Recruitment Marketing vs. Recruitment Operations:

Maximizing Talent Acquisition Success​

Recruitment seems easy: Post a vacancy, interview candidates, and hire the best. Isn’t it? But that’s not what it is. The world of recruitment has changed. Similar to how businesses attract clients, recruitment teams must market their employer brand to attract high-quality candidates and define work processes for effective talent acquisition. Thus, the two key components which can help you devise a successful recruitment strategy include recruitment marketing and recruitment operations.​

While recruitment marketing and recruitment operations are two distinct disciplines, they are closely related and work together to attract and hire the best talent.

In this blog, we will discuss how recruitment marketing focuses on building an employer brand, attracting candidates, and creating engaging experiences, while recruitment operations streamline and optimize the logistical aspects of hiring, ensuring efficiency and accuracy.

What is Recruitment Marketing?

It is promoting your employer brand using marketing methodologies to attract, engage, and nurture relationships with employees. Recruitment marketing can involve activities such as:

• Creating a strong employer brand,

• Developing and executing marketing campaigns, and

• Using social media to connect with potential candidates.

• While it sounds like another HR buzzword, it’s a full-fledged business function.

What is Recruitment Operations?

Recruitment operations are functions that define work processes, assist talent acquisition teams to work more effectively, and oversee hiring processes. This can involve:

• Using applicant tracking systems (ATS),

• Managing job boards, and

• Coordinating with hiring managers.

As a result, human resources teams can leverage the incorporation of recruitment operations into the process.

Let us get into the details of what separates the two terms.

Let's Talk About Recruitment Marketing...

Recruitment marketing uses a traditional marketing funnel to entice, engage, and nurture talent. The term embraces four stages under its umbrella.

1. Awareness

Spread your brand awareness and market your company to attract job seekers to work with your organization. A majority of job seekers do not actively look for opportunities. Therefore, employers must reach them before they even actively start looking for jobs.

2. Interest

After attracting their attention, it is time to narrate your brand story. And do it so that they remember your brand for a long time. Then, devise a content marketing strategy to ensure constant communication with them.

3. Decision

Bring out your best offers just as a salesperson highlights a product's USPs. Simply put, you need to share the benefits & perks you can offer. As per a LinkedIn study, 49% of candidates seek compensation-related information, 33% want to grow professionally, and 29% prefer work-life balance. So highlight what you offer and tell why they should choose to work with your organization.

4. Action

The last stage is the call-to-action for candidates to apply. Furthermore, look out for loopholes in your hiring process and make improvements. This will attract top talent to apply and proceed to further steps.​

What does a Recruitment Marketing Manager do?

Are you a large company and setting up a dedicated recruitment marketing team? or, a small company having HR professionals work on recruitment marketing activities? In both cases, the duties & responsibilities of a recruitment marketing manager will include the following:

• Identifying candidate persona, which consists of the profile and skill sets of ideal candidates.

• Improving or modifying company culture as per the current employees’ feedback and suggestions.

• Working on content and communicating with the outside world through blog posts, videos & social media.

• Organizing events to promote employer brand.

Understanding Recruitment Operations...

There are three major components of recruitment operations.

1. Processes

Processes in recruitment operations refer to the sequence of activities that ensure a clear understanding of recruiting workflow among the members.

2. Responsibilities

The recruiting & hiring team members carry out various responsibilities to play their roles well and work for the organization's common goal. This sets expectations and provides clarity to every member.

3. Technologies

Recruiting operations are maintained using various technologies that differ from one organization to another.

What does a Recruitment Operations Manager do?

• Strategizing to map out the possible solutions to prevent loopholes in the hiring process from hampering effectiveness.

• Streamlining recruitment to find the best talent, enhance employee experience, and successfully train employees.

• Collecting and learning from data to improve the hiring process, enhance employee experience, or improve the company culture.

• Identifying the workflows and evaluating whether the systems are working effectively.

• Finding the best digital solutions for recruitment, such as recruitment software, to improve efficiency and assist in developing sourcing strategies.

• Managing the recruitment budget.

• Making employees aware of the circumstances that call for a change. Additionally, helping them understand their changing roles and how to adapt.

• Ensuring the organization complies with employment policies, rules & regulations.

• Managing the brand’s reputation and ensuring effective promotion.

Conclusion

Recruitment marketing and recruitment operations are the two inseparable aspects of any organization. While the former is the process of promoting your company’s employer brand, the latter is responsible for the administration and management of the recruitment process. A modern-day employer cannot choose one over the other, owing to the importance of both processes.​

​

FAQs

1. What is the meaning of recruitment marketing?

Recruitment marketing refers to the inbound strategies and tactics an organization uses to find, attract and nurture talent before they apply for a job. Recruitment marketing builds awareness and visibility to help attract top talent. The most important benefits of recruitment marketing are as follows:

• Reach more candidates

• Strengthens brand’s value and trust

• Conversion of candidates into applicants

2. What are the two types of recruitment processes?

Two types of recruitment processes are:

• Internal recruitment: This process occurs within an organization. Three sources of internal recruitment are transfers, promotions, and re-employment.

• External recruitment: External recruitment is external to an organization. External recruitment sources are advertisements, employment exchanges, employment agencies, educational institutes, and recommendations.

This article is originally published by CGP Singapore and edited by CGP Vietnam. View original article