inbound recruiting strategy

Inbound RecruitingUsing Inbound Marketing Strategies

To Recruit Top Talent

Attracting the right job candidate to your company is like attracting the right customer to your products.

If you can find the right customer for your product, that customer will:

● Be genuinely interested in your product.● Buy your product.● Become a loyal customer.● Trust your brand.● Promote your product.

However, if you’re marketing your product to the wrong type of customer, you won’t receive the same results.

This is where buyer personas come in.

A buyer persona is the ideal buyer of your product or service.

Personas help marketers create the right content - content that speaks to their ideal customer.

The right content will most effectively attract these visitors, convert them into leads, and close them into customers.

Personas play a huge part in recruiting top talent.

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Traditional marketing strategies try to sell products or services to people who don’t want or need them.

Traditional marketing strategies also interrupt a customer’s experience in order to sell.

Think of the telemarketer who calls your house around dinner time.

Or, picture the door-to-door salesman who sidles up your walkway, pledging to sell you the best set of books this side of the Atlantic.

Chances are, you’ve never even heard of what they’re trying to sell - let alone have an interest in it.

This is traditional marketing.

● It’s interruptive. ● It’s marketer-centric. ● It’s not going to win you over.

Now, picture a product you’ve been researching.

You’ve read reviews of its pros and cons.

You understand how it works and where it fits into your life.

You may even know someone who uses it.

You’ve considered - probably more than once - why you want to buy it.

Since you are aware of it - and you’ve established how you feel about it - you’re ready to make a decision.

When you see the “purchase button,” are you going to click it?

This is a consumer-centric approach.

You’re aware, you’ve considered how the product fits you, and you’re ready to take action.

61% of consumers say they feel better about a company that delivers custom content and are also more likely to buy from that company.

Delivering this custom content to top talent is so important in today’s recruiting strategies.

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In order to make the sale and generate a loyal customer who shares your product with his/her friends, you need to target the RIGHT type of customer and nurture them with educational resources.

Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads.

So, what’s the secret to attracting, nurturing, and keeping the RIGHT type of customer?

Inbound Marketing.

What’s Inbound Marketing?

Inbound Marketing is a marketing strategy that tries to sell products or services to people who are already looking for them.

Before making a purchase, 81% of consumers have researched the product online.

Instead of interrupting a customer experience like traditional marketing strategies do (think back to the door-to-door salesman), the goal of Inbound Marketing is to become a PART of the experience.

Inbound Marketing gently guides potential customers through a conversion funnel by…

● Educating them on their problem

● Empowering them to find a solution

● Funneling them to your products or services

Guiding job candidates through this same process is an effective way to get the right talent to your job openings.

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This funnel is called the “Buyer’s Journey.”

The Buyer’s Journey

Inbound Marketing Strategy

● Define your target buyer persona

● Empower your target buyers by educating them

● Leverage educational content by building successful conversion paths

● Nurture your leads

This marketing strategy is extremely effective.

On average, companies save $20k per year by investing more in inbound marketing vs. outbound.

54% more leads are generated by inbound tactics than by traditional paid marketing.

So, Inbound Marketing is great for acquiring quality leads and customers for your products. What does it have to do with your company’s hiring strategy?

You know how effective Inbound Marketing is for attracting quality, loyal customers. Why not use the same, proven strategy to obtain quality, loyal employees?

Companies can apply these proven Inbound Marketing strategies to acquire top talent by incorporating a strategy called Inbound Recruiting.

Inbound Recruiting

What is Inbound Recruiting and how can you apply it to your current hiring process?

Inbound Recruiting is a hybrid of two strategies:

1. Inbound Marketing2. Traditional Recruiting

Just as Inbound Marketing helps companies attract quality customers to buy their products and services, Inbound Recruiting attracts quality job candidates to apply to their job openings.

Inbound Recruiting strategies try to “sell” jobs to target job candidates by becoming a part of the job search process.

Inbound Recruiting gently guides potential job candidates through a conversion funnel by educating them on their problem, empowering them to find a solution, and funneling them to their job openings…

...just like Inbound Marketing does with the “Buyer’s Journey.”

The Job Seeker’s Journey

As you can see, the Job Seeker’s Journey is very similar to the Buyer’s Journey.

Inbound Recruiting Strategy

● Define your target job candidates● Empower target job candidates with educational content● Leverage that content by building successful conversion paths● Nurture interested talent

Define Your Target Job Candidates

Who ARE the best candidates to fill your job openings anyway?

To determine this, you need to create a persona - an ideal job candidate - to market your company to.

An easy way to do this is to look at your current employees.

Who is the rock star? Who do you wish you had 10 more of working for your company?

That’s your ideal job candidate.

That’s your persona.

Now, where do you find these ideal job candidates?

The truth is, the best talent isn’t actively looking for jobs - the best talent is hidden.

These are the sophisticated job seekers

...more widely known as passive job seekers.

75% of the talent pool is comprised of sophisticated job seekers.

These highly qualified candidates are currently employed and relatively happy, but are open to new opportunities if the right one comes along...

...so it takes more than a job posting to persuade them to change companies.

They know they have a good thing, and they’re not willing to give that up for a company they know nothing about.

40% of professionals worldwide research companies that interest them.

67% of job seekers will accept lower salaries if the company has exceptional online reviews.

