Traditional recruitment is very reactive. You post a job on your website or pricey job boards and wait for applicants to come to you. It’s expensive and time consuming. With Recruitment Marketing done right, you can have warm job seekers informed and ready to go when you need to fill common roles. It’s a brand-focused, engaging practice that I love to be apart of.
I was asked recently where my passion for Recruitment Marketing comes from. It didn’t take me long to answer because for me I instinctively know that I love the ever-changing pace of it. Marketing is a fairly new practice to recruitment and growing so fast. We’re finding new ways everyday to provide value and interact with our target audience. Video content is really taking over social media and this recruitment video campaign my team put together really hits the mark!
We did 3 things I always recommend doing to create a successful campaign.
1. Know Your Target Audience
In our case, modern developers.
At Tenable, we have a hiring plan set for every year. As I was reviewing positions we needed to fill next quarter, I came across many roles that required knowledge (or interest) of “Kubernetes.” After speaking with our tech recruiters, I learned that this new open source system would be attractive to modern developers — just the people we need to hire. I also knew that running a campaign for these types of roles was an opportunity to showcase Tenable as a forward-thinking company that uses cutting-edge technology.
Once my team decided on a Kubernetes focus for the campaign, we began brainstorming, but we all kept saying the word wrong — it became an inside joke. We figured this must be a very common problem and thought it would make a funny intro with non-tech employees trying to pronounce it for the first time. Sure enough, they were as perplexed as we were and it was very amusing! We also created this web campaign in our Clinch CRM, so candidates can click through our posts or ads to learn more and apply.
2. Differentiate Yourself from the Competition
In our case, our developers use cutting-edge technology to defend the newest security vulnerabilities — no “code-monkeys” here.
Recruiting content should not appeal to everyone: only your target audience for that campaign. A good example of video content that differentiates one company from their competition is this video by BetaBrand. They created it as a reaction to the rumor that HP had a dress code for developers. The dislikes on the video are great because someone that doesn’t get this humor would not be a good culture fit for their company. Those people can opt-out and save the recruiters time vetting them.
3. Don’t Over-Produce Video
Our video was easy and very low budget. We borrowed a nice camera from our Creative department but we could have used a cell phone to shoot it. I would argue that less produced/scripted videos are more effective because they are believable. Over-producing takes away the authenticity of the project and leaves it feeling like a commercial, instead of a compelling story.
To recap for you, sometimes the best ideas happen naturally and can turn out even better than you expected. Define your target audience, figure out what makes your company different and shout it from the rooftops!
