Applying the marketing funnel to talent acquisition
For many employers, their job ads are the first (and sometimes only) connection point with job seekers before applications. Whether it’s by the off chance your candidate finds it on a job board or in a google search, or because you sashayed into inboxes dropping your flash job ad at your ideal candidate’s fingertips and inviting them to check it out while they still scratch their heads wondering who the hell you are.
Marketing is much more than publishing a job ad.
And effective marketing begins long before your job ad is copy pasted into Seek.
To show you precisely why this approach isn’t working in the 21st century, I’m going to apply a traditional marketing funnel to talent acquisition. Because who doesn’t love a visual demo?
This is a marketing funnel
This is a marketing funnel for a typical buyer journey. You can probably relate: before we buy, we search the internet, connect with brands, read reviews, compare products, confirm our choice, and complete the sale. As people move through the funnel, the ones who don’t align will start dropping off, leaving super qualified leads who’ll eventually buy (or apply).
Diagram source: Skyword
In my experience, the service buyer journey is longer and more intense than products, because services tend to cost more money and are very reliant on the reputation of the service provider. Much like a new workplace!
🚨 Your job offer is a bigger investment than a new pair of sneakers 🚨
Which is why candidates are approaching the job hunt in much the same way as consumers consider buying decisions. Before anyone is willing to commit, they’ll want to educate themselves about your organisation to see if your offer is a good fit.
So, let’s now look at this funnel through a talent acquisition lens.
This is a demonstrative talent acquisition marketing funnel-not-a-funnel
Here, instead of marketing a product or service, you’re marketing a job. However, much like traditional marketing, what you’re really marketing is a *lifestyle* 🤯
Source: Me :)
Refer to the various stages in a buyer’s/candidate’s journey with you, from awareness to onboarding and note that for some, the job ad serves as their initial brand awareness stage – the first time candidates hear about you and express some interest in your organisation.
And while this will always be the case for some – it shouldn’t be your *only* case.
In my ‘funnel-not-a-funnel’, I’ve dropped the job ad in the 3rd stage. Because if this was a standard buyer journey, this is the point where they have enough information about you to willingly invest time and “Book a demo” or “Submit an enquiry”.
The “sale” doesn’t happen until your candidate signs a contract 😉
Content helps with awareness and education
When you think about it, most candidates will perform some kind of background check on you, especially if they’ve never heard from you before. Because they still need to fulfil the second stage – consideration. Who are these people and what’s in it for me if I apply here?
But when they come in cold from your job ad, even if twenty minutes of stalking can turn them into a tepid temp, they may be curious but still lacking enough information to make your job offer a decisive “YES!”
Content helps you build awareness and educate audiences long before ‘intent to apply’ is considered. In the middle of funnel, your education pieces help candidates identify with your offer or self-select out, ensuring that the quality of applications increases, time to fill decreases, and stronger hiring decisions can be made.
And while education isn’t exactly linear, you ideally want your leads to be *warm* by this third stage. It certainly makes your job easier converting them during recruitment. This is why it’s not effective to rely heavily on a job ad and *maybe* also that token awe-inspiring post on LinkedIn that goes along the lines of, “Fantastic opportunity to join our talented team in our Sydney office! Check out the link and reach out if you have questions,” as your only means of connecting with future talent.
— So, if this is your attempt at recruitment marketing, you’re missing out. And unfortunately, until marketing competency is built within talent acquisition teams, you’ll have little chance to proactively meet the organisation’s talent needs now and in future.
Moving from reactive to proactive recruitment marketing
The way traditional marketing (and therefore recruitment marketing) works is, you want more people coming across you at the early employer brand awareness stage, then you want to entice them to learn more about you, picture themselves with [your product / your workplace]. You want to be giving them valuable information here that solves their problems, reassures them, and connects with them so they want to keep learning more, hearing more from you.
So, you’re inviting in a whole heap of somewhat qualified leads at the top of your funnel, and then the next stage arming them with more information, and then the next stage even more – so by the time they reach the “Apply now” stage in your funnel/job seeker journey (if they’re still holding on), they got a bloody good feel for who you are and what you stand for and how much they’ll fit, so you end up with more qualified leads to carry through to the final stage (offers!).
And while education should continue throughout shortlisting, the more informed the candidate is of who you are by the time they submit that application, the higher your chances are that it’ll be an application worthy of your time.
This is why you need to bring the awareness stage forward in your recruitment marketing efforts. The funnel enables you to create and feed a constant pipeline (community) of candidates all year round.
You don’t want to rely on that obvious right-in-the-moment “We’re hiring now!” awareness.
BEFORE THEN.
Before your job ad is even a twinkle in your hiring manager’s eye.
How?
Using the same tools as B2B marketers – content marketing. Strategically publishing blogs, emails, social posts, videos and resources that entertain, inspire and educate.
Because newsflash! Recruiting *is* marketing
Did you just roll your eyes at me and mumble, “But, I’m a recruiter, not a marketer.”?
Hear this –
We.Are.All.Marketers.Now
Authors are marketers.
Plumbers are marketers.
Baristas are marketers.
Pollies are marketers (they’re just dreadful at it).
This is the reality of doing business in an online, attention-driven world.
So, stop crying about it, and get a wriggle on.
You’ve got work to do.
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