HR Consultancy
August 25, 2024When searching for new jobs, the top 3 methods people around the globe use are job boards (60%), social professional networks (56%), and word-of-mouth (50%). (LinkedIn Research)
As a company looking to hire talent, you need to conduct recruitment marketing to not only be seen by potential job seekers but to those candidates familiar with your brand.
Despite there being thousands, if not millions, of job seekers in every country, companies continue to struggle to find talent. Regardless of their industry or where they are in the world.
To attract those candidates, companies need to implement and continuously improve their recruitment marketing strategies. This can mean updating your company’s website, using social media, among others.
But what does a recruitment marketing campaign look like? And how can it be successful?
With this type of campaign, ideas need to be out-of-the-box, as we’ll see in the following examples of successful recruitment marketing campaigns.
Why should you care about recruitment marketing?
Before we look at successful examples of recruitment marketing, let’s go over the benefits quickly.
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Faster hiring
Talent acquisition teams need to hire fast. Building a strong candidate pipeline through effective recruitment marketing can significantly speed up the hiring process. This means less time searching for new candidates and more time focusing on quality hires.
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Better candidate experiences
Your relationship with a potential candidate doesn’t begin when they submit their resume. It begins the first time they encounter your business. It could be through a job post, a social media post, or even a billboard.
That’s when the candidate experience begins. It ends when you onboard them.
Both employer branding and recruitment marketing play a role in the candidate experience. In fact, each of these strategies can make a candidate decide if they want to apply for a vacancy at your company or not.
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Fewer hiring process dropouts
Let’s face it, many candidates drop out of hiring processes, resulting in lots of time wasted for companies and recruiters. Research shows 78% of job seekers abandoning or ‘dropping out’ of “long or complex recruitment processes.”
However, with efficient recruitment marketing and a clear recruitment process, you can significantly improve your recruitment KPIs, create a positive candidate experience, and reduce the number of dropouts.
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Stronger employer branding
Doing your recruitment marketing right means improving your employer brand.
Employer branding and recruitment marketing aren’t the same thing but they go hand-in-hand and complement each other.
Combining your recruitment marketing efforts with your employer branding strategy can mean more people applying for jobs, higher employee retention, and longer-term growth.
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Lower long-term hiring costs
Recruitment marketing can boost your employee retention, thereby reducing the cost of employee turnover and your long-term hiring expenses.
6 examples of recruitment marketing
Now, let’s look at recruitment marketing examples from some of the world’s leading brands.
If you’re a small or medium-sized business, you don’t have to overspend on recruitment marketing. Create a strategy you can follow with KPIs you can measure and a budget to support it.
Recruitment marketing can help you build a stream of potentially interested candidates that you can tap into.
You may choose to put your money into building a community around your brand to entice candidates to submit their resumes when you’re hiring and engage with you when you’re not hiring.
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Cisco
US tech company Cisco Systems used its employees for its recruitment marketing campaign ‘Be you, with us.’
The campaign shows Cisco as seeking individuals who aren’t part of the heard. The one-and-a-half-minute video doesn’t contain any speech but it’s a beautiful example of a company building teams of individuals who ‘stand out.’
The video also showcases Cisco’s company culture and how it supports unique individuals and perspectives.
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Volvo tech recruitment campaign
Swedish carmaker Volvo launched a unique campaign called The Recruiting Car campaign in 2019.
The company had a challenge. They wanted to hire 400 research and development (R&D) technicians in 12 months.
For this campaign, Volvo presented its S90 model at a motor show and incorporated AI into its pedestrian speech technology and car connect system. The AI interviewed candidates and tested their social and technical skills inside the car.
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Oglivy’s ‘greatest salesperson’
This may be an old campaign, but it’s a great example of recruitment marketing and brand building. Marketing firm Oglivy created a video that presented people with a challenge. It wanted to find ‘the world’s greatest salesperson.’
The company promoted its video across Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
The challenge? Create a video of yourself selling a brick. The perks? The best videos would be featured at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival that year. In addition, the winner would also get a three-month fellowship at Oglivy.
Although Oglivy wasn’t looking to hire someone specific, this campaign combined Oglivy’s renowned marketing tactics with recruitment, brand building, and engagement.
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Google’s billboard
It’s been 20 years since Google’s recruitment marketing campaign, globally known as the ‘puzzling billboard.’ However, it continues to be a stellar example of a successful recruitment marketing campaign.
In 2004, a company placed a billboard in Silicon Valley that presented a complex mathematical problem. Only smart and exceptional tech talents could figure it out. Once they solved it, a website URL appeared on their screen and the solvers had to visit it to learn more.
When they clicked, they got one more puzzle they had to solve. Once they solved that final puzzle, successful candidates received the following message
“Nice work. Well done. You’ve made it to Google Labs, and we’re glad you’re here. One thing we learned while building Google is that it’s easier to find what you’re looking for if it comes looking for you. What we’re looking for are the best engineers in the world. And here you are.”
When software engineers began answering the puzzle, they hadn’t known it was Google behind the campaign.
Google then grouped those who solved its billboard and subsequent mathematical problems into a community or group called ‘problem solvers.’ It also hired the best engineers from that campaign.
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Mastercard Canada
Mastercard Canada had an internship opportunity but instead of creating a regular job posting, the company created a competition for college students.
They asked interested applicants to submit an idea for a product or app or technique that would support the company’s drive for a cashless future.
Judging was based on the number of retweets or likes each idea received.
Mastercard received 532 qualified candidates and decided to expand its internship program and add another intern.
This experiment also allowed them to tap into a pool of qualified undergrads for future internships or potential junior roles.
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IKEA’s Australia expansion
In 2011, IKEA sought to expand its presence in Australia. However, to support its expansion the company needs to hire more people.
Did they publish regular job postings? Nope.
The Swedish company added vacancies and job descriptions in every pack of furniture sold to customers. This recruitment marketing campaign cost $0 and got people, who were already IKEA fans, to apply to the brand’s jobs.
From this zero-cost campaign, IKEA got 4,285 applications and hired 280 people.
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Microsoft’s community
Many companies fall into the mistake of creating one social media page for everything. This can work for small businesses, but as you get bigger, one page just won’t work.
Microsoft figured this out quite early. It knew its corporate social media accounts were designed for its customers not for recruitment. So, the company’s talent acquisition team created a Facebook community, attracting over half-a-million fans and candidates.
The company could easily tap into this community for candidates whenever it had a job opening.
4 things to consider for your next recruitment marketing campaign
It’s easy to think ‘These brands are too big, what can I do?’
Here’s your answer. There are 4 things you need to consider before creating any recruitment marketing campaign.
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Your target audience
Consider who your target audience are and what you want for them. This applies to any marketing campaign.
Is your audience gen-z so they’re more likely to be interested in a tech savvy campaign? Or are they millennials with a different preference?
Similarly, are you hiring tech talents? You may not have the luxury of going for a billboard like Google but a creative challenge can do the trick.
Or are you hiring marketers? Perhaps a marketing quiz can be a good idea.
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Your budget
Budgeting is essential for any campaign you create. You should estimate the cost of hiring this person and how much it costs your company to have this vacancy empty for a long period.
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Your end goal
Determine what you want to get out of this campaign. Do you want candidates to apply for jobs now? Or do you want to build a talent pool to tap into when you have vacancies?
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How you’ll create this campaign
Finally, consider how you’ll create the campaign. Will you use your in-house team? Work with a marketing or recruitment agency? Consider Cisco’s idea of using their teams in a video to promote their brand and invite people who stand out of the crowd to apply.
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