In today’s candidate market, recruiting is become increasingly intertwined with marketing.

A recruiter has to be able to sell a candidate on their firm and what they have to offer. With candidate’s putting themselves out there through outlets such as social media, recruiters have to in turn tell their story. With the integration of recruiting into marketing strategies, the ways you go about sourcing candidates is more complex than it has ever been.

Here is a simple step-by-step guide on how to successfully use marketing strategies for recruiting success.

1. Create a Brand Strategy

How do you want people to view your firm? If a potential candidate comes across your agency, is it readily apparent from your brand that your agency would be a good place for them? Your brand needs to tell your story and convey your value.  Depending on your offering, your brand could range from broad concepts like “employer of choice” to narrow concepts like “Atlanta area’s premier event staffing.” 

Once you have identified your brand, how will you use it? Identify a recruiting strategy for your marketing efforts by determining how you will build your brand awareness. Your strategy should be coordinated and intentional. Everyone in your agency is an ambassador of your brand and your strategy should include how individuals will represent your brand as well. Your brand is the starting place for your marketing efforts, so ensure your brand strategy is clear and used consistently and deliberately.

2. Build a Social Media Presence

84% of organizations use social media for recruitment; your firm should be part of that statistic. With more people than ever using social media as a way to job search, you should have an active presence across all major social media channels. LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are the top three sites that candidates use to job search. Social media participation should be driven at the corporate level with company LinkedIn and Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, and each individual recruiter should leverage their social media networks to further spread brand awareness and recruit new candidates. Take advantage and promote your firm only as a recruiter could while sourcing the candidates you want.

3. Develop a Blog

Reaching candidates through social media is only one part of the puzzle. A blog is a great way to show them an inside look into your firm and provide them with valuable information for career development. Use your brand strategy and center your blog content on topics your ideal candidates would find interesting. Be consistent with how often you publish and stick to a schedule once one is developed. You want your call-to-action to resonate with your candidates and make them want to engage with your firm.

4. Create a Social Community

With your social media networks and blog in hand, you need to take the next step and build a community around your involvement with candidates online. Build campaigns around a specific topic of discussion to involve candidates you need to source for open positions. Share not only your information, but also that of those you consider influencers of the positions you have available. You want candidates to see that the topics you discuss are the ones trending the most in their industry. By engaging your social community with information that is important to them, you make it that much easier to source the candidates you need.

5. Lead Generation & Nurturing

Once you have begun to capture the attention of your community, you want to start converting them into potential candidates that you can bring into your firm. You want to utilize your recruitment software as a tool for finding potential candidates and keeping track of all levels of communication. Are they reading your blog? Are they engaging with you on social media? Once you have identified potential candidates, you can begin to nurture them with your marketing efforts. Track your talent through email campaigns, job postings and any relevant information about your company that captures their interest.

6. Track Your Success

With any good marketing strategy, measuring the success of your efforts is as important as the efforts you put into it. Tracking your engagement and who you reach will help you build a more successful marketing campaign. Here are some key metrics to consider:

• Social media engagement
• Blog visitors
• Email campaign engagement
• New candidates

When you use marketing strategies as a recruiting tool, you will increase the success of your candidate sourcing. When recruiting and marketing come together, they build a brand image that is appealing to candidates and consumers alike.