The job market environment has shifted significantly in recent years. With candidates now in the driver’s seat, it’s more important than ever for employers to understand the needs, behaviors and motivators of today’s workers.
To make this happen, all industries are looking to leverage their data for decision-making. We are more fact-driven than ever, and technology is the superpower for measuring (almost) everything. Data is the new ‘oil,’ and it’s fueling decisions worldwide, not only for financial strategies but by using people data for talent management.
Randstad has taken a data-driven approach to high-volume recruitment by combining people analytics with innovative strategies to ensure access to the amount and quality of talent your company needs to operate efficiently.
learn more about our E2E approach.
download the guidePeople data was seen in the past as HR territory and sometimes not even considered in the data conversation. Now, finally, more and more companies are using this data to do analytics — people analytics — to support and enhance their business strategies. This trend was confirmed in the Talent Trends Report 2022, which shows a higher percentage than ever (73%) of talent leaders investing in people analytics. But unfortunately, companies that haven’t taken part in data analysis are spending a lot of money trying to attract and retain top talent without knowing how to optimize this investment.
Some may say that people analytics is a buzzword or a temporary concern because the market is now candidate-driven, but we know this isn’t true. People analytics is key to closing the skills gap and attracting and retaining the high-volume talent you need to meet quotas. It can also help your company build a successful employer branding strategy and a diverse workforce. These challenges are overall business problems, not (just) HR problems.
With Canadian manufacturers attempting to adopt Industry 4.0 innovation, and a large proportion of businesses reporting skills gaps, alarm bells are going off across the country, especially among organizations with a sizeable number of employees. People analytics is part of the solution, but a total transformation goes even deeper.
a recruitment marketing approach
Businesses that utilize high-volume talent need an innovative approach to recruitment marketing, a complete and radical change from the old way of working. From attraction to the end of the relationship, employment is a lifetime data journey with millions of touch points to consider, starting in the recruitment stage.
Think of the hiring process as a funnel, with many candidates exploring job offerings online only to filter down to one job acceptance. The funnel has thousands of data points that can be collected and analyzed to bring efficiency, speed, insights and quality to the table. This process is even more complex for blue-collar profiles because the challenge is not for one role but an entire talent ecosystem.
It takes a combined strategy to develop a data-driven recruitment journey — to make decisions based on analytics and improve the recruitment process, from sourcing to job acceptance. People analytics supports the three main objectives of a recruitment marketing approach.
- improve the quality of recruitment
- speed up time-to-hire
- reduce acquisition costs
But what is recruitment marketing? First, let’s go a bit deeper into the concept to understand how Randstad can use recruitment marketing to support your high-volume business.
7 questions about recruitment marketing
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1. what is recruitment marketing?
Recruitment marketing is a strategic approach to recruitment that combines HR with IT and marketing strategies. Basically, companies approach talent like they do clients. They look for motivators, like why candidates apply for new job opportunities and what causes them to accept job offers. Adding marketing insights into the recruitment process, along with people analytics, creates a powerful tool
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2. what is the goal of recruitment marketing?
The holy grail of recruitment marketing is to attract the right candidate to the right job. But it’s also the perfect opportunity to build a large talent pool of applicants for high-volume hiring. Therefore, recruitment marketing not only focuses on driving quality applicants to a specific vacancy but also on identifying candidates for immediate onboarding during periods of high product demand. Besides conversion, recruitment marketing can improve the candidate experience, promoting favorable employer brand recognition.
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3. how does recruitment marketing work?
A recruitment marketing strategy requires two different ingredients: people and data.
a. form a team
Start by building a team of experts from different departments within the company, including HR, IT and marketing. HR understands the needs of a high-volume workforce. Marketing creates personas and develops organic and paid marketing strategies. IT contributes with technology and data manipulation. This combination of expertise can deliver an improved experience for the candidate and better hiring outcomes for the employer. Incidentally, Randstad offers custom IT solutions if you need access to higher-level IT functionality.
b. understand the data
Recruitment marketing is (or must be) a data-driven strategy, with people analytics playing a key role. The right data is critical to making the best marketing decisions, so start with a data assessment, asking relevant questions, such as:
- What data do we have available? Is this data trustworthy?
- What data do we want to know more about?
- What are the team’s overall goals and objectives?
- Is there a clear taxonomy for the data points and concepts we want to analyze?
- What analyses do we already have available?
