The Best Digital Recruitment Tips to Attract Job Applicants

Having the right interview process and strategy in place is extremely important when hiring for your organization. But unless you have job applicants, there's no one to use these strategies on!

Being laser-focused on improving your online presence and website is essential. Here are some digital recruitment tips to help assess and audit your company's websites and change your interview process.

Career Website vs. Corporate Website

Yes, there is a difference between the two!

Your corporate website should be the place where you boost your:

• Mission statement
• Brand
• And company information.

Often, we see organizations wanting to include these elements in their job postings or careers page. But doing so only hurts your chances of being seen by candidates.

Use your corporate site to tell job candidates WHY they should work with your organization and your careers page to show them HOW they can work FOR your organization.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Unless you're a marketer, you probably aren't super familiar with SEO (search engine optimization) and how your organization can be better at it.

SEO is the process of affecting the visibility and rank of a website in a search engine's unpaid results' listing – often referred to as organic results. This means that the more SEO-friendly your website is, the more traffic you'll get. The more effective you are with your placement and choice of keywords, the more people searching for those terms will have visibility to your job openings.

It's amazing how this can significantly impact your ability to drive applicants. Without it, recruitment teams will be forced to source and will not benefit from inbound traffic.

Mobile Responsiveness

In addition to making your site "SEO Successful," you must also ensure that your site is mobile responsive.

Did you know that 78 percent of all Millennial job seekers use their mobile device for a job search? Did you also know that if the process is too complicated, 60 percent of those candidates will abandon their application?

So, what does this mean for you?

It means you need to simplify your application process. By making your careers page mobile and consumer-friendly, you will see an improved page ranking on Google, a decrease in cost-per-apply, and an increased number of qualified candidates.

Now that you have optimized your website search engine (SEO), audited, and mobile-friendly, let's get to marketing those jobs. 

"Post and pray" is not a viable strategy for marketing your job openings.

If you're just slapping your company's jobs on job boards, you must seriously rethink your approach!

There are endless ways to market your jobs. And they're all rooted in determining where your job prospects are (on and offline) – and marketing there.

Go to job hunters; don't expect job hunters to come to you.

The ideal marketing strategy is a marketing "mix," combining a variety of tactics to reach your target audience. Here are a few ways to better market your company's job openings to facilitate successful recruitment.

3 Digital Recruitment Marketing Techniques for Your Job Openings

First, let's talk about marketing online. We wrote an entire eBook on this, but I'll keep it short and sweet (for this post, at least).

Where are your potential job candidates in the digital world? Generally, we can narrow this down to three main spaces.

1. Google

Google processes over 3.5 billion searches every single day. So, yes, you should be marketing there! At the very least, ensure your job descriptions are search-engine optimized so that your jobs appear in Google search results. Your job descriptions should include keywords someone may use when searching for a job. (For example, if you're hiring an administrative assistant, utilize the words "administrative assistant," "secretary," "executive assistant" -- any variation that can describe your posting.)

This is something you can do for free. Something that's not free but can pay dividends? Google AdWords: targeted advertising on Google. By setting up an AdWords campaign, you can ensure you're reaching people who match your target audience when they're searching for words and topics related to your job openings.

Think of it as a way to be at the right place, at the right time. These are the ads you see at the top of your search results or off to the sides of certain websites.

2. Social Media: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter   

By now, you don't need to be convinced of the importance of social media. In fact, 92 percent of companies use social media for recruiting—which is great! But how many organizations tap into social media's full potential to market their jobs?

At the very least, you should ensure your company and your employees are regularly posting links to your job openings on their networks. This will engage those already aware of your company (your followers) and potentially attract employee referrals (because they're tapping into their own networks).  

To broaden your reach, there are several ways to run funded campaigns on your various networks to reach thousands of potential applicants every day; these include:

• Facebook and Instagram Ads (Facebook ads can translate directly to Instagram at the flick of a switch in your Facebook Ad setup, too.)  
• LinkedIn Ads  
• Twitter Ads
• On LinkedIn, you can even target people with specific job titles and seniority or who work for companies (think of your competitors).  

On Facebook (in addition to the traditional ad types), you can create a job posting where someone can apply directly on the platform. You can sponsor it for more visibility. Ensure you have the "jobs" option selected for the menu of your company's Facebook page.

There are a variety of different ad types depending on your goals, so ensure you think through the KPIs that will best measure your success (is it impressions, clicks, or conversions?), and go from there.   

3. Email inboxes

How often do you check your smartphone? More times than you can count, I'd bet. Thanks to smartphones, email is always at our fingertips—even when we're in the bathroom. (Yuck!)  

But that's good news for you.  

You can get someone to look at your job from just about anywhere! We've already discussed social media and Google, but let's not forget the email inbox.

When you have job openings, market them to your email databases regularly. Send out links to the job opening and provide contact information of your recruiters and HR department. Include content that can potentially answer job candidate questions and reduce hesitations so you can get more qualified applicants. Do you have a job benefits page you can link to? An employee testimonial video? What content can you use to go beyond marketing your specific job but a career with your company?

As I mentioned, your job-marketing strategy should be a mix. While it's important to market your job prospects online, don't neglect the opportunities offline. Again, it's all about marketing where your audience already is.  

Think about leveraging advertising through avenues such as:  

• Direct Mail
• Newspapers  
• Magazines  
• Radio  
• Flyers

Don't forget about marketing your jobs through events, as well. Think about:

• Hiring Days  
• Job Fairs  
• College Showcases  

Marketing your job through an event can be especially helpful, as it adds that personal touch you can't get through a phone or computer screen.