As a creative agency with years of employer branding chops, our coffee breaks and client conversations often involve recruitment marketing trends. We’ve married some insights drawn from experience with some of the latest research to bring you tips worth keeping in mind when you hire in 2023.
Seize the Data
The beauty of keeping your recruitment strategy modern is that there’s no longer a need to “post and pray.” Current technology and analytics allow for a data-driven approach, which means you can adjust your aim—and your story—to speak directly to your target audience.
Having this kind of deeper knowledge from our data and analytics team has helped many of our clients recalibrate their positioning and reach candidates in a way that has the greatest impact.
We’ve seen data make a difference by:
- Identifying keywords that speak to desired candidates
- Pinpointing audience search behaviors and preferred platforms
- Guiding actionable recommendations to optimize tactics
- Offering a more holistic understanding of your desired candidate
- Revealing missed opportunities to act on
The cherry on top? Having a handle on the numbers means you can track your progress in a tangible way. We’re all about getting those small delights wherever you can, so don’t miss out on the joy of watching those numbers go up. Of course, it’s also functional: Knowing where you stand and what moves the needle is invaluable when it comes to planning the rest of 2023.
A Brand to Stand On
Don’t mind us while we briefly mount our soapbox, but this one’s important (so important, we’ve made it one of our specialties): your employer brand. Your employer brand is to hiring what an ante is to poker—you need it to play the game.
With the potential to hold the keys to unlocking the secret in helping your brand stand out in today’s job market, from game-changing differentiators to defined values, your employer brand is your ticket to finding aligned candidates. By allowing you to share your voice, your mission, and your personality from an employer brand perspective, highlighting the what’s in it for me (the candidate), this is where you win candidates’ hearts and minds.
Listen, we know we have some skin in the game here, but we promise that the proof is in the pudding. Recent research shows:
- Hiring is nearly twice as fast for companies with solid employer brands
- On average, cost per hire reduces by half for those with strong employer brands
- 75% of candidates are more likely to apply for a company with an active employer brand
So, there you have it. It’s not just what we do, it’s what we believe. Building a unifying rallying cry of an employer brand has helped clients like Worldwide Clinical Trials increase organic traffic by 75% in two months, and helped Johnson & Johnson win the #1 Employment Brand among Fortune 500 companies in a 2018 Wilson HCG Top Employment Brands study.
Do Your Candidates “Like” You?
Recruitment marketing is all about establishing an authentic, robust personality for candidates to connect with. This takes consistency. This takes awareness and relevance. And, with a Glassdoor study proving that 79% of job seekers are using social media to find brands they connect with, social media may be the way to get there in 2023.
Back to the poker strategy, your employer brand is the ante, but social media is like your deck of cards—the pieces you’re playing with to build your story. In using social media to tell our clients’ stories, we’ve seen advantages like:
- Customized and refined messaging
- Diversified and expanded reach
- Cost-efficient, lower-investment marketing
- Built-in tracking tools
- Instant and consistent access to your audience
- Greater candidate awareness and engagement
- Insight into what your audience (literally) likes
- Ability to shape your brand’s persona
Bringing social media into the recruitment marketing toolkit has helped BNO clients like Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) increase YoY site traffic by 160% from influencer campaigns, leading to a 76% increase in Apply Now clicks. So, as you set your aim to hire in 2023, it serves you to show up—and be active—where candidates are looking.
Walk Your Talk
When crafting an employer brand with our clients, we like them to think of it as an oath. Whatever values you claim in your recruitment marketing should be carried out from application and interview to day one on the job and beyond.
Something to keep in mind is that word of mouth is a powerful tool. In a study by CareerArc, 72% of candidates that have a negative experience during the applying/interviewing process have told other candidates about it. While this figure may seem intimidating, you can also use it to your advantage by creating a positive candidate experience and create the right kind of buzz.
We help brands create this energy by making sure they have:
- User-friendly careers sites
- Direct and thorough job descriptions
- Easy-to-navigate application processes
- Timeliness and communicative responses
- Fun and informational onboarding processes
With all this talk of candidate and employee experience, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the elephant in the room (or the home office)—remote work. According to LinkedIn, remote positions received over 50% of ALL job applications in the last year, and 64% of employees admitted that they’d consider quitting their current roles if they were expected to be in the office full-time. When you’re thinking about your employee experience, this is an important trend to keep in mind as we move into 2023.
What does this mean for you? Candidates want clear communication—from experience expectations to workplace logistics. One way to set you on the right path here is to have a clear employer brand and recruitment marketing strategy that succinctly defines (a) who you are, (b) what’s in it for the candidate, and (c) who and what you’re looking for.
Putting It All Together
While we can tell you that the recruitment/talent acquisition world and employer/candidate dynamic has certainly changed over the last few years, it seems one thing is here to stay: having a strong recruitment marketing strategy is the differentiator you need to attract and retain top talent in 2023 and beyond.
If you’re ready to tell your story in a way that communicates directly to the cream-of-the-crop candidates, see how we can help at www.bnoinc.com.
