3 Steps to Attracting the Right Candidates

Once your story is written, you need to get it published. There are many channels to get your recruitment marketing strategy out there, but you can start with the big two: job boards and employee referrals. These are the quickest, easiest, and most cost-effective ways to market your opportunities to start building a talent pipeline.

Job boards are your friend. Once you’ve created a job advertisement you’re proud of, you’ll want to get it posted on some of the most effective job boards, starting with Indeed and ZipRecruiter. In a survey conducted by Money, Indeed was ranked as the best overall job search site, and ZipRecruiter was named “the best for employers.” According to Indeed, their platform enables you to reach 250 million job seekers. ZipRecruiter, in addition to being a great site for employers, markets itself as the #1 rated job seeker app. Between these two platforms, you will be able to reach a huge audience of both active and passive job seekers.

After Indeed and ZipRecruiter, there are many other job boards you can try out if you need to. Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and CareerBuilder are strong and don’t forget Monster, one of the original job boards. Be sure to also engage with niche job boards in your industry. For example, techie job boards like Dice, job boards to recruit accountants like iHireAccounting, and college boards like Handshake.

Today, job boards are considered traditional recruitment marketing and the most common vehicle for talent discovery. If you have invested the time to create strong job descriptions, candidate profiles, and advertisements, you can easily take advantage of the large pools of candidates the job boards can produce.

Employee Referral Programs have long been one the most successful and cost-effective solutions for recruiting A-level talent. In a recent study on LinkedIn, 82% of employers rated employee referrals above all other sources for generating the best potential leads. It also found that candidates who were referred by employees are 55% faster to hire than those sourced through traditional methods.

A-players tend to know other A-players, and candidates typically place more trust in the opinions of their own colleagues than they do in messages created by a marketing department. Current employees will be motivated to make employee referrals because they’d prefer to work with people they know and believe in.

In some instances, companies offer extra incentives for successful employee referral programs. Special prize promotions and monetary bonuses can help generate excitement about referring potential employees. The marketing of these programs can help create a buzz throughout the company and reinforce a positive message of growth and possibility.

Hiring through employee referrals has many benefits, including: High-quality candidates – when employees make referrals, they tend to recommend only quality candidates. After all, they’re putting their reputations on the line as well. Cost and time-efficient – No external marketing costs; referrals fill positions in an average of 30 days. Build a network – Employee referrals can serve as a talent pipeline for future openings. Inspire employee retention – Give current and new employees more reason to stay and grow with the company. Working with recruiting search partners.Some business leaders feel that they don’t have the necessary resources to execute a talent search campaign themselves. Working with a recruiting agency or search partner can be helpful for some companies.

A search partner can execute and guide the recruitment process including some of the most challenging components of the process, including finding qualified candidates, administering pre-employment assessments, conducting interviews, and even completing background checks with a high degree of focus and attention. A good recruiting company will work closely with you and treat your talent search as if it were their own.