So, to even be considered by a sophisticated job seeker, employers should have the following:

● Careers page on website● LinkedIn Careers page● LinkedIn Company page● Glassdoor profile

61% of global companies have a strategy for recruiting passive candidates.

72% of American talent acquisition leaders say recruiting passive talent is a top priority for them.

It’s time to get the attention – and interest – of those sophisticated job seekers.

Inbound Recruiting is the best way to do that.

The key to attracting those sophisticated (or passive) candidates is to create a targeted message that speaks to their individual needs.

The Passive Candidate Map (or Global Talent Pool) outlines the spectrum of talent as evaluated by recruiters. This spectrum was designed to help recruiters understand who is available to them.

There are eight distinct segments of candidate motivation identified in the Passive Candidate Map (or Global Talent Pool). Each segment is aligned based on its receptivity to new opportunities.

Being able to identify where a candidate falls in the Passive Candidate Map is essential when tailoring a recruiting message. It will also help identify things that resonate with desirable individuals, which will result in consistent success. (ERE.net)

Once you determine where your target job candidate falls in the spectrum, you must use the information to create targeted content.

Focus on being a resource for your target job candidates. Educate them on how they can succeed in your industry, or how they can excel in a job you need to fill.

Empower Them With Educational Content

Content examples:

● “How to” posts on career development for specific type of job● General advice for your industry, customers, etc.● Insight into your company culture, accomplishments, goals, etc.

By creating and promoting content that speaks to your target job candidate’s need, you will not only establish your company as a resource, you’ll also be able to promote your job opportunities.

Leverage Content By Building Successful Conversion Paths

You can do this by including calls-to-action within the educational content you’re promoting.

These calls-to-action will guide your target job candidate to their next step in the Job Seeker’s Journey.

Call-to-action examples:

● In-post text links● Buttons● Call-to-action boxes● Sign up forms

We’re hiring! Check out our job openings!

These calls-to-action will direct your target job candidates to things like email lists, videos, job openings, and more, depending on where they are in the Job Seeker Journey.

28% of HR managers are focused on improving the candidate experience.

When you’ve got those qualified, targeted job candidates in your Inbound Recruiting funnel, you need to nurture them and continue to act as an educational resource.

Nurture Interested Talent

This increases their trust in your brand, and keeps your company fresh in their mind.

So, when they decide to pull the trigger and apply to a different job, they’ll think of you.

38% of HR managers are focused on building their talent pipeline.

As you can see, the Inbound Recruiting funnel catches your target job candidates right from the beginning when they first realize they have a problem at work.

Then, it gently guides them through the three stages in the Job Seeker Journey (Awareness, Consideration, and Decision), which helps filter out ill-qualified job seekers and nurture the top talent your company needs.

The problem with traditional recruiting strategies is that they don’t start at the beginning of the conversion funnel (with educational content).

Instead, they start at the end, the Decision stage (with job postings).

Again, this goes back to the door-to-door salesman analogy:

You probably wouldn’t buy something you don’t know anything about…

...so why would you apply to a company you don’t know anything about?

With Inbound Recruiting, you can attract the talent your company needs and hire the right people.

Who’s Responsible For Inbound Recruiting?

Since this is a marketing strategy, you might think your marketing team should lead this process. Or, at the very least, the two departments should collaborate on this effort.

However, both of these solutions present problems:

● Time consuming

● Expensive

● Hard to keep messaging consistent

Instead, companies need recruiters who have both hiring AND marketing knowledge.

This is the NEW recruiter - the Savvy Recruiter.

Why should your recruiters own this process instead of your marketing team?

● Recruiters understand the hiring process.

● Job candidates trust recruiters.

● Recruiters are motivated to find quality candidates.

Instead of trying to create an employment brand, Inbound Recruitment helps recruiters to reveal the brand that already exists.

They know what the best applicants look like and what kind of questions they want answered.

By developing resources and fostering relationships with the target candidates that recruiters know they need, recruiters can leverage the brand to be sure that the talent finds you.

With this specialized expertise, recruiters don’t waste time and money trying to “sell” a job to an ill-fitting candidate.

Candidates can take comfort in the fact that recruiters aren’t just mindlessly “selling” jobs so they can get paid.

They can’t just find anyone for the job, they need to find the RIGHT person for the job.

When recruiters find the right candidates, they reduce their time-to-fill.

The national time-to-fill average is 25 days. That’s the longest time-to-fill average in 13 years.

Empowering recruiters by providing them with the tools and resources they need to become Savvy Recruiters will ultimately streamline the hiring process for companies - resulting in more quality hires in less time.

Inbound Recruiting is the smart way to attract top talent.

With an Inbound Recruiting strategy run by Savvy Recruiters, you will be able to effectively filter out ill-fitting candidates and acquire the passionate, hardworking talent you need for your company to thrive.

Thanks for reading!We hope you enjoyed this ebook and found it helpful.

What’s Next?Learn more about the RIGHT kind of content you should be writing and the best way to promote that content!

Check out our FREE ecourse, “Engaging Top Talent Through Storytelling: Hiring Success In A Week Or LESS!”

Questions?

Join us every Wednesday at 12pm ET for our weekly #InboundRecruiting Twitter chat!

Or, shoot us an email at employmentbranding@careerealism.com

SourcesInbound Marketing concept (Hubspot)

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Pg. 57 (LinkedIn Talent Blog)

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Pg. 78 (ERE.net)

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