7 Inbound Recruiting Hacks to Attract Top Talent
This article will give you key clues to be part of the most desired companies to work. Every year the Fortune magazine ranks the most attractive companies from candidates point of views. Each year Google or Salesforce are in the top five attracting the best recruits on the market.
The common point of these companies? Their brand precedes them. For their target audience their brand message is like a siren calling the best recruits in their particular space and culture. Consequently, when it comes to attracting best talent it is like it is made. According to Jim Collins author of the bestseller “good to great”:
“Leaders of companies that go from good to great start not with “where” but with “who.” They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. And they stick with that discipline—first the people, then the direction—no matter how dire the circumstances.”
You have to be like the popular kid everyone wants to hang out with. Keep in mind that a great team with mediocre ideas will do better work than a mediocre team with great ideas. However, attracting the right talent deserves serious attention and concerted efforts.
Inbound recruiting for the new kids on the ground
What can you do if you are a ‘new kid’ on the ground? First, inform you and be aware that the majority of job seekers start their job search through Google. Most of the time, when active job seekers hunt for your business on web and sees nothing… he or her will give up the idea to apply for one of your vacancy. As a consequence, you clearly miss out your chance of building a strong talent pipeline.
If you don’t have company profile built and optimized for mobile and social media channels to showcase who you are and what are you standing for, top talent will definitely question whether your company is an attractive place to work.
The reality is that the online presence does not only impact your sales but it also affects your hiring pipeline.
1- Set your objectives
Prepare your team with goals you want to reach and plan your operational objectives. Most importantly, establish the way you want to sort and use data. Make sure that you well measure data before and after your inbound recruiting campaign. This will help you to evaluate the accurate and the power of your recruiting campaigns.
2- Establish your candidate personas
Are you sure that you know who is your target audience? And which talent you are looking for? You can wonder how the answer will be different for the human resources professionals whether you want a growth marketer versus a web developer. Their expectations will not be similar. This is why it is essential to design candidate personas with accuracy and understand their needs. Then, use the collected insights to educate them and give what they are expecting from a company like yours. Your goal is to make their life simpler and better when communicating with them. The essential is to catch and arouse their attention through the use of content.
3- Create educational content and leverage expert assets
Inbound recruiting is all about creating quality content. Make sure that your content differentiate itself and is remarkable on social media channels. According to your audience’s insights create appropriate content and use several mediums such as videos, blogposts, ebooks or online brochures to name few examples. Appropriate contents will generate candidates’ engagement and awake talent curiosity. The key is to evoke the feeling of “how this is a great place to work” rather than just saying it. Make stories come alive and create concrete example of hiring candidates! Push your company’s values and the way you apply into your business model.
4- Develop powerful call-to-actions
Once you have all your contents created you can promote them via a SMART call-to-action (Specific, Meaningful, Action oriented, Realistic and Timely). Don’t ask for the moon! The shorter and simpler you ask the more likely you will receive responses. You could try using sentences like “learn more” and don’t forget to explain WHY someone should do what you are asking for. To increase your chance of success spread your content via every appropriate media you use to interact with your target audience. Also ask your employees and your partners to spread the word around their social circles using every single tool in their possession. Your only goal must be generating brand visibility and sympathy.
5- Capture prospective hires information
If your main goal is to increase your talent pipeline it is a must to have a well-branded career page integrating a lead generation landing page. Active and passive candidates can therefore learn more about your company. In exchange of remarkable content that you’ve created, prospective hires will kindly fill out lead generation forms with their contact details. With Talentsquare you can use the information captured to continue building the relationship with the candidates by asking him/her to transfer the application and therefore importing CV’s into the candidate pool.
6- Cultivate your prospective hires
Concentrate your efforts on introducing yourself and your brand to your target audience through a strong investment in inbound recruiting activities. Proceed gradually and go through the following 4 points to make sure using relevant mediums:
- Search Engine Optimization: you have to get found in the search results for relevant keywords queries from job candidates
- Blogging: build your expertise as tough leader in your field showcasing your perspective to attract the best talent
- Social Media: keep in mind the four steps of the engagement which are inspiring, entertaining, educating and informing your target audience. The goal is to build a deep relationship and advocacy for your employer brand. The current trend is to source candidates via network
- Email Marketing: communicate with targeted content to inspire, delight and convert connection into employees
7- Measure and optimize your pipeline
You should already have a tool settled to measure your recruiting activities at each stage of the process. If it is not the case equipped your HR department with Talentsquare. Your candidates’ management programmed should enable you to differentiate and target talent as necessary. You can then tag, follow up and measure these candidates appropriately. Strongly focus on increasing the number of young qualified job seekers coming to your website. Then, convert them into active prospect hires meantime growing the number of top notch employees coming from your inbound pipeline investment. Talentsquare can escort you all along the recruiting process.
Here is a simple infographic giving you guidelines that you can download and stick near your desk.
8 – Final words
To attract top talent coming from different backgrounds, your online presence should present WHO you are and WHY you do things that way. Each time a talent experiments your brand, you want him to remember your identity. You need to focus on reinforcing your communication on what you do, why it is important and finally why it is unique. Top talent are not only motivated by money. Believe it or not, they want to work in a fast-paced environment that challenges them regularly. Overall, with inbound recruiting you will help both active and passive candidates understand if they would be a good fit for your company as well as how your business can help them fulfill into their passion.
