Recruiting is a marketing opportunity, but instead of finding customers for products and services, you’re finding candidates for your organization. Hiring new employees can seem like a daunting task — sifting through emails, scheduling interviews, comparing candidates, all while you’re still trying to manage your day-to-day responsibilities. And it can get challenging because a resume can’t tell you everything you need to know about a person. If your description is too broad and your promotions too frequent, your inbox can get flooded. On the other hand, get too narrow with your search, and your position will stay vacant.
So how do you strike a balance and ultimately find the rock stars you want to hire?
1. Start Your Search with an Ideal Candidate Profile
You can’t find the right person for the job if you don’t know who you’re looking to hire. This requires going beyond outlining relevant experience. Your ideal candidate profile should also include important soft skills, attitude, work style, and motivators. When you finish your ideal candidate profile, you’ll have a road map to help conduct a systematic search for your next hire.
A word of caution: Try to avoid finding the “perfect person.” The candidate who turns out to be the right fit might start off needing time to learn and grow with your company.
2. Remember That Referrals are Gold
Your current staff can serve as a great resource for finding the next hire. Beyond marketing your business to a pool of potential candidates through job sites, LinkedIn, and other marketing tactics, don’t forget to ask your employees for recommendations. They may know individuals who would make valuable additions. Work your network to find the kind of candidates who might not be “looking” for a job. If you craft social media posts to market your open position (and you should!), ask your top talent to share.
Your staff is also perfect to help you understand the best qualities of your company. If you don’t already know, ask them how they found their job, and ultimately, what attracted them to the position. Use any new insights to help you create the right content for your recruitment campaign.
3. Craft a Targeted Message 
With your ideal candidate profile in hand and input from top performers in mind, it’s time to craft a compelling message to reach the best people for the job. While the description on your Careers web page will focus on the job description and requirements, your marketing is an opportunity to tell a story and connect on an emotional level with specific candidates.
Evaluate if your radio script or magazine ad copy feels like a generic list of skill demands, or if it provides insight into your company culture — and why they are the right fit. Ask yourself, “Based on this information, would I want to work here?” More importantly, consider if the description will attract your ideal candidate. You’re not looking for just anyone, so what you say and how you say it shouldn’t resonate with just anyone.
4. Choose the Right Platforms to Post
Just like your message can and should be targeted, so should your media mix. Active job seekers typically conduct their search online. They visit listing sites like Indeed, ZipRecruiter, and Glassdoor, as well as social platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook. And once they’ve found companies they’re interested in, they’re checking out their individual websites to learn more.
Another effective recruitment marketing platform is radio. Use your spots to share employee testimonials, talk about your culture and benefits, and give candidates a clear next step to find and apply for the opportunity. Radio is highly targeted and your results are easily trackable. Not to mention, about 89% of adults who listen to radio report they are “very likely” to look for alternative employment within the next year. Take a look at Zimmer Radio & Marketing Group’s family of nine radio stations, and you’ll see there are many options to hone in on the right audience for your recruitment marketing campaign.
5. Show Up When They Search
For the best talent to apply, they first need to find you. Conduct keyword research for your industry and incorporate it into your job description and other recruitment marketing content. You’ll want to integrate these keywords everywhere it matters, like on your Careers page and other relevant places on your website (both on-page and in elements like image tags), in search advertising and digital promotions, and even in your social advertising and page posts.
6. Always Be On the Lookout
Does your culture advertise for you? If you’re known as one of the best businesses in the area, then you’ll likely have a full pipeline of candidates without needing to do much advertising, and not just when you’re hiring. If you’re not quite there yet, let people know why your organization is awesome. Share pictures and videos of your group outings and training events on social media. Promote your volunteering activities, and celebrate employee growth. The branding campaigns you run should support recruitment needs when they arise.
Never wait until your company needs to fill a spot before you start seeking candidates. Instead, be proactive — have an option for prospective candidates to send their resumes, even if you’re not hiring at the time. After you capture their contact information, you may find you need to nurture the relationship just as you would a prospective customer, like sending them email updates and letting them know about new openings.
Looking to learn more about incorporating radio into your next recruitment campaign? Download our free guide outlining unique quirks of mid-Missouri radio.
