This post is sponsored by TalentLyft.
In order to predict the state of the recruitment industry in 2019, let’s start by a quick recapitulation of the key recruitment challenges in 2018.
According to Glassdoor, 76% of hiring managers reported that attracting top talent was their greatest challenge in 2018. This finding comes as no surprise considering that US unemployment rate in 2018 was the lowest in almost five decades, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This trend will continue well into 2019. This means that employers will face an even bigger challenge when it comes to attracting top talent. Compared to the job market of the past, candidates now have far more power than employers. They are the ones choosing where they want to work, not the other way round. Employers who post their jobs and wait for talent to apply will be left empty-handed.
Now that candidates are calling the shots, employers have to apply innovative recruiting strategies in order to stand out from their competitors in the war for talent. This is where recruitment marketing comes in.
Top 3 recruitment marketing trends in 2019
Recruitment marketing is the process of using marketing tactics to attract potential candidates and nurture them until they are ready to apply to your open job positions.
If you want to be successful at hiring in 2019, you should make these three trends your top priority.
Improved communication. Effective communication is the cornerstone of a successful hiring strategy. And yet, despite talk about candidates having the upper hand in the current job market, most companies still don’t treat them with respect. An astounding 77% of job applicants receive no communication from the organization after applying for an advertised position, according to a Talent Management and HR report.
Not providing continuous, timely and effective communication throughout your recruitment process is a sure way to ruin your employer brand. According to CareerArc research, 72% of job seekers that had a bad experience told others about it, either online or in-person. It would really be a shame to have all your recruitment efforts shattered and your company’s reputation destroyed over such a simple task of updating your candidates on their current status in the recruitment process.
Keeping candidates informed in real time might seem like a complicated, time-consuming task. It is, if it is done manually. Luckily, modern recruitment software is equipped with everything you need to delight your candidates with great communication. Deliver quick updates through text. Implement a chat to answer questions 24/7. Create recruitment email campaigns that feature video profiles. And this is just a start.
Recruitment content. In the past, the only recruitment marketing content companies had was a job description. Today, job descriptions have upgraded into job advertisements. Modern job postings have evolved beyond listing the company’s needs and their job requirements and qualifications. Job postings are now created as advertisements focused on candidates and what a company offers to them.
Many other types of recruitment content have emerged as well. Best-in-class employers have started implementing different recruitment content ideas to promote their brand, not just open job positions. They do it by creating engaging content for their career site, developing company culture and employee testimonial videos, writing regularly on their career blog, producing posts for their social media networks, actively updating their company profile on company review sites and more.
It is important to stress that, if you want to achieve the best results, your recruitment content shouldn’t sound like a commercial. If it does, candidates will be turned off by it because it sounds fake. Your prospects want to see the story behind the scenes since that is what they’ll be buying if they accept your job offer.
A great way to give them a true glimpse into everyday office life is by encouraging employee-generated content. Empowering staff to create and share work-related content will be the holy grail of recruitment marketing content in 2019.
Creating a talent pool. These days, most of your potential candidates already have a job. This means that they aren’t actively looking for open job positions on job boards and career sites. This is especially true for top performers, who receive job offers daily through their LinkedIn profile, not to mention other communication channels.
If you want to convince these top performers to come work at your company, you’ll have to do much more then send them a cold recruiting email or LinkedIn message. You’ll need to make a great first impression in your outreach then continue building relationship with them until they are ready to apply. You can’t expect them to leave their current job or invest a lot of time in your application process just because they’ve seen your job description—no matter how brilliant it is.
Build relationship with potential candidates by communicating with them regularly through engaging content. Make sure each piece included an invitation to join your talent pool. This simple, yet highly effective lead generation tactic will help you build your talent pool quickly and easily.
Implementing these three key recruitment marketing strategies should be a priority for every company who wants to be successful at attracting and hiring top talent in 2019. Almost no company seeking to thrive in today’s competitive job market can afford to do without them.
Kristina Martić is a director of marketing and employer branding at TalentLyft. She is an experienced digital marketer and a certified recruitment marketer passionate about the latest marketing and recruiting trends.