Today, candidates are inundates by job board and LinkedIn jobs alerts, recommended jobs in social feeds or recruiter emails but are these methods still making a impact? In order to get candidates attention, we have seen great success from recruitment agencies and internal staffing functions that have introduced inbound marketing and recruitment marketing campaigns as part of their overall candidate sourcing strategy.Â
Generally speaking, internal staffing functions invest in the power of recruitment marketing campaigns to attract talent and/or build brand awareness to fill their internal vacancies. But can recruiters and recruitment agencies apply the same approach to fill their jobs?
To assist with your research, here are 4 inspirational recruitment marketing campaigns, spanning a variety of sectors, and what lessons you can learn.
The Hull And East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust: Remarkable People, Extraordinary Place
Campaign
The express goal for this recruitment marketing campaign was to attract more applications and retain existing staff. By creating simple designs that involve the stories of staff members, connecting with the emotion of working for the NHS, they more than doubled the applications from the previous year. In addition to this, they received 6,936 website visits in the first month and reached over 92,000 people in social media.
What Can We Learn?
As the Trust in a lesser known region of the UK, it is more difficult for them to attract the right calibre of candidates to fill their vacancies. This recruitment marketing campaign focused on using real staff to provide a snapshot of their work or experience, which evoked the emotion of potential candidates, resulting in more applications and brand awareness on social media. These shareable images and supporting video worked perfectly on social media and demonstrated in just a few seconds what it’s like to work for the NHS in Hull.
AXA: The Great Global Adventure Game
Campaign
Creating a buzz amongst graduates is a tough task for any insurance firm. To reach these tech savvy millennials, AXA created an online game that could be played on all devices with grand prizes including a 12-month all expenses paid world trip, two internships and a place on an AXA volunteering project. The campaign was a huge success gaining 220,000 visits, nearly 6000 hours of gaming time and over 54,000 Facebook likes.
What Can We Learn?
Recruitment marketing campaigns don’t always have to about jobs, culture and the company itself. Knowing your audience and creating content that they will enjoy, take part in and share with their friends is a very effective marketing tactic to grow brand awareness within a new audience.
CISCO Systems: #MayThe4th Be With You!
The Campaign
The #MayThe4th campaign which ran earlier this year, 2017, was an chance for Cisco employees to show off their geeky side and apply to become a Jedi Knight and join the Cisco Order. At its core, it represented Cisco’s values and culture, showing the company’s authenticity and enthusiasm to champion individuality. Led by their employees, created a lot of attention, particularly on social media.
What Can We Learn?
Cisco’s Talent Brand Team is focused on employee generated content (EGC) including blogs, social media, videos and podcasts. They believe by showing their authentic culture, candidates get to know exactly what it is like to work at Cisco. The lesson being, recruitment marketing does not always need to be about particular roles, by showcasing your company culture, you can create campaigns that resonate with your audience, attract media attention and more engaged candidates.
BJL: #JoinBJL
Campaign
As a creative agency, to impress other creatives, it helps if your recruitment marketing campaign is unique. BJL identified the Rose Creative Awards night as a venue that would be full of their target candidates. To get their attention on a low budget, they set up their own free WiFi service called #JoinBJL. This wifi login took you to a landing page which advertised that BJL were hiring. Not only was everyone blown away by this innovative approach, it gained immediate social media attention, including an article in The Drum and hundreds of applications from high quality candidates.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJJI_roQ-BU
What Can We Learn?
You don’t need the marketing budget of companies like AXA to create brand awareness and attract the right candidates. By really identifying where you target audience is and using some innovative ideas, you can easily grab the attention of your intended audience.
Recruitment marketing campaigns can be a risk and the majority of them can take considerable time and effort. To mitigate the risk, as we have seen, you need to identify exactly who you are aiming at and create content that they will enjoy, share or find useful. Whether you have a small or large budget, your recruitment marketing can cut through the noise and make a significant impact to your brand awareness and make it easier to source high quality candidates.
To discover how inbound marketing can help your recruitment agency, download our free eBook today.
