Recruitment Marketing
The Skills and Technologies That Matter
Borrow from the Best
Few people would make a connection between fast-food restaurants and banking. And yet many of the iconic associations we have with modern banking (such as drive-thru capabilities, weekend hours, and lollipops in the lobby) came directly from one man’s experience of running Burger King restaurants. That man is Vernon Hill.
Hill founded Commerce Bank in 1973, dubbing it “America’s Most Convenient Bank” and building it on key features of successful retail franchises—notably, the convenient hours of fast-food restaurants. The catch was, supporting longer hours was expensive; that’s why other banks didn’t do it. Hill decided the only way to pay for the longer hours was to offer customers lower interest rates. He gambled that customers would value the convenience of longer hours and friendly, helpful tellers over higher interest rates.
He was right. As a result, Hill grew from one branch with US$1.5 million in capital in 1973 to over 450 branches by 2008, when Commerce Bank sold to TD Bank for a whopping US$8.5 billion.1
Commerce Bank didn’t owe its success to whole-cloth innovation; it was successful because Hill took the principles of convenience and customer service well-known to one industry (fast-food operations) and applied them to a new business (banking).
As HR leaders, we have a similar opportunity in front of us. In a candidate-driven market, finding the best talent to fill critical jobs isn’t as simple as opening a job requisition and waiting for the applicants to roll in. Today, recruiting is a multifaceted operation to compete for the attention of both active and passive jobseekers. And we aren’t just competing with other recruiters at other companies; we’re competing with social influences that demand our candidates’ attention. This is especially true with passive candidates, who may be interested in working with your company but are also interested in the latest developments on Twitter, Instagram, their podcasts, and their regular subscriptions.
Arresting attention in a candidate-driven market is hard .
But there’s good news. A well-established profession has already developed best practices for earning and arresting attention: marketing.2
Recruitment marketing isn’t a new field. But new tools make it a serious and robust complement to traditional recruiting strategies. Just as Hill applied fast-food strategies to banking, we can apply marketing strategies to recruiting that create demand and attract the right candidates at the right time.
Recruitment Marketing: What Is It?
The practice of finding, attracting, engaging, and nurturing talent before they become a candidate.
Recruitment marketing
noun /rɪˈkruːtm(ə)nt/ /ˈmɑːkɪtɪŋ/Just as marketers promote the value of a product or service to attract customers, recruiters highlight the value of their company to attract highly qualified applicants.
In a thriving economy, the competition for talent is fierce. No longer can companies expect passively to secure a new crop of hires. Rather, candidates need to be wooed and courted. They need reasons beyond a paycheck to work for your company: proven social responsibility,3 meaningful work, and reasonable work/life solutions. And much of the time, it falls to HR to market our companies as prime workplaces for these choosy candidates. That marketing is often referred to as
Employer Branding: What Is It?
The process of creating an emotional connection between a company (the employer) and a potential candidate.
Employer branding
noun /ɪmˈplɔɪ.ər/ /ˈbræn.dɪŋ/But an employer brand can’t be dictated; it must be experienced. How candidates feel about our companies is what matters, not what we say about them.
Creating this emotional connection is the key to recruitment marketing. And we do this by nurturing talent from first contact through onboarding.
A Match Made in Heaven
Of course, talent acquisition takes a lot of time. Recruiters are already inundated with applications, and sifting through them to find the best candidates—let alone engage passive candidates that haven’t applied—is a full-time job. So how can already-busy HR teams implement a successful recruitment marketing strategy?
HR leaders are investing in recruitment-marketing technologies that are coupled with their applicant-tracking systems. This integration allows recruiters to use information gleaned from their candidate pools to reach and attract new candidates. Having all this data in one place streamlines the recruiting process and helps recruiters keep conversations relevant, timely, and fresh.
But while companies are purchasing this powerful recruitment technology, they may not be using it to their advantage.
Imagine having access to a rich, ready, responsive talent pool—only to ignore it.
Essential Skills in Recruitment Marketing
Successful recruitment marketing revolves around people—the relationships between recruiters, candidates, and HR leaders. And that stems from your employer brand.
What are people saying about our brand?
How are we positioned in our market?
How do candidates feel about possibly working for us?
Answering these questions won’t happen with technology alone; it requires creativity, curiosity, and a willingness to embrace the unknown.
Candidate Experience Redefined
Hill redefined banking by leaning on the concept of “retailtainment;” the use of ambience and emotion to enchant customers and put them in a mood to buy. He created not just a bank that people wanted to go to; he changed the idea of what banking should be. He redefined the brand image of banking.
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“Every great company has redefined
“Every great company has redefined
the business that it’s in.”6
—Vernon Hill, Founder, Commerce Bank
As recruiters, we have the same opportunity before us. We have a chance to create delightful experiences that make job-hunting easy. Even, perhaps, fun.
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Why do we force candidates to create accounts before they can apply to a job?
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Why do we make it difficult for candidates to tell where they are in the application process?
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Why do we simply turn candidates away, rather than suggest similar jobs where they’d be a great fit?
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Why do we allow job-hunting to be a soul-sucking venture?
