With so many marketing channels, modern recruiters are struggling to decide which marketing channel is the best for recruiting. Which marketing channel should you focus on in 2021 if you want to attract and hire top talent? Read on to find out!
The internet age has massively expanded recruitment possibilities. Instead of being practically limited to advertising locally, you can now use recruitment marketing to easily market your positions to the entire web.
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But with so many channels available, where should your effort go?
Upon first glance, the rich online opportunities seem ripe for the taking, but many recruiters feel less optimistic when they think about how much time and effort can go into posting and responding to ads through just one channel.
When you have a business to run, and everyday operations to handle, you can’t afford to spend hours each day handling recruitment - no matter how important it may be that you attract the best candidates. This can easily lead to frustration (it isn’t fun to leave options on the table).
This is what drives people to wonder which marketing channel is best for recruitment. Knowing that their time is limited, they want to pick out whichever channel best warrants 100% of their job-posting effort. That seems sensible (better to do great work through one channel than mediocre work through several), so let’s look at the options.
What channels are open to the modern recruiter? Here’s a solid list to begin with:
Company sites
Depending on the popularity of your brand, it can be effective to heavily promote your available roles on your website (or websites). You might even have a dedicated career site with additional information for viable candidates.
Influencer marketing
This might sound like an odd fit, because the idea of having a suitable influencer straightforwardly list a job posting is somewhat comical, but that isn’t how it works. Instead, it’s about building up the value of your brand to make it more appealing to jobseekers - establishing your expertise and authority in your field
Social media platforms
Great for networking and sharing succinct pieces of information, social media platforms have become very productive for jobseekers.
Certain platforms (like LinkedIn) are more business-oriented than others, but each platform has something to offer through reaching a distinct audience. In short, social media recruiting is a must these days!
Job boards
Ranging in formality and fee (some charge for listings, but there are also some free job posting sites), job boards obviously hold some value, but can make postings feel generic. It’s tough to compete through personality where people are mainly comparing perks and salaries.
Print/digital media
Through creating original content for physical or digital publications, you can build interest in your brand, or even in specific roles. The key is reaching the right people - suitable candidates who will also be willing to take the initiative to chase up the lead you provide (a lead that must be strongly alluring).
PPC advertising
One of the most reliable ways to bring in online traffic, running PPC ads can be used to target recruitment-centric keywords. Unfortunately, since Google now prefers to top its SERPs with its own job-aggregation feed (drawing from job listing sites), Google Ads are no longer effective - consider social media PPC if anything.
Each of these channels has its strengths and weaknesses, and which one will best suit a particular job listing will depend on the specifics of that listing (the type of job, the field it concerns) as well as the nature of the company behind it.
For instance, a listing for a social media manager will best fit on social media itself (mainly Twitter, given its fast pace), whereas a posting for someone with a huge amount of experience in a specific industry might be best placed in a suitably high-end industry publication.
We now arrive at the titular question, trying to discern which of these channels is best for recruitment in 2021 - but the (perhaps unsatisfying) answer is that there is no best marketing channel for recruitment. It’s all completely contextual, depending on the target audience you’re trying to reach, the type of job, the reputation of the company, and various other things too.
You could make a case for social media platforms overall, but does that really narrow things down sufficiently? That ends up leaving you with LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and whichever the next big platform ends up being. Each of those platforms has unique formatting restrictions (not least for images) and plenty of distinct users, so targeting just one won’t yield the consistent results you’re looking for.
This might sound like a major problem, then. You want to recruit efficiently, but you don’t have the time to manually handle two recruitment channels, let alone several of those we’ve listed. However, there’s actually a solution that can get the job done for you - so let’s look at it.
Technology always steps up to solve everyday problems in the business world - think about how efficient processes like workplace communication and calendar scheduling have become. Talentlyft Source is doing just that for the online recruitment process. Not only does it make it possible to effortlessly share a job listing across numerous job boards and social channels, but it also brings the rich data of the online world to bear in delivering passive candidates.
When you’re trying to reach people actively looking for work, there’s a fair chance that they’ll reach you eventually. It’s just a matter of time. People currently employed and not looking, through, are far harder to sway. Talentlyft Source can not only get your job listing seen across the internet, but it can also find and import details of potential candidates - you can then sort through them, identify the standouts, and reach out to them directly to gauge their interest.
Note that you’ll need to match the breadth of this effort once you’ve actually recruited people. Provide smooth onboarding and solid internal processes including a clear HR system and a polished payroll process at a minimum (payroll factors into company culture, remember), and demonstrate a comprehensive marketing strategy.
Why do your internal processes matter here? Because cross-channel recruitment sets a precedent for being forward-thinking and tech-savvy - a precedent that might draw people to you. If someone joins your team only to discover that your everyday operations aren’t comparably cohesive, they might not want to stick around.
In closing, while there’s some logical reasoning behind it, it doesn’t ultimately make much sense to concentrate on one specific marketing channel for recruitment across the board. You might want to concentrate on one for a particular job listing, but you’d need to decide which one based on its unique qualities.
Alternatively, you could just use a solution like Talentlyft to ensure optimal cross-channel coverage for your postings and bring in plenty of prospects you can choose from at your leisure. It doesn’t seem like a hard decision!
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