The Guide to Captivate Candidates and Build Engagement Why employers need to use recruitment marketing automation to build talent pools, cultivate more engaged new hires, and deliver a better candidate experience. a Research ebook by: NEW JOB POSTING! APPLY NOW
Introduction The recruitment marketing guide by icims Hire Expectations Institute reveals how to use marketing techniques to attract candidates, develop a winning recruitment marketing strategy, and nurture your talent pools into hires. 03 Recruitment is like marketing 04 Market the opportunity 05 What are job seekers looking for when researching your company? 06 What is recruitment marketing automation? 07 Goodbye workforce attrition, hello candidate attraction 08 Companies need to ensure they stay top of mind 09 How to segment your talent pools 2015 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Recruitment is like marketing Finding top talent today is more difficult than ever. Conditions call for companies to adopt marketing techniques and transform the way they attract talent. Organizations need a strong employment brand to create a positive reputation as an employer. 94% of candidates are likely to apply to a job if the employment actively manages their employer brand online. 76% want details on what makes the company an attractive place to work. Source: Glassdoor, October 2014 Understanding how prospective applicants and candidates perceive an organization as an employer is the first step in developing and marketing an employment brand that attracts top talent. How an organization s general brand is viewed by the public greatly impacts its employment brand, but a brand s familiarity or likability are not the only factors in attracting top talent. Company culture, career growth opportunities, and perks and benefits can all be marketed to portray an employment brand. A well-articulated employment brand helps job seekers understand if they re a good fit for the company. When combined with a compelling value proposition (why someone would want to work for you), an organization can position itself as a sought-after employer of choice. Company Culture Growth Opportunities Perks & Benefits 2015 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Guide to Captivate Candidates and Build Engagement 3
Market the opportunity Today, job seekers are researching companies before applying for an open position much like they would research a product before purchasing it. According to a recent survey by Talent Board, 56% of job seekers surveyed spend 1-4 hours researching the company and specific job opportunity prior to applying. Where are job seekers researching your company? Talent Board asked job seekers to select up to 5 resources they found most valuable when researching their next career opportunity: JOBS COMPANY CAREER SITE 65 % JOB NOTIFICATIONS OR AGENTS 34 % LINKEDIN CAREER PAGES 25 % ONLINE GROUPS (LINKEDIN, YAHOO, GOOGLE+, OTHER) 24 % EMPLOYER REVIEWS (GLASSDOOR, VAULT, GREAT RATED!) 20 % This is great news for recruiters and HR departments. It means that they can control most of the content candidates turn to. 2015 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Guide to Captivate Candidates and Build Engagement 4
What are job seekers looking for when researching your company? Company culture is becoming a major differentiator from the perspective of job seekers. A strong recruitment marketing effort establishes and promotes a company s culture, enticing active and passive candidates to connect, engage, and apply for open positions. In addition to obvious job basics like salary, location, benefits, and job responsibility, company culture ranked high in importance when considering a position. When asked to rank the most important things they consider in a job, respondents said company culture outranked location, company size, job title, and training and development as the most important aspect. Approximately 76% of respondents thought culture was important in their job search. By incorporating techniques recommended by marketers to bolster recruitment efforts through employment branding and nurture marketing, employers of all sizes can set themselves apart and drive recruitment results. 2015 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Guide to Captivate Candidates and Build Engagement 5
What is recruitment marketing automation? Once you have people interested in your employment brand, you need to engage their interest. For years, sales and marketing professionals have used customer relationship management tools (CRM) to build relationships with sales prospects. This software has made its way into recruitment practices. Marketing automation software designed specifically for recruiters is widely available, allowing organizations to build pipelines of viable candidates, manage automated communications, and track results. By staying connected with these people, organizations are more likely to convert passive candidates to active candidates or new hires when the time is right. Why is it important? According to icims research, 41% of people surveyed have changed employers within the past three years and 43% said that they are looking for a job in 2015. If workers are staying in positions for shorter periods of time, employers will need to be prepared to fill open positions more often. Additionally, according to a 2015 CEB report, compared to 2010, it now takes 62% longer five additional weeks to fill the average vacancy. It takes an even longer period of time to fill critical roles. This slow down exposes organizations to the risk of losing talent to competitors and costs an average of $11.25M per 1,000 vacancies through lost productivity and additional recruiting work. It now takes 62% longer five additional weeks to fill the average vacancy. 2015 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Guide to Captivate Candidates and Build Engagement 6
