As the balance of power has shifted from company to worker, recruiters are faced with bigger challenges than ever when it comes to attracting and hiring top talent. 

In many ways, a recruiter must now take on the responsibilities of a marketer in order to succeed, except what they are selling is the company that is hiring, and the demographic they are selling to is quality talent.

Just as customers want to know why they should buy the product being offered and why they should buy it specifically from a certain vendor, workers want to know why they should apply for a job opening and why they should apply specifically with a certain organization.

Working as a marketer for most of my career, many years in HR Tech, and as a recruiter, here are five pro tips on how marketing can help you up your game in the quest for recruiting and retaining top talent :

Pro-Tip #1. Know your brand

Recruiters need to be intimately familiar with their employer's brand. Hiring professionals are well aware of these expectations, but many are unprepared for the realities of what they need to do to excel. While 67% of respondents to one recruitment survey said they need to understand marketing to be successful, only 36% said they're using employer branding strategies as an aid to recruitment marketing.

Pro-Tip #2. Understand what your customers candidates want

Workers don’t just want “a job” anymore. They want a career that gives them purpose and provides flexibility. Compensation is important, but assuming it’s all about the money is a big mistake. In fact, while 64% of respondents to a recent Gallup survey said they’d like a bigger salary and more benefits, 61% also mentioned greater work-life balance and better personal well-being as top priorities.

Pro-Tip #3. Be open to new technology

AI and automation are driving recruitment marketing, and 68% of recruiting professionals say that the best way to improve recruiting performance over the next five years is by investing in new recruiting technology. However, 60% of recruiters have issues with the integration of new technologies with the ones they already use. 

Pro-Tip #4. Your data is your answer key - analyze and read it well

Just like any other “sales” job, the amount of data on “customers’ is staggering. Recruiters and hiring managers have access to more candidate data than ever before: enough to get lost in, to be honest. However, if that data is correctly filtered and analyzed, it can be the most powerful tool in a recruitment professional’s arsenal when it comes to building profiles of ideal candidates and recognizing patterns that point to future performance and Quality of Hire.

Pro-Tip #5. Sharpen your communication skills or you may lose your audience

Customers today have the attention span of a goldfish, or so it’s said. Candidates are nearly as quick to lose interest and move on - all it takes is a week of radio silence from a recruiter or slow interview scheduling by a hiring manager. Engagement and nurturing are key to keeping top choices interested long enough to finish the application process and make it through the interview stage. 

How Recruiters Can Become Better Marketers

Work collaboratively 

Collaboration between recruiters, hiring managers, and members of the team the employee will be interacting with most in their new position increases the chances of a quality hire. Tools like TalentWall™ by Crosschq allow everyone involved in the hiring process to get on the same page and make tracking how hiring is going across open roles and entire departments easy and intuitive with greater transparency.

Make data-driven decisions

Available data on candidates and existing employees can provide insights to be leveraged in future hiring decisions. Crosschq Analytics lets hiring managers track employee engagement, satisfaction, and performance post-hire, to build out profiles of what quality of hire looks like. These can be used when targeting job ads to high-quality candidate pools.

Bottom line: To be a better recruiter, learn how to become a marketer. You have the skills needed to help communicate and sell the company and role to the best-matched candidates, coupled with the right recruitment technology and data, you’ll be unstoppable! To learn more about how Crosschq can help you refine your approach to hiring, contact us for a demonstration today.