Research shows that 75% of today’s job seekers will investigate a company via multiple online avenues like social media, job boards, or a company’s website before they consider submitting an application. Job seekers expect an increased level of transparency from employers about who they are, what they stand for, and what they can offer candidates, and, as a result, hiring managers are thinking differently about their talent acquisition strategies.
A recent survey found that 86% of hiring managers view recruitment as a form of marketing, and this shift in the talent acquisition space can prove to be tricky for B2B companies that don’t have the employer branding and recruitment pieces in place to reach the next generation of industry professionals in the ways they want and expect.
What do these employer branding and recruitment pieces look like? Here, we’ll look at a couple of things B2B companies can do to jumpstart effective recruitment marketing campaigns, elevate their employer branding, and drive new applicants.
Optimize the design and layout of your website, specifically your careers page
Job seekers view your website as a digital first impression. This makes optimizing your website key in creating a positive first impression and enticing job seekers to investigate your company further, especially since job seekers factor in the design and functionality of a website when weighing the legitimacy and reputation of an employer.
Website optimization includes technical components like page responsiveness and page load time, both of which can not only impact the functionality of your site but also the job seeker experience.
For example, page load time — or the amount of time it takes a website page to fully load — can impact whether potential applicants stick around long enough to investigate your company and submit an application. Semrush reports that websites with a load time of more than 5 seconds have a bounce rate of more than 90%, which means a slow-to-load careers page could be costing you applicants.
Making sure your website pages load quickly and fully across a variety of platforms is also important when running any kind of paid search recruitment campaigns, as unresponsive or sluggish pages can compromise the performance and cost-effectiveness of your ads.
There are a number of elements that can impact the technical side of web performance, and our website grader can audit your site and help identify technical website issues that are hampering your site’s performance. Other things to consider for optimizing the design and layout of your website for a positive job seeker experience include:
- Ensuring images or videos are properly sized based on your website’s theme, and that image file types are compressed to reduce page load times, not to mention how much a user needs to scroll to find position or application information.
- Placing an application submission or contact form at the top of the page to streamline the submission process. The same principles that play into optimizing a website page for conversions also apply here — the less hunting candidates have to do when submitting application materials, the better.
- Using active, clear, and concise language in your call-to-action — common examples include apply now, or submit your application.
It’s important to remember that the layout and functionality of your careers page is not limited to what job seekers experience on a desktop or laptop screen. Making sure your page is mobile-friendly is critical, especially since more than 50% of all website traffic comes from mobile sources. Plus, website accessibility — how well your website can be viewed by people with all levels of abilities — can be key for compliance and maximizing your reach.
There’s also more to optimizing the job seeker experience on your site than just the technical aspects. You can make sure your website is optimized for organic search traffic using relevant keywords and content — this means it will be easier for people to find your website based on search engine queries. We recently discussed some best practices for search optimization.
Emphasize employee testimonials
The fuel for an effective recruitment marketing campaign is content. Employee testimonials that speak to your company mission, vision, values, and workplace culture can not only resonate with job seekers, but they can also help make it easier to convey your employer value proposition (EVP) by sharing the stories and anecdotes of current employees.
Job seekers crave a window into what it’s really like working for a given company, and emphasizing employee testimonial content can give job seekers the glimpse they’re looking for. Employee testimonials can also have internal brand equity benefits in terms of showing current employees that you value their story and contributions to your team and boosting their feelings of pride in the company.
For example, we worked with a historic property restoration contractor, Renaissance Historic Exteriors, on a content marketing recruitment campaign that included a series of blog posts that featured Renaissance's restoration specialists discussing what makes the company unique and a special place to work.
While written employee testimonials in blog posts or social media posts can be effective, video testimonials can take job seeker engagement to a whole other level. Research shows that online video volume increased by more than 20% in 2022 alone, and this number will likely continue to increase over the next few years. Video content can help employers make a powerful statement to job seekers by showing as opposed to telling.
Plus, employer branding videos are more likely to be shared within personal and professional online networks like LinkedIn, which helps to amplify your reach and influence.
Industrial Pump & Equipment (IPEC) recently asked us to help them create a series of videos to demonstrate what it’s like to work with and for IPEC. These videos needed to be evergreen and repurposed across multiple platforms — YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook — to help document the story of a company on the rise.
This type of behind-the-scenes look at the work your company does and the partnerships you create within your industry can make a real difference in helping to establish and reinforce both your brand and your employer brand.
Leverage social media as an outreach tool
Studies show that more than 85% of job seekers use social media at some point in their job search, and 42% of job seekers use social media as a tool to determine whether a company is a good fit for them. This elevates the importance for employers of maintaining active, relevant, properly branded social media accounts, and this same principle applies to job posting and employee review websites like Indeed and Glassdoor.
While you may not categorize these sites as social media, these do have a heavy social component in that job seekers read and engage with content like photos, videos, and employer reviews. Too many employers still lack a strategy for updating their profiles with relevant and useful content, and many do not claim company pages or profiles created on sites like Glassdoor.
But social media can serve as more than a tool for job seekers to research your company — employers can use social media as a targeted outreach tool to find and attract the right candidates. This is where LinkedIn — and Facebook, to a lesser extent — can help companies create dynamic recruitment ad campaigns targeted by job title, work history and experience, and location.
This highly targeted method of outreach can help companies optimize their recruitment marketing spend by positioning ads only to those users who meet specific employment criteria. LinkedIn’s recruitment campaigns can include single image, multi-image, and video content, and these ads can funnel traffic to your careers page to help streamline the application process.
We executed a LinkedIn recruitment campaign for Renaissance Historic Exteriors with ads that targeted a number of very specific job titles and skill sets in the historic restoration field. This campaign generated tens of thousands of impressions and helped Renaissance reach the kind of experienced craftspeople they needed to satisfy demand for their restoration services.
Optimizing the design and functionality of your website, harnessing the power of employee testimonials, and using social media to target the right candidates is a good start for companies to attract the talent they need. But there’s more that employers can do to create effective recruitment campaigns, and we can help you craft a recruitment strategy that helps you meet your staff needs.
Tell us about what you need from a recruitment campaign and we’ll connect with you soon.