Goodbye workforce attrition, hello candidate attraction To avoid a costly and lengthy time-to-fill, employers can build talent pools and nurture passive talent until they are ready to apply for an open position. The talent is out there and ready and willing to be found: If a recruiter contacted you about a role that suited you, would you be open to pursing a new opportunity? 80 % PACIFIC WEST MOUNTAIN WEST NORTH CENTRAL 80 % MIDWEST EAST NORTH CENTRAL 79 % MIDDLE ATLANTIC NORTHEAST NEW ENGLAND 73 % 81 % 73 % 78 % 78 % SOUTH ATLANTIC WEST SOUTH CENTRAL EAST SOUTH CENTRAL SOUTH 73 % The percentage of people per U.S. region who said they would be open to a new opportunity. 2015 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Guide to Captivate Candidates and Build Engagement 7
Companies need to ensure they stay top of mind Clearly, you will want to drive as much talent to the recruitment marketing automation tool as possible so you have a sufficient pool of candidates from which you can draw. Here are some ideas on how to drive more traffic towards your brand. Sign Up Connect with top talent. Incorporate an attention grabbing, graphical link that invites passive candidates to sign up to receive notifications from your company and join your talent pools on all recruitment marketing materials, career pages and corporate social media sites. Make it easy for potential talent to get to know your company. Gather candidate information quickly. Leverage recruitment marketing software to gather candidate information on the spot with mobile devices at career fairs. Spend more time getting to know the candidates, while also building your employment brand audience and talent pools. Develop social recruiting strategies. Considering 74% of all Internet users have at least one active social media account, it is clear that social recruiting is a sure way to reach the largest audience for the lowest cost. Post to your company s branded social media sites to invite people to join your talent pools and choose an area of interest. Build your audience and ability to source from a large pool of interested and engaged candidates. Maximize employee referrals. Develop an internal campaign or contest that encourages employees to become brand ambassadors and refer their connections to open jobs and to join your organizations talent pools. By engaging your employees and encouraging them to champion your brand you can increase the number of employee referrals hired and lower your cost-per-hire and time-to-fill. 2015 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Guide to Captivate Candidates and Build Engagement 8
How to segment your talent pools Strong talent pools ensure that a company always has a pipeline of talented and qualified candidates to select from when a job becomes available. In order to get the most out of talent pools, recruiters must group candidates together based on similarities and continue to communicate with these connections through personalized content. Sending automated personalized, branded communications based on what talent pool they belong to makes passive candidates more likely to think of you when ready to apply to a job. Examples of how to organize your talent pools include tagging by: Education level Work Experience Department Location Hierarchy level Qualifications or skills An organized and robust recruitment marketing automation tool ensures that recruiters are able to quickly and easily determine what types of emails to send to which candidates. By leveraging your employment brand and technology you can maintain a constant pool of warm candidates, shortening your time-to-fill and cost-to-fill metrics. 2015 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Guide to Captivate Candidates and Build Engagement 9
How to segment your talent pools (cont d) Here are a few examples of marketing content that an organization can send via automated, scheduled email campaigns to engage candidates from their recruitment marketing automation tool: Employment newsletters that include spotlighted jobs, pictures or videos with top performing employees, social media links, positive news about the company, and/or new professional development programs at your organization. Company updates or press releases that pertain to new products, expansion, growth, or social/civic activity. Industry news that explains how the update is likely to have a positive impact on your organization. Professional development ideas that relate to your industry or a specific field in which the candidate has expressed interest. Notifications about your upcoming job fairs, or other events at which the candidate can network with members of your team. 2015 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Guide to Captivate Candidates and Build Engagement 10
Final Thoughts icims, a leading provider of innovative Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) talent acquisition solutions, is an Inc. 500 and Software Satisfaction honoree focused on helping businesses win the war for top talent through the implementation of easy-to-use, scalable solutions that are backed by award-winning customer service. icims Talent Platform, the industry s premier candidate management solution, enables organizations to leverage mobile, social, and video technologies to manage their entire talent acquisition lifecycle from building talent pools, to recruiting, to onboarding all within a single web-based application. To learn more about the icims Talent Platform, call 1-800-889-4422 or take a look at our demo at www.icims.com. icims is one of the largest and fastest-growing talent acquisition system providers with offices in North America, UK, and China. To learn more about the icims call 1-800-889-4422 or visit our website at: www.icims.com Sources: icims Hire Expectations Institute Proprietary Research 2015 icims The New Era of Talent Acquisition ebook, 2015 CEB, 2015 The Talent Board, 2015 Glassdoor, 2014 CareerBuilder 2014 icims Are You Ready for the Future of Talent Acquisition? ebook, 2015 For best practice insight and proprietary research, please visit the icims Hire Expectations Institute website at www.icims.com/hei 2015 icims Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Guide to Captivate Candidates and Build Engagement 11