When it comes to your recruitment marketing content strategy, there are a lot of options to consider. From compelling videos and social media campaigns to CRMs leveraging the latest machine learning, the touchpoints to connect with candidates seems to expand by the day. It’s definitely an interesting time to be an employer brander thanks to the new tools and strategies coming out, but one of the best ways to connect with candidates is through written content.
Investing time to focus on written content will make a huge difference in your recruitment marketing strategy. Not only are you able to produce fresh and timely content a lot easier and more consistently than something like a flashy video, but you also have a lot more versatility for where you can share it.
Here are 10 places you can leverage for your written recruitment marketing content.
Career Sites
First and foremost, you need to get your career site looking good. However you’re driving candidates to your open roles, they’ll likely either land here to apply or will generally check it out to learn more about you.
Which means…
This really needs to sell your company, so you better give it all you’ve got. Make sure your copy is compelling, you’re sharing insights into how you treat your people, you promote opportunities for employees to grow, you illustrate what your company culture is, you’re sharing the interesting problems you’re trying to solve, and you get clear on what you offer your people.
You want to use this space to give candidates the full picture (both the good and not so good). This is the opportunity for them to get clear on whether your company or role is what they’re looking for, so don’t be afraid to make your site a little more robust to give them something to research. If you’re able to add a careers and culture focused blog too, that’s even better! Get those employee voices out there!
This also goes for third-party sites. Although the career profiles are typically more limited, make sure you’re picking the best content available and that it’s well rounded. If you’re leveraging targeted sites, such as for engineering, be sure to craft your written content to speak directly to them, the problems they’ll solve, their teams, and so on. Make sure it’s specific.
Landing Pages
If you’re running a campaign or putting on an event, you’ll want to create targeted landing pages that share relevant information for the candidates you’re trying to recruit. Whether it’s an organic social media campaign or a paid advertisement, leading them to a customized landing page can get them the details they need to decide if you’re right for them.
Think about your audience. For example, if you’re doing a push to hire more women in technology, consider what information they’d want to know.
How’s the team laid out and what’s their culture? Are there mentorship opportunities? What career paths are there? What projects are they working on? How will they be supported?
Creating a targeted landing page that has the right information can make a huge difference of whether a candidate converts into an applicant.
Social Media
Social media is a great way to give those authentic behind-the-scenes looks into your people, company, and culture. But rather than assuming the picture or video will do the talking, it’s best to make the most of your caption!
Instead of writing a quick caption on the fly that says something like, "fun team outing to celebrate our product launch," use the caption to say something more meaningful.
Find ways to tell a stronger story and highlight how this particular moment captures the essence of your company culture. Maybe talk about how this team's dedication made the launch a success, give specific members a shout out for their contributions, or talk about how your company values innovation, which is how this product even came to fruition. These insights can make your posts much more impactful.
Job Descriptions
Your job descriptions might be one of the first places candidates discover you. If you’re posting on job boards and your company is still relatively small or not well known yet, your job descriptions are where you need to shine to build that brand awareness and increase candidate interest.
If you’re using those dry, overly bulleted HR-type job postings, STOP. Not only will you cause your candidates’ eyes to glaze over because they’re often far too long and wordy, but those job descriptions usually don’t inject any of the company’s or team’s personality into it.
Think of your job descriptions as an ad. You want to tell a story, get people jazzed, and highlight some key things they’ll work on and the skills they need to be successful.
Don’t overwhelm the job description with a ton of bullet points and big blocks of text. Make it easier on the reader to scan first so they can get a sense of the job. Yes, we live in a world where everyone’s attention spans are practically nothing, so helping them scan or giving them enough to pique their interest will be the key to getting them to commit to reading more and taking action.
One-pagers
Consider your one-pager as a sales brochure. In traditional marketing, you’d use this to showcase the product/service features and benefits. You’d give insight into how things work and why the person reading about it would need it. You’d explain how it would make their lives better.
If someone stops by your booth at a hiring event, for example, how would you use this one-pager to stand out from the many other companies recruiting at the same event?
The events can be overwhelming, and eventually, employers start to blend together. Make sure your candidates have an interesting piece of content to take with them when they have a moment to gather their thoughts and weigh the options.
Culture Playbooks
Some companies get really deep into explaining who they are, what their culture is, what qualities they expect of their employees, and so on. In fact, Bretton Putter wrote a whole book about it called Culture Decks Decoded.
In this book, he breaks down several companies’ culture decks, from startups to massive enterprises like Netflix and Starbucks.
Culture decks are a great internal resource to have. This helps employees understand what’s available to them and what’s expected. It provides insights and the company history to help them make better decisions at work and continue to protect the behaviors that keep the culture stable.
However, many companies have shared these decks externally too as a way to attract (or deter) potential candidates.
Blogs
Blogs are one of the best ways to interject your employees' voices. Adding a blog to your career site can provide the extra resource candidates need to get a deeper dive into specific subjects. Whether you’re doing employee spotlights, office tours, sharing exciting company news, highlighting benefits and perks, or talking about company culture, this is an opportunity to provide unique perspectives from your people.
And when we say that, we don’t mean testimonials (although you can definitely include this). You need to gather experiences from a variety of people. This means the good and the challenging.
If you focus on real stories and less fluff, you can establish trust with your candidates a lot faster.
Also, be sure to create clear categories and tag your blogs to make it easier for candidates to sift through information and find what they need.
Sponsored Featured Editorial
Similar to your blog, sponsored editorial through a third-party is another way to showcase your company, careers, and culture.
Whether this is focused on career-based sites or industry-specific sites, sponsored content can help you reach new candidates because the site that publishes it will promote it to their social networks, newsletter subscribers, and through ads.
And since these candidates subscribe to this third-party, they’re likely to trust the source, which will be great for brand awareness.
Ads
If you want to build brand awareness faster and get in front of candidates sooner, ads might be the way to go. Whether you’re doing social media ads, banner ads on career sites or industry sites, or PPC ads that pop up on popular sites around the internet, you need to create headlines and captions that hook candidates right away.
After all, you’re not just competing with other companies that are hiring, you’re also competing with everything else on the internet. Other ads and distractions can make it hard to get people’s attention. Put your best content out there and target more directly.
Newsletter
If you have the option to set up a talent network through your ATS or another email marketing tool, a newsletter is a great way to keep candidates nurtured and warm. Use this as an opportunity to give them exclusive updates on what’s going on in the company, highlight hot jobs, and so on.
This also allows you to build a relationship with your candidates, especially those who could fit the hard-to-fill roles you have down the line. So ensure your email marketing is consistent and engaging. And, if possible, try to create targeted email campaigns based on specific audience details. For example, a job function or specific location.
As you can see, there are a lot of options to write recruitment marketing content that can excite, inspire, and attract the best candidates to your company. Each touchpoint is an opportunity to really show them what you’re all about, so make a habit of including as many of these as you can in your recruitment marketing strategy.
And don’t forget to audit your content regularly! Your company is growing and changing. Make sure everything is accurate and up to date so candidates don’t feel like you did a bait and switch if they read one thing and find out it’s not true.
Need help with content development? Harlow can help! Check out our brand activation services here.
Join our community for tips, news, and resources.