To recruit effectively, companies need to understand and adapt to new job search habits of candidates. Before responding to an offer, candidates learn about the company, its activities, its values but also the quality of life at work, the opinion of employees, the benefits … Posting a job offer on your career website is not enough to attract talents!
Inbound Recruiting, what is it?
Inbound Recruiting can be defined as a strategy to attract potential candidates to your company, particularly through the publication of qualitative content. The purpose of these contents is to introduce your company and its advantages and to convince talents to join it. Inbound Recruiting plays a major role in the development of the employer brand and the interest of candidates for your company.
Inbound Recruiting helps create a relationship and a trust between a candidate and a company even before making contact. The goal is not to oversell the benefits of the company but to arouse the interest of the candidates.
The Inbound Recruiting steps
How to put in place a good Inbound Recruiting strategy? What are the key steps and actions to take?
Inbound Recruiting can be built in 4 stages, to follow the candidates in a logical acquisition funnel:
- Attract strangers to your company: Content creation is the key of a successful Inbound Recruiting strategy. Indeed, a talent could be hidden in the mass of the unknown people of which you will attract the attention, that is why the content you will create must be engaging and adapted to the profiles you seek. Publish blog articles about your company life, infographics presenting key figures on your organization, SEO, development of your career website and of course the animation of social media is a good start. By creating this type of content, you will start the first phase of contact and turn a simple stranger into a visitor on your corporate website, your career site, your social media pages or your blog …
- Convert your visitors by creating an interest and a will to discover more: The objective here is to accompany the visitors throughout their search of information. If they are in this category, it is because they have shown an interest in your company, so you must do everything to guide them through an enriching and exciting experience. To do so, you can create job descriptions, share internal videos or employee testimonials. Your job offers must be easily accessible, detailed and transparent. If a candidate is coveted by several companies, he will choose the one that inspires him the most trust. To develop this trust, you can put forward some reviews (on Glassdoor, LinkedIn, Viadeo, Google …) or customer cases, to demonstrate the seriousness of the company and its references.
- Hire the best candidates quickly: If a candidate applies for one of your offers, he will probably have applied for other similar offers in other companies. It will therefore be necessary to very quickly capture the talent and show him your interest in his profile. Through targeted and personalized emails, sharing the best content, or via calls to candidates who have expressed their interest. Managing a candidate database (like a customer database) is essential to refine your actions and improve your recruitment process.
- Engage your employees and make them ambassadors: The major goal of Inbound Recruiting is to transform your employees into ambassadors for your company. A happy employee will let it know and give the best advice on your company. You must favor the best candidate experience to create, from the beginning, an employee engagement in your company! This commitment is reflected in the sharing of job offers in employees’ personal networks (Alumni, previous university, word of mouth …) or on social networks.
Here is an infographic that summarizes the 4 stages of Inbound Recruiting:
The benefits of Inbound Recruiting
- Save money: The investment required to succeed in your Inbound Recruiting strategy is more a time investment than a financial one. In fact, writing and publishing content, setting up online communication campaigns and getting in touch with candidates takes a lot of time but very small budget. It is a long strategy to develop but, once in place, is successful in the long term.
- Creation of a strong employer brand: All the actions empower your employer brand among candidates. Indeed, your brand is more visible online and develops a social media presence which increases its influence and improves its image.
- Valuing the company’s image for customers: Happy employees who show it, social actions and promotion of the company also benefits your company’s business. Customers tend to favor companies with a good image, an ethical and respectful organization because they know that happy employees are collaborators who provide quality work.
The advice of ARAGO Consulting to improve your Inbound Recruiting strategy
« Think Different »
This famous slogan of Apple fits perfectly in the case of Inbound Recruiting. As with any marketing or communication campaign, you have to think differently and differentiate yourself from the competition. Follow the trends, choose the media that engage the most, but try to transform them with an innovative touch.
For example, video is a format that is widely used today and shows very promising results. But the video also offers many creative formats that only limit your imagination, so stand out!
Candidate first!
As with a product, do not describe your business as the best in the world, with the best benefits, the best working conditions and the best people. What today’s candidates are looking for, especially young talents who are in high demand in the job market, is authenticity, transparency and respect for employees. Think first about the needs of the candidates, highlight the most important criteria for them and show that your priority is their fulfillment within your company.
Reactivity is the key!
In the recruitment sector, things move very fast. Every day, new positions are available and new talents are looking for work. That’s why you must be very responsive when you capture a talent that meets your criteria! Do not waste time telling yourself “there may be even better tomorrow” because tomorrow will be too late! A talent is a profile sought by many companies who will not hesitate to make a proposal. As soon as a talent shows you his interest, take the opportunity to meet him.
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