Successful Recruitment Campaign: A Step-By-Step Guide

What is a Recruitment Campaign?

A recruitment campaign is a planned and organized strategy to identify, encourage and attract the best candidates to occupy the open positions within the organization.

The goal of the recruitment campaign

A recruitment campaign helps to develop an interest in the job openings, reach out to prospective candidates, and inspire them to apply for the open roles. Its purpose is to attract your target audience and stand out among the competitors.

Recruitment campaigns strategies

Recruitment campaigns may involve different strategies to draw in job seekers, some of which are:  

1. Job boards: Utilize the power of job boards like indeed, glass door, etc., to post job openings.  
2. Social media: Use social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., to post open positions.  
3. Employee Referrals: Advise current employees to refer people who could be a good fit for open jobs.  
4. Job fairs: Participating in career fairs and seminars, markets the company to potential candidates so that they are more curious to apply for the open positions.  
5. Internships: Give opportunities like internships to undergraduates so they can get trained for future open positions.

But what makes the recruitment campaign an excellent one?

The basics that make any recruitment campaign stand out are discussed below.

1. Goals are defined: Create precise, actionable, and smart plans. Strategically plan a recruitment strategy that works like a skilfully crafted tool, succeeding and adjusting as needed. Set goals using the SMART rule.
2. Use the magic of advertisement: The first and foremost step is to know your target audience. How do you appeal to them? You can use various marketing channels depending on the organization and job opening. Send them a clear message about what you expect from them and what they can expect.
3. Power of social media: Use LinkedIn, a perfect place to get to know and reach out to a job candidate, or other social platforms such as Facebook or Twitter.
4. Evaluate: No strategy is 100% accurate. There is always room for improvement. Take out time to evaluate your recruitment campaign strategy and cover the weak areas so that you can recover quickly.

Research on recruitment marketing

Increase brand awareness by adopting marketing principles and strategies to attract candidates. After reading the above recruitment campaign strategies, you can utilize them to a great extent depending on your job and the company's requirements.  

According to SHRM, companies can generate 3x more applicant leads by incorporating recruitment marketing into their hiring strategy than those who don’t. It ultimately leads to a 100% higher close rate on applicants.

Moreover, recent research by Allegis states that by utilizing a recruitment marketing campaign, companies can save up to 40% on total talent costs.

Additionally, recruitment marketing has the potential to draw in around 50% more qualified candidates.

Great hiring campaign ideas

There are several ideas for hiring campaigns that can come in handy and attract top talent. Some of them are:

Social Media challenges:

Create interesting challenges to encourage individuals to collaborate and build teams with their colleagues and share their experiences on social media.

Define the values that drive this company:

Represent the company’s culture and values. Showcase teamwork and how the company promotes innovation and diversity.

Hashtag game:

Use relevant hashtags such as #Teamwork-makes-the-dream-work! or #TeamChallenge etc., on social media to grab the attention and motivate people to share their experiences.

Flex your company’s activities:

Create a wide range of content like videos, posts, blogs, and website pages to highlight employee stories and group activities.

Get the show on:

Host events, seminars, discussions, presentations, etc., so that potential candidates can meet with current employees, put forward their queries, and gain further insight into the company culture.

Offer prizes:

Offer prizes for the best participation in events, challenges, or discussions to encourage people to participate more in the future and help spread the word about the challenge.

How can companies create original recruitment marketing campaigns?

Following these steps is all it takes to build a killer recruitment campaign:

Step 1: The first step is to analyse and evaluate the challenges faced by your HR team while reaching top talent.

Step 2: The next step is to find solutions to overcome those challenges and gather ideas. Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience, and communicate with them in a manner that resonates with them.

Step 3: Wrap up all your ideas and devise a recruitment marketing strategy, including the mediums you’ll use to publish it, such as the company’s career website and social media platforms.

Step 4: Make sure the campaign is relatable to your target audience and calculate the cost accordingly.

Step 5: Lastly, you are good to launch your campaign! Get ready for your job ad and campaign components to get all the attention it demands.

Simple but efficient recruitment marketing ideas

1. Standout from the rest - Be Unique
2. Communicate with candidates throughout the hiring process, to read more about candidate engagement.
3. Use the power of social media to showcase your brand and attract top talent.
4. Keep your career page up-to-date and optimized.
5. Advertise your company on job boards.
6. Bring your A-game with Facebook or YouTube advertisements.
7. Develop a positive application experience.

A great game-changing example of recruitment marketing campaigns

You probably have heard the name of the big home furnishing brand, IKEA. To open a new store in Australia, they had the task of hiring 100 employees. They chose loyal customers as their target audience and sent them career instructions in the box of their purchased furniture. These instructions were like guidelines for “how to assemble your future”; This activity resulted in 4285 applications and 280 new hires. A plain and powerful strategy that turned out to be very cost-effective. Your company should also be doing its best to elevate the marketing and advertising game.

Creativity in recruitment campaign

Sometimes HRs use creative recruitment campaign ideas, such as games, challenges, riddles, code-cracking puzzles, video content, etc., to link directly with the emotions and thoughts of their target audience.

What is inclusive recruitment?

In order to enhance the diversity of successful candidate appointments, a systematic set of activities, procedures, and actions are used to attract, assess, and hire candidates for open job roles within the organization. This is called inclusive recruitment. It is the most effective way and optimal means to increase diversity and inclusion beyond protected characteristics.

Importance of having inclusive recruitment techniques

‍

Incorporating inclusive recruitment practices will prevent discrimination. Diversify your workforce by recruiting people across categories such as race, gender, color, caste, religion, social background, etc. Once those people get onboarded, it will increase the company’s reputation, enhance creativity and innovation, and enables them to succeed and stay with the company in the long run.

How to ensure your hiring process is actually inclusive?

Following are some key points to guarantee that your recruitment process is unbiased:  

1. Write inclusive job descriptions and ensure they do not include any language or pattern that may prevent candidates from applying for the role.  
2. Define goals to represent your commitment to diversity and inclusivity.  
3. Make sure to organize inclusive tests and interviews.  
4. Provide your hiring team with training to highlight the significance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace.  
5. Guarantee to ask the right questions with the right tone.  
6. Evaluate and identify potential biases that may stop diverse candidates from being hired in your current hiring process.  
7. Search for candidates with different experiences and backgrounds to ensure your candidate pool is diverse. Try to adopt blind hiring techniques by removing personal data from resumes, etc.

Postface

There is a vast pool of talent out there, that you can attract through a structured, well-planned recruitment campaign, which ensures that the right people are in the right roles. It is a good strategy for organizations that aim to expand, enhance, and stay competitive in their respective industries.

‍