It goes without saying that finding the best talent to add to your team is hard. Indeed, recruiting can take up a lot of time and resources even in any size company, but small businesses have to pay special attention to choosing the best candidates.
That being said, you can’t just expect people to come to you – you need to be the one reaching out. One way to do this is through recruiting content. Here’s how to develop a successful recruiting content strategy.
What Is Recruiting Content?
What exactly is recruiting content? To put it simply, it is any kind of content used during the process of recruiting new employees into a company. Anything from blog articles to social media posts to email newsletters could be considered recruiting content as long as its purpose is to attract potential candidates. Most of the time, recruiting content has a number of goals:
- It generates traffic and improves SEO on your website and social media profiles.
- It engages potential candidates and encourages conversations between your company and them.
- It improves brand recognition and awareness in your target audience of candidates.
1. Define Your Target Audience and Goals
First and foremost, you need to define your target audience and goals. Be realistic with your expectations even if you are certain that nobody would ever decline the offer to work for your company. For your target audience, think about:
- Your ideal candidate’s education, certifications, and qualifications.
- Your ideal candidate’s past work experience (volunteering and internships if applicable).
- Your ideal candidate’s skills, areas of expertise, and proficiency levels.
When setting your goals, think in the same way you would about a typical content marketing campaign while taking into account who your target audience is. Which channels will you use? What levels of content performance do you expect?
2. Describe the Job Position in Detail
A key aspect of hiring the right candidate for a role at your company is creating an accurate description of what that job position entails. In other words, if you don’t know who you are looking for and what the job will be like, you won’t find the candidate that will be the best choice in that position.
The job description you create will need to be used both in job listings and as a guide for the content you will be creating. In the latter case, it will be just as useful as your ideal candidate’s profile that you already created when defining your target audience.
Think about the responsibilities the role involves, the challenges the person will face, and the bonuses they will get if they do their job well. Think about the opportunities they will have in the long run and why your candidate would want to apply for the job in the first place.
3. Develop Ideas for Your Content
Now that you have a more or less clear picture in mind, you can start developing ideas for your recruiting content. Remember that the topics you cover in your content need to be relevant to your target audience.
In addition to that, think about the content types and formats you will be using based on the marketing channels you have chosen. If you are unsure about what topics to cover, you can always seek professional help from an experienced writer from a reputable writing services reviews site. This way, you can get a consultation on how to proceed and which ideas to use for your content.
4. Find Third-Party Content and Create Your Own
Recruiting content campaigns don’t necessarily require you to only publish content of your own creation. In fact, using third-party and user-generated content could really boost the success of your recruiting campaign. That is why the next step is for you to both find third-party content and create original content yourself.
Take into account everything you have planned so far. Make sure that both third-party and your own content is relevant and of high quality. To find third-party content, visit relevant blogs, websites, social media profiles, and so on.
5. Put Together a Content Calendar
Before you launch your recruiting content campaign, you need to finalize your strategy by putting together a content calendar. This calendar will help you schedule your content to be published at the right time to achieve the best results from it. To create a content calendar, consider such things as:
- The time of the day and day of the week when your target audience is most active on the channels you have selected.
- The preferences of your target audience when it comes to content frequency (e.g. weekly vs monthly email newsletter).
- Whether or not you want to publish content at the same time across multiple channels (e.g. simultaneous posting on your blog and several social media accounts).
6. Publish Content on Multiple Channels
Once everything is ready, you can start publishing content on multiple channels that you have chosen. Remember to stick to your content calendar and use both the third-party content you found and the original content you created yourself.
If you need any help with more content that you decide to create, you can outsource some of your content creation. Check the top writing reviews and find an experienced writer that will help you write different types of content for your recruiting campaign.
7. Assess Its Performance and Adapt
After you publish your content, your job isn’t done yet. You need to keep a close eye on it and assess its performance continuously. Based on what you see, you will need to adapt accordingly both for this campaign and in the future.
Use your goals and performance metrics to make accurate assessments of your content’s success. If your goals are unrealistic, you might be disappointed in what you see, so try to adjust them if it is necessary.
8. Begin the Recruiting Process
Last but not least, you can begin your recruiting process. As you gain more brand awareness and recognition, more potential candidates will flock to your website and social media profiles. They will apply to your open job positions or directly reach out to you.
When this happens, you need to be ready to launch your recruiting process. Evaluate resumes, schedule interviews, and so on. Try not to rush things to find the best candidate for the role who will fit your team.
Conclusion
To summarize, creating recruiting content is no different than creating any other type of content. You just need to understand who your target audience is and how to approach it in the most successful way. Use the tips in this article to help you create your own recruiting content strategy and start recruiting experienced professionals into your team.
About the Author: Max Mitchell is the latest alumnus of our content marketing department. He is very passionate about typing, creating complicated spreadsheets, and consuming an inhuman amount of caffeine. Nevertheless, he is also the creative type of individual who will always find a new perspective on topics of interest