If Hill could redefine banking as something families do on weekends with their kids, then we can recreate recruiting as an opportunity for talent to be matched with a perfect-fit role.
Good recruiters are matchmakers. We connect the right people to the right jobs where they can grow and develop over time. And if we’re really good, we engage and enchant them even before they know they want a new job.
Talking with Tech
As a consumer, you're probably familiar with Progressive Insurance’s spokesperson, Flo. Her quirky demeanor and bright red lipstick are immediately identifiable, especially in a sea of stale, dull insurance advertisements.
While the Flo character built the brand and changed the image of insurance in consumers’ minds, the company decided on a different tack to bring fresh new talent into their company. They combined their brand with ideas taken from the book and movie
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“We know that, when you’re a kid and even an adult, ‘work in insurance’ isn’t on your list of dream jobs. We want to get ahead of people before they start looking for a job, so they’ll consider us in their search when the timing’s right.”7
—Erin Hendrick, Talent Search Leader, Progressive Insurance
Ready and Waiting
Marketers understand that interest is not the same thing as intent. A person might be interested in a product or service but lacks the budget or authority to buy. The same is true in recruiting. A person may be curious about or interested in your company but may not be ready to make a move. Perhaps the right role isn’t currently available, or maybe they’re still comfortable in their current job.
But recruiters can’t wait for great candidates to garner intent. We need to coax them along their journey.
When a potential customer is interested but not necessarily ready to buy, marketers don’t ignore those buyers. They nurture them. They keep them interested through regular touches, such as sending them news stories and updates that align with the buyers’ interest and the company’s product or service. This way, marketers keep their brand top of mind for interested prospects. When they’re ready to buy, they’ll think of those brands that engaged them first and, most importantly, best.
We can do the same thing with our candidate pools. We shouldn’t limit our touches to job alerts. We should:
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Keep them apprised of what’s happening in our company or industry
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Nurture them with content that sparks curiosity and conversation
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Create a relationship that makes candidates feel like they belong, even before they are onboarded
Create a Community of Partnerships
Today’s workers see their employment as a partnership, and they expect their employers to prioritize their career development. Recruiters can foster this relationship early. When we create a community around our recruiting efforts that conveys best practices, trends, industry challenges, and more, our talent pool comes to think of us not just as potential employers but thought leaders. And today’s top talent wants to be associated with companies that are leading the charge toward a new future of work. They want to be the vanguard of a new age.
Modern recruitment platforms that offer candidate relationship management allow us to build relationships with both active and passive candidates. By tracking and recording candidate engagement and interaction, recruiters can start to understand what’s working, who’s interested, and how to target similar prospects.
Internal candidates aren’t left out in the cold either. Tools and technology help increase mobility by amplifying available career paths and keep employees in the know about open good-fit positions. And since our current employees are often our best candidates for other jobs, keeping them abreast of (and excited about!) new openings means more opportunity for business growth and competitiveness.
Ready to Revolutionize Recruitment?
Talent marketing is an exciting place right now, and we have an opportunity to change what it looks like. We have the chance to bring a little fast-food razzle-dazzle to recruiting. And in doing so, we have an even greater opportunity: to create fans.
When asked what he does better than anyone, Vernon Hill responded that he creates fans. “My experience is that fans join your brand, stay loyal, and bring their friends.” 8 And this is precisely what we hope to do as recruiters; to create a fanbase that wants to work for us and that will advocate for us to their networks.
By combining the best practices of traditional marketing with gumption and the right technology, we have an opportunity to redefine the candidate experience, build relationships, and create true fans. Our employer brand can become just as powerful and profitable as a consumer brand, allowing us to find, nurture, and onboard the right talent to help our companies soar into the future.
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Bill Taylor, “New Business Models Are America’s Most Undervalued Export,” Harvard Business Review, November 11, 2010, hbr.org/2010/11/americas-most-undervalued-expo.
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Jobvite, “The Tipping Point: The Next Chapter in Recruiting,” Jobvite 2018 Recruiter Nation Survey, jobvite.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/2018-Recruiter-Nation-Study.pdf.
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Deloitte, “The Rise of the Social Enterprise: 2018 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends,” www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/insights/us/articles/HCTrends2018/2018-HCtrends_Rise-of-the-social-enterprise.pdf.
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Josh Zywien, “Recruitment Marketing in 2019: The New Black Hole (and How to Fix It),” ERE Recruiting Intelligence, March 7, 2019, ere.net/recruitment-marketing-in-2019-the-new-black-hole-and-how-to-fix-it/.
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Ibid.
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Bill Taylor, “New Business Models Are America’s Most Undervalued Export,” Harvard Business Review, November 11, 2010, hbr.org/2010/11/americas-most-undervalued-expo.
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Steve Olenski, “Taking Corporate Recruiting to a Whole New Level,” Forbes, January 2, 2018, forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2018/01/02/taking-corporate-recruiting-to-a-whole-new-level/#5636f09c4706.
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Vernon Hill, “Secrets of My Success: Vernon Hill, Chairman of Metro Bank,” Evening Standard, December 7, 2017, standard.co.uk/business/secrets-of-my-success-vernon-hill-chairman-of-metro-bank-a3713206.html.