The competitive recruitment landscape and increasing popularity of social media are fundamentally changing the way companies attract talent.
HR managers are engaging in the fight for top talent through recruitment marketing, with two thirds creating and distributing recruitment content via social media.
A further 44% are using social channels to communicate directly with candidates, with the majority saying these methods deliver results.
The findings are part of Recruitment Marketing Insights 2016, a report launched today by creative content agency Southerly and HR transformation consultancy Veran Performance.
The research forms the most comprehensive overview of recruitment marketing to date and aims to help HR professionals gain the traction they need in today’s challenging market conditions.
The report shows that businesses are producing a variety of targeted content to attract and inform potential candidates, ranging from career sites and ‘join us’ pages to job profiles, Q&As, career blogs, employer brand videos, podcasts and slide-shares. Of these, career sites and job profiles are proving particularly effective in helping companies recruit the best talent.
When it comes to getting this content in front of candidates, 67% of HR managers are turning to social media, with almost three quarters (73%) using Facebook, 67% using LinkedIn and 50% using Twitter.
It’s not just the major social channels proving useful, with almost a fifth (18%) of HR managers distributing recruitment-focused content on Instagram and 5% using Snapchat.
Overall, HR managers report that recruitment marketing is helping them increase the number of applications per vacancy, increase the quality and diversity of applications, reduce cost per hire and time to fill positions. It also improves brand recognition and staff retention.
Explaining the motivation behind the report Shelley Hoppe, CEO of Southerly, said: “As the economy has picked up, candidates have become more discerning. HR managers simply can’t afford to stick the old ‘one size fits all’ approach to finding talent. Content and social media are hot topics in marketing and these techniques can be applied to great effect in the world of recruitment.”
See: Top 11 Modern Recruitment Marketing Practices to Attract and Hire Talent
“Forward thinking HR managers are making the most of the various media, tools and channels available to engage with candidates in a fresh and informative way, and are seeing positive results across a variety of strategic metrics,” added Hoppe.
Tom Holmes, founding director at Veran Performance, comments: “The HR function is in flux at the moment and this is an area that HR absolutely must own, rather than hand off to marketing or brand teams. There’s a real opportunity for HR managers to embrace new, dynamic techniques that will help them attract high quality candidates who reflect the organisation’s values, which in turn will impact positively on recruitment and retention costs.”
HR professionals are also experimenting with paid promotions on social media. LinkedIn and Facebook are deemed as most effective for paid promotion of recruitment content.
88% of companies are measuring the success of their recruitment efforts on social media with particular emphasis on content. Of these, 47% rely on Google Analytics, 32% use sophisticated content tagging and tracking systems and a further 18% make use of social media listening tools.
Employee advocacy can be extremely powerful – happy, motivated employees who’ve found the right working environment are your best advocates and candidates will be interested in hearing their views.
If you are wary of asking your employees to get involved in your recruitment activity then you should ask yourself two questions: is your employee engagement as good as it could be and, if it isn’t, what will your staff retention look like next year?
Also read: 8 Best Practices to Enhance Recruitment Transparency in 2016
Image credit: recruiterbox.com
