4 Ways to Recruit Like a Marketer and Win Top Talent - Glassdoor for Employers

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4 Ways to Recruit Like a Marketer and Win Top Talent

Introduction

To stay competitive as recruiters, you have to get creative. A recent survey we conducted made it clear that winning talent away from the competition is your number one challenge. We all have a few heartbreaking stories of the one that got away — a dream candidate who had it all: an impeccable resume, talent for days, passion for the job.

Before shedding that wistful tear, it’s time for some tough love: in today’s tight market, it’s more important than ever that you do whatever you can to make good candidates want you as much as you want them.

So take out your marketing hat and pretend like you’re going to put it on. Now toss it in the corner and while your marketing leaders are distracted — steal their playbook (it’s not rocket science).

Here are 4 steps to recruit like a marketer to improve your chances of winning the talent you want:

1. Understand your market

You need to know who your competitors are and how what you offer as an employer is different. Today’s applicants want to work at companies with inclusive cultures and strong values — what are your competitors’ Employee Value Propositions, and how do their values show up in their hiring language? Knowing the ins and outs of your competitors will help you better position your business and stand out from the competition.

TO DO:

  • Embrace that hiring is harder than it used to behow to recruit like a marketer
  • Know who and where your candidates are
    • Define key competencies. Instead of creating buyer personas like your marketing department, create candidate personas to increase your odds of attracting people with the competencies you want.
    • The ones you want, want you. The candidates you want to hire aren’t applying blindly to every job ad they see, they’re doing their homework up front on Glassdoor and applying only to the jobs that they really want. 86% of employees/job seekers are likely to research company reviews and ratings when deciding where to apply for a job.3 And, of U.S. Glassdoor users:

  • Know who your biggest employer competitors are
    • Identify your strengths. Use Glassdoor Company Compare to identify your strengths compared to your biggest employer competitors. Then use Glassdoor to showcase your unique values, benefits and mission.
    • Out-recruit the competition. In a competitive marketplace, a Glassdoor Enhanced Profile can help you attract the candidates you want to hire. You can even promote open jobs on up to ten different competitors’ profiles.

2. Nail your positioning

What is the perception of your employer brand in the marketplace? Even a decade ago, employee culture was viewed by CEOs as fluffy, hard to measure, and a nice-to-have. But two factors have elevated the importance of employee sentiment and engagement throughout the economy in recent years:

Employee culture has become a non-negotiable core business issue. As we learned in Glassdoor Economic Research conducted by Dr. Andrew Chamberlain, 2020 will begin a culture-first decade for employers. Companies increasingly realize that their employees are their most important asset, and a recent Glassdoor survey confirmed that workers increasingly prioritize company culture over cash.

Additionally, employee culture has been demonstrably linked to better financial performance, innovation, talent attraction, ethical workplace behavior, customer satisfaction and more through an expansive collection of academic and private sector research in the past decade.

Workplace transparency is the expectation. Candidates are investing more time and energy researching company culture before accepting jobs, and that has created a dynamic in which employers with strong workplace cultures are enjoying a powerful strategic hiring advantage.

TO DO:

  • Spell out your EVP
    Develop a clearly articulated employee value proposition (EVP) and values-based employer branding that clearly communicates how you want to be perceived and what differentiates your culture, values or mission.
  • Show off your mission
    Showcase your company mission and values and highlight your EVP within job descriptions, recruiting emails, on your Glassdoor Why Work With Us tab, and on your Careers page.
  • Elevate employee engagement
    Make employee engagement a priority by actively seeking out employee feedback and closing the loop on learnings, using Glassdoor strategically to boost overall employer brand transparency.

3. Hone your presence

How do you sound to potential candidates? What is the look, tone, and feel of your employer brand in the marketplace?

Today, people spend hours researching their next car (mattress, tv, etc.), so you can be sure they’re going to be digging deep on what your company offers to help them make one of the most important decisions of their lives

Today’s job seekers want more than a job description. Nearly 60% of employees/job seekers always or often look for more information about a company after reading a job description.5

It’s up to you to build a robust story complete with campaign taglines and branded messaging that shows up everywhere you communicate with candidates, whether that’s in custom emails (candidate messaging), social media videos, job ads or behind-the-scenes content.

TO DO:

  • Use proactive tactics
    To get in front of the right candidates, use your marketing chops to think about how to sell a role to the right person. Build a story around your employer brand by using values-based brand language and creative visuals, leveraging graphics, imagery, video and more to create awareness, affinity and a positive candidate experience.
  • Build your recruiting strategy
    Showcase your company mission and values and highlight your EVP within job descriptions, recruiting emails, on your Glassdoor Why Work With Us tab, and on your Careers page.
  • Get creative
    Go beyond traditional marketing tactics like custom emails (candidate messaging), by leveraging social media videos, job ads and behind-the-scenes content on Glassdoor. These creative campaigns help build stories around why it’s great to work with your company.
  • Eliminate bias
    In 2020, employers will further prioritize diversity and inclusion jobs. Use AI and tools like Textio to ensure that you’re choosing inclusive, powerful language for your recruiting content that not only neutralizes bias but also highlights your robust, thriving culture, mission and values within job reqs, sourcing emails, and everywhere you write.
  • Build brand advocacy
    Encouraging your employees to be brand advocates can deliver the best ROI when it comes to recruiting, so it pays to make sure your employees are engaged.
  • Close the deal
    When you’ve found the right candidate, consider how to sweeten the pot, whether with a signing bonus, a flexible schedule, moving fast on your offer, or some other incentive. You’ll also want to make sure you have a plan for closing the loop with silver- and bronze-medal candidates. You want to keep runners-up in the talent pipeline.

4. Measure your success

Develop a month-by-month budget of what you plan to spend on recruiting, including a specific metric that tells you to stop if it’s not generating sufficient ROI. Then get disciplined about looking at your metrics/recruiting analytics. Track your recruiting success on Glassdoor in your Enhanced Employer Profile.

TO DO:

  • Consider Qualitative Feedback:
    • Use Glassdoor to ask for and receive feedback from candidates on your recruiting process.
    • Use Glassdoor to ask for and receive feedback from candidates on your interview process.
    • Look for themes in feedback and regularly incorporate learnings into your process to ensure disciplined improvement.
  • Consider Quantitative Feedback:
    • Choose specific talent analytics metrics to watch closely and monitor them over time.
    • Share out those metrics with key stakeholders to ensure that you’re noticing and celebrating successes, while watching and learning from shortcomings.

Any recruiter worth their weight in salt knows that the days of “post and pray” are long gone. Employers can no longer sit back and wait for top-tier talent to come knocking. In today’s fast-moving, competitive labor market, employers must be both proactive and creative — even borrowing tactics from their friends in marketing — to compete for a relatively small pool of highly skilled and diverse talent. Claim your Free Employer Account.

Citations

  1. Source: Glassdoor/Harris Poll, Sept 2019
  2. Source: Aptitude Research Partners, Informed Candidate, 2017, U.S./UK
  3. Source: Glassdoor/Harris Poll, Sept 2019, US
  4. Source: Based on multi-platform Cross Visiting Report, Comscore July - Sept 2019 Media Metrix®, US
  5. Source: Glassdoor/Harris Poll, Sept 2019, US