How to Leverage Content Marketing For Recruitment

Rather than waiting for qualified talent in your field to come to you, leveraging content marketing for recruitment purposes is a surefire way to get your job listings to the right people. With compelling content like blog posts, social media posts, and search-engine-optimized job board posts, potential candidates can get a good idea of your company’s culture and core values. 

Let’s take a look at how you can get started with content creation for recruitment purposes by making your very own content strategy. 

The Importance of Content Marketing for Recruitment

Without a dedicated recruitment marketing strategy, your recruiting team will struggle to make your job opportunities visible to prospective candidates with the relevant levels of experience. 

Recruitment content marketing isn’t just about encouraging your target candidates to sell themselves to your business. It’s also about positioning yourself as an excellent employer that’s attractive to work for. 

With a salient content marketing strategy, you have the opportunity to showcase yourself as an industry expert by delivering high-quality content that packs a punch. Leadership content ideas include: 

• Video content 
• Blog posts 
• Whitepapers 
• Industry News
• Interactive content 
• Email newsletters

As well as establishing yourself as an industry leader, recruitment marketing also lets you:

• Highlight the positives of working for you by using employee testimonials 
• Build relationships with candidates by opening a line of communication through social platforms 
• Drive traffic to your job listings, which will make them more visible to your target audience

By implementing the above marketing techniques, you can encourage more high-quality applicants to consider applying.

5 Types of Content Marketing for Recruitment Purposes

Marketing to your ideal candidate is a crucial part of the recruitment process. Without it, your online job roles will get lost in the noise. Here are the top five types of valuable content most effective for recruiters: 

1. Employee-Generated Content

Perhaps the most effective content marketing strategy for recruiting is to post original content from current employees. Sharing positive experiences about working for your business on your social media channels or blog from employee perspectives will encourage more high-quality applications. 

Types of employee-generated content include: 

• Employee testimonials: quotes from current employees about what it’s like to work for you and how you’ve contributed to their career goals.
• Employee blog posts: articles about what your employees are currently working on, industry insights, or how they ended up on their career paths. 
• Employee podcast episodes: podcasts produced by your employees detailing their roles or sharing insights into industry trends.
• Q & A sessions: An “ask me anything” session with employees where they can share career advice or details on your company values. 

Encouraging your current employees to rave about your company ethos and policies acts as an endorsement of working for you, generating more applications. 

2. Video Content

Creating video content for your social media channels or company website allows potential candidates to visualize what it would be like to work for you and place themselves there. This adds a more human aspect for job applicants and helps them to understand your ethos better. 

Video content ideas could include: 

• Company culture: create impactful videos featuring team activities and company events. 
• Day in the life: highlight what a typical day looks like in the office, showcasing meetings and coworker interactions. 
• Interview prep tips: share useful advice for potential candidates on what you are looking for and how they can best showcase their skills. 

By providing content in video form, you can better portray your company culture so potential candidates can assess whether they’re the right fit for your business moving forward.

3. Blog Content

Content marketing for recruitment will most often include blog posts that demonstrate the business’s industry knowledge and insights. This is a way for you to attract potential candidates to interact with your business first, and understand your brand before they apply.

Include details about how your business runs so future employees can know what to expect before applying. This could include titles like: 

• “The Benefits of Entering into a Joint Venture” 
• “What is Co-Employment?” 
• “A Guide to Affiliate Marketing”

Posting fresh content to your company blog is also a way to boost your search engine visibility, so when you do post job listings, more potential applicants will find it. 

4. Podcasts

Creating your own company podcast is a way for you to add personality to your brand persona. Encourage your marketing team to discuss relevant topics like job market trends, career development, your workplace culture, and what makes an ideal job applicant. 

5. Social Media Content 

Another content marketing strategy for recruitment is to post regular social media content to your channels like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. To avoid duplicating topic ideas, consider creating a content calendar for each of your social networks.

How to Create Your Own Content Marketing Recruitment Strategy

There’s no one-size-fits-all method for developing a content marketing strategy for your recruitment efforts. You should tailor how you market to candidates depending on your industry and the job vacancy you’re trying to fill. 

Having said that, there are strategies you should follow as you work on developing your marketing efforts. Let’s take a look. 

1. Develop Candidate Personas

Before anything else, you need to understand who you’re targeting in your recruitment marketing efforts. Start by researching the demographics, job preferences, motivations, and pain points of your ideal candidate. This could be based on education level, job experience, and how they prefer to work.

Then, develop the core types of candidates you’re looking to attract with your content marketing for recruitment strategy. Here’s an example of how a candidate’s persona might look:

• Candidate: Paul
• Demographic: A 32-year-old sales professional with a bachelor’s degree in business admin and seven years experience in retail. He’s currently in joint employment, working for both a staffing agency and a retail company.
• Goals and Pain Points: Jason’s goal is to gain experience in sales and customer service, using his current skills to enhance his career. He wants a job that offers flexibility and stability.
• Preferred Communication Channels: Jason wants to communicate with potential employers on LinkedIn so he can build his network of industry peers.
• Preferred Content: He values content that provides insights into his current career, like sales strategies and customer relationship management. 

Creating multiple candidate personas will allow you to attract the top talent you’re searching for, as you can tailor your marketing plan to suit their content needs. 

2. Optimize Your Job Listings for Search Engines

To make your job listings as visible as possible, you should implement search engine optimization (SEO) strategies as part of your content marketing for recruitment strategy.

Start by conducting keyword research to find relevant terms and phrases job seekers are actively searching for in Google. You can do this by using tech like SEMrush or Ahrefs and finding keywords with high search volume and low competition.

Then, use these relevant words or phrases in your job listing and your wider published content like web pages and blog posts. Optimize your meta titles, descriptions, and headings to make your content more visible to the right candidates.

3. Develop Your Own Recruitment Marketing Funnel  

A recruitment marketing funnel is about guiding your potential candidates through different stages, including awareness, consideration, and, ultimately, conversion (a successful hire). Here’s a breakdown of the recruitment marketing funnel: 

Awareness Stage 

The awareness stage lays the foundation for attracting potential candidates and introducing them to your business and job opportunities. Before you begin, define your target audience—you should’ve already done this by creating your candidate personas.

To build awareness, you should then develop organic content for each persona that is designed to attract their attention. Use a mix of the five types of content we included above. 

Consideration Stage

During this stage, potential candidates will start to review your business and weigh their options to ultimately decide whether they want to apply to work for you.

High-quality candidates will need to see value-added resources like: 

• Case studies
• Employee testimonials 
• Virtual tours 

As part of the consideration stage, you should also work to build the credibility of your business. You can do this by publishing thought leadership content showcasing your expertise in the field.

Conversion Stage

At the conversion stage, you need to make it as easy as possible for external candidates to apply for open positions. You can do this by: 

• Personalizing any and all communication with the candidate.
• Providing optional assistance for candidates as they navigate the interview process.
• Tracking and measuring your results by tracking your conversion rates (the number of applicants).

By following a carefully planned recruitment marketing funnel, you’ll attract high-value candidates who have a thorough understanding of your business and what it would be like to work for you.

Boost Your Recruitment Strategy with Content Marketing Today

With so much competition in recruitment, waiting for talent to come to you isn’t enough anymore. You must make an active effort to target potential candidates, with one of the most effective ways being content marketing. 

Leveraging content like blog posts, social media updates, and SEO job board listings will not only attract potential candidates but also provide insight into your company culture and brand values.

Rather than trying to target candidates blindly, follow a recruitment marketing funnel to map their journey from awareness to consideration to ultimate conversion and give your business the best possible chance of attracting top talent.