What is recruitment marketing?
Recruitment marketing is everything you do to let the right candidates know you exist, before they apply. An agency builds the campaigns, picks the audience and makes sure the vacancy lands with people who fit, not with everyone who happens to be searching.
The candidate you want usually has a job already. They do not browse job boards and do not respond to a vacancy text. They respond to an employer they recognise.
Why recruiting in engineering and industry looks like B2B marketing:
- The audience is small and specific, so a broad campaign pays for people who will never fit.
- The decision takes long, because nobody quits their job after one ad.
- Several people weigh in, at home and at work.
That is why we treat a vacancy as a campaign with a different buyer. It fits the way we work, from buying signal to sales meeting, with the recruiter in the role of sales.
Your vacancy is online, but the right people never see it
Employers rarely call us because there are no applications. The applications come, but from the wrong people. The vacancy sits on the job board, the agency forwards CVs, and the technician or engineer you want is meanwhile happily working for your competitor.
In our campaigns we see the same causes. The vacancy text is written for the organisation itself, not for the candidate. The campaign runs on interests, so it lands with everyone. And whoever does respond waits days for a reply.
How we handle recruitment marketing
We work in four steps, together with Active Talent.
The monthly report shows conversations and hires, with the campaigns that produced them. Our position is that you measure recruitment marketing on conversations with the recruiter and on who eventually starts, not on the number of applications. A hundred applications from people who do not fit only cost time. In our campaigns we see that the candidate who eventually starts rarely responded to the first ad; they had seen the employer several times before.
Recruitment marketing never stands alone here. The same recognition you build with clients through demand generation works with candidates. Whoever already knows you as a client sees you sooner as an employer too.
Candidates who are not searching
We define who the ideal candidate is, where they work now and what would make them move. That profile sets the audience on LinkedIn and Meta.
Recognition of the employer
Those candidates first see who you are and what the work looks like, with real colleagues in the picture, before they see a vacancy. That is employer branding with a purpose: recognition among exactly the people you are looking for.
Response to the vacancy
The vacancy lands with people who already recognise you. We measure which campaign produced which response.
Meeting with the recruiter
Active Talent picks up every response within a day, holds the conversation and reports back which campaign produced candidates who fit.
Who recruitment marketing works for, and who it does not
It works when you hire continuously in a tight market and have the time to build recognition.
- You are looking for several colleagues in the same field over the coming months.
- The candidate you want has a job now and is not actively searching.
- Someone picks up responses within a day, at your company or at Active Talent.
It does not work in every situation, and we would rather say so up front.
- You have one vacancy that must be filled next week. Then recruiting through Active Talent's network is faster than a campaign.
- You are looking for people who actively search job boards. No campaign is needed for that.
- You do not want real colleagues in the picture. Without faces you build no recognition.
How we work together
You have one contact for the campaigns and one for the recruiting, and both sit in the same building in Groningen. We build and steer the campaigns; Active Talent holds the conversations and guides candidates up to their first working day.
From you we need a clear profile, colleagues willing to be in the picture, and feedback on who started. Once a month we go through together which campaigns produced conversations and what changes the month after.
Frequently asked questions
What does a recruitment marketer do?
A recruitment marketer builds the campaigns an employer uses to reach candidates: the profile of the ideal candidate, the audience on LinkedIn and Meta, the copy and imagery, and the measurement of what each campaign produced. The work resembles that of a B2B marketer, with the candidate as the buyer and the recruiter as sales.
How do you measure whether recruitment marketing works?
You measure recruitment marketing on conversations with the recruiter and on who eventually starts, per campaign. Counting applications says little when most applicants do not fit. That is why we tie every response to the campaign it came from, so you see which message and which channel produced candidates who were hired.
What does a recruitment marketing programme cost?
A recruitment marketing programme costs the advertising budget plus the work to build and steer the campaigns, and on top of that the recruiting itself through Active Talent. What is sensible depends on how many colleagues you are looking for, how scarce the field is and whether you are already known as an employer. We work it out together in a first meeting.