions and candidate email exchanges, for example should always be written in a way which is representative of the company’s values – just like the marketing team would do with a product or service.

Collaboration is key

Both HR and marketing focus on influencing and motivating people so it makes sense for both departments to work together and share each other’s expertise. For HR, this opens an opportunity to learn and ensure that the corporate brand aligns with the employer brand. By developing a well-structured marketing plan within your recruitment strategy, you can cast a wider net and reach and engage a bigger, more targeted talent pool – and it doesn’t have to be an extensive or complicated plan.

Simple tools and tricks, which your marketing team will be familiar with, can help to flesh your marketing plan such as:

• Have a central recruitment dashboard – marketers know all too well about how to track their campaigns and modify them based on the result metrics, so HR should use similar tools to manage their applicants such as CornerstoneOnDemand’s applicant tracking software
• Use real-life employee videos – marketers love exploring different media to reach different audiences and video is one of the best ways to engage people in your content –  filming current employees in their day-to-day job will give candidates an authentic outlook of your company.
• Experimenting with targeted job ads – Paid social campaigns can help to boost brand awareness and reach the right customers so do the same with job roles on sites like LinkedIn.

Whatever you decide to integrate into your recruitment strategy ensure that you think about what the prospective candidate would want out of the recruitment experience and how you are able to make the company stand out from the crowd.

Marketing and HR might seem like very distinct, independent departments at first, but when you put the two minds together, they could become a powerful partnership in recruiting.