For the recruitment marketing team to make informed HR and business-related decisions, they must have a constant supply of accurate and on-point data
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4. how is recruitment related to marketing?
In the past, the answer would be that there's no relation between marketing and recruitment and that candidates and employees are not part of a marketing strategy, but this is an outdated approach. Companies need to be more human-centric. Talent is key to business success, and the working relationship has changed over the last few years. Employing strong talent is as important as attracting clients, and you should take the same approach you use to attract prospective customers.
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5. does recruitment marketing depend on people analytics?
Yes, definitely. With no data collection and analysis, recruitment marketing is a blind strategy. Therefore, people analytics is vital for implementing successful recruitment marketing techniques.
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6. how does recruitment marketing relate to employer branding?
Recruitment marketing is a strategic approach from the first moment of the talent journey to onboarding. Employer branding is broader than just attracting candidates. It’s how prospective candidates, as well as your employees, perceive you as an employer. It includes components like employee value proposition (EVP) and focuses not only on attracting but also retaining top talent. Both concepts work together in the sense that the company employer brand impacts the strategy of recruitment marketing, and the recruitment marketing strategy contributes to the employer brand of the company. Randstad has a long track record of providing insights about employer branding.
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7. why use an HR partner for recruitment marketing?
Recruitment marketing is all about data and people analytics. It's a strategic approach that benefits from expertise, market insights and a deep knowledge of what drives candidates. As your HR partner, Randstad knows how to maximize these benefits for improved hiring results. Together we can overcome the talent challenges Canadian businesses face while helping you compete in a global market.
learn more about our E2E approach.
download the guiderecruitment marketing in practice
At Randstad, we believe that a strong recruitment marketing strategy is the best way to get the right talent in the necessary amounts. We work at a local level in your cities and provinces with support from global teams, and we’re constantly working on the following pillars:
channel optimization
We have a strategy in place per channel to feed the right audience. By working with our marketing team, we create and implement quality content that performs and is relevant for candidates in all stages of the funnel. We identify the top job profiles to support the relevance of our job offers, making sure that we can impact the right talent. Social media is also an important channel for us, keeping us in constant contact with key profiles. All these channels, together with our branches and recruiters, enable us to gather robust data so we can choose the best sourcing channels to use for each profile based on the moment of the journey. This strategy also enables us to build a vast database of top talent.
campaign implementation
Investing in a campaign involves a mix of channels and data-driven decisions. We don’t just post job ads everywhere and hope for the best. We know who to target and how many people we need to reach to make sure we can deliver quality candidates for high-volume orders. For every campaign, people analytics is critical, as well as other factors, such as trend research into the mindset of Canadian workers, employer brand and the value proposition of each offer.
E2E analysis
E2E stands for ‘End to End,’ which is the key to everything. We need to measure all stages of the funnel, including conversion rates, sources and cost of acquisition. These concepts are critical not only for planning but also for measuring results and making future decisions regarding adopting an attribution model that can leverage performance.
one size doesn’t fit all
In challenging times, we need strategic approaches to recruitment. At Randstad, we combine our expertise with insights into your needs. With high-volume recruitment, there's a clear benefit to using technology to automate moments of the journey where the human touch isn't adding value. Some examples are:
- do-it-yourself campaigns where candidates can do a self-assessment and schedule the interview if they pass the first screening. This approach combines the speed of delivery with pre-screening activity.
- put your money in the right pot by analyzing the conversion percentage to see what works and what doesn’t.
Since we’re targeting people, it’s critical to remember that one size doesn’t fit all, even when attempting to fill a thousand roles. We first need to know them and engage with them before presenting who you are and what your company can offer. We need to find not just candidates but the right candidates for the job, the team and your company.
randstad supports your recruitment marketing strategy
We can help you create a recruitment marketing strategy for your high-volume demand that assures the quality of the candidates and also supports you with relevant data for all stages of the recruitment journey. Randstad provides end-to-end recruitment solutions, including sourcing, recruitment, onboarding, training and workforce scheduling. In addition, our portfolio includes staffing for temporary workforce needs and ourRandstad Inhouse Services for companies with a high-volume demand for talent. Everything is completely customizable, so you can determine precisely what aspects of the recruitment process you want our teams to handle and what parts you want to keep in house.
Are you ready to implement a recruitment marketing approach based on people analytics in your company? Download our E2E model to get to know the key concepts of the implementation and the model we use for the recruitment funnel.
