Turn Up Hiring with a Cool Marketing Plan | 2-Minute Video

Are you ready to turn up hiring?

If so, put on a marketing hat. Or, talk with your marketing pros. Or, at the most basic level, think more about using marketing techniques to hire better.

Almost 80% of hiring professionals say it’s difficult to find ideal candidates, according to research from SHRM. So, it’s very likely most of them would consider less traditional routes to hire for their open roles.

Strange Bedfellows Can Turn Up Hiring

You might think Marketing and HR make strange bedfellows. And, truthfully, HR probably doesn’t need to fully integrate with Marketing to turn up their hiring efforts.

The key is to think of the jobs you need to fill as products you want to make attractive to consumers — the “consumers” being job candidates. Sprinkle some positive company culture and good benefits and compensation into the “product” and you have a much more attractive offer for those consumers/candidates.

But how can you make recruiting marketing work for your HR team and company? We have some answers here.

What’s Up in This Episode

In this episode of HRMorning’s 3-Point, Laura Schmidt, Senior Talent Marketing Specialist at Land O’Lakes walks us through their new approach to attracting and hiring the best talent for their open roles.

Click, watch and listen for more details on how to make your hiring process a successful marketing effort.

Transcript (edited for clarity):

Wish your recruiting efforts had more reach – like a viral TikTok?

Well, here’s the good news. Most of those trending TikToks are the handiwork of good marketing. And HR’s recruiting efforts are a perfect match for Marketing.  To be specific, it’s recruitment marketing, and here’s what you need to know.

Schmidt: I kind of see recruitment marketing as this really cool emerging space that’s between employer branding and applying these branding principles of marketing to candidate audiences. We’re treating candidates in similar ways that we’ve marketed to different segments of consumers. But candidates don’t all want to be talked to the same way. There are people who want to be messaged differently. And understanding what their preferences are, and what their needs are, makes that experience more seamless for them.

So think about the things that pique your interest. It’s what you see on social media. Product placement in a store. Or the advertising that seems to speak directly to you.

Same goes for recruitment marketing. You get interest from candidates and sell the role. How?

Schmidt: Making sure we’re providing the messaging of what that would be like for them and help them picture themselves there.

So, it’s a little bit of show-and-tell for each role you want to market. More specifically …

Schmidt: Making sure we have updated photos of both our headquarters space and our manufacturing facilities — showing what a day in the life might look like. So if you’re applying for a marketing job, you might know what our headquarters look like. You could take a virtual tour.  Or if you’re applying for a manufacturing job, you can see a video and maybe see some people you might work with at that manufacturing site.

Now, can you turn everyday recruiting into a marketing campaign? Yes, and here’s how:

• Adopt the mindset. Think like a marketer attracting customers to a product — except your product is a job and the customers are candidates.
• Build unique messages. Every role – and its customer – needs a different message.
• Paint the picture. Use video, photos and social media to show candidates a day on the job.

Now, going forward, consider HR and Marketing your dynamic duo.