Today’s tight talent market means that staffing and recruiting firms are increasingly leveraging new tactics to try to reach and engage candidates. Staffing firms have been incorporating everything from new strategies for posting job descriptions, to increased referral and signing bonuses and more.
However, tempting candidates to act on your openings is only one part of the equation; first, you need to get your opportunities in front of them. Much like a staffing firm has a sales cycle established to reach, engage and continually nurture prospective and existing enterprise customers, this same approach can also prove to be effective with jobseekers.
That’s where paid strategies come into play.
Why Digital Advertising?
As candidates spend more and more time online daily, companies must become more proactive about cutting through the noise online for their employment opportunities to be seen. Yes, you can increase advertising dollars with job aggregator sites or LinkedIn, but maybe at higher costs of acquisition. Digital advertising can help you cost-effectively get in front of the right audience, in the right place, with the right content.
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Get Creative With Your Audiences
One of the biggest mistakes a staffing firm can make is to overlook and not leverage a talent pool. These audiences should all play a role in your digital advertising strategies:
- Previous Applications. Whether someone applied five hours ago, five weeks ago or even five years ago, you shouldn’t forget about them. Maybe they were placed on assignment or found a permanent opportunity. If you’re not marketing to these candidates, you could be missing out on the ability to fill job orders now or in the future.
- Website/Job Board Visitors. If candidates come to your job board, don’t apply or even return later – were they even there? Using cookie- and pixel-based tracking, you can now target candidates who visit your website but didn’t take actions.
- New Talent. On Facebook, there are several detailed targeting options to build a candidate profile that might be a good fit for the positions you staff. Leverage the site’s host of demographic targeting options including educational background, job title, personal interests, certifications and more.
- Lookalike Talent. Facebook also offers robust audience targeting options, including the ability to build a list of potential candidates by having it use a preexisting list (such as previous applicants) as inspiration. Once you create a lookalike audience, apply additional advanced filtering to hone in on talent that may be an ideal fit for your opportunities.
Create a (Paid) Engagement Cycle
Once you have segmented the different users you will be going after, it’s time build your mix of paid campaigns. Here are a few you should consider leveraging:
- Promote Facebook Jobs listings to candidates who meet your demographic criteria and/or reside on lists.
- Re-recruit your ATS list or previous website visitors through ads that remind them of your opportunities and core differentiators and drive them back to your job board/website. This can be done on Facebook, Google, Instagram and more.
- Use Lead Generation ads on Facebook to quickly collect a candidate’s information without making them leave the social network.
- Use Google Search Engine Marketing Ads (SEM) to have your opportunities come up in search results you would otherwise struggle to rank for organically (or cost-effectively).
- Use Display ads on Google’s Display Network to stay top-of-mind with previous website and job board visitors. Continually reminding them about the types of opportunities you open.
Don’t “Set It and Forget It”
Digital advertising isn’t something that should be turned on and then ignored. It is important to evaluate ROI, look for opportunities to increase conversions and continually test different campaign strategies. Leverage tools such as Google Analytics (and goals), Google Tag Manager, event tracking technology, and other PPC tools such as SEMrush.
Leveraging paid advertising tactics to reach, engage and continually nurture your talent pool will position you to benefit from increased quantity and quality of candidates.
