Attracting new applicants for open positions has always required a variety of methods to engage and source those best for your roles.

Potential candidates often look to the reputation and background information of a company before choosing to apply.

This is where content marketing can help give applicants an in-depth understanding of the feel of not just your client’s company, expertise, and job position but also your own recruitment agency.

What is Content Marketing?

Within recruitment, content marketing builds the relationship between you (the recruiter) and potential applicants.

There isn’t one fixed way all potential applicants will discover your company, so your content needs to be varied and accessible on multiple platforms.

When those applying for jobs see this content, they picture how well they would fit into your client’s company and job roles and then decide whether to make a formal application.

Essentially, your content marketing creates the first impressions of you and your client’s company. This means, in combination with an Applicant Tracking System, your content marketing has the responsibility of sourcing the right applicants and guiding them to your application process.

Read more: What is Recruitment Marketing? Top 7 Tips, Strategies & Ideas.

4 Types of Content Marketing for Recruitment Agencies

Constantly churning out the same content is boring for both your current staff and your potential candidates.

However, by using a range of content types, you can keep the attention of those browsing your online platforms and appeal to a wider variety of candidates.

1. Blog Posts

By far the most common style of content marketing is blog posts.

These can efficiently display the knowledge and expertise of a business, alongside offering written advice for those in the application process. There’s a lot of range within this category too – you can host listicles, a case study sharing an example of B2B e-commerce, interviews with CEOs on their job role, and more.

Having managers and CEOs as authors of your blog posts gives credibility to your content while having other staff talk about their work experiences can provide insight to potential candidates.

Later on, you can use this content and create engaging podcasts which will help attract a wider audience.

2. Videos

Did you know that websites that use video see 78% more traffic?

If you’re wanting to reach a wider range of people with your content, create a video to capture their attention before directing them to your careers site.

Incorporating video into your Instagram strategy can show the personality behind your brand, proving real people make up your company, and showing viewers behind the scenes.

It also helps create a sense of authenticity and honesty through your marketing. Whether hosting Q & As, demonstrations, or collaborations with influencers, it all helps potential candidates get a feel of your recruitment agency.

3. Podcasts

Podcast popularity has risen in recent years, with an estimated 104 million monthly listeners in the US.

Not everyone has the time to dedicate solely to researching companies they may seek a job with, and podcasts are great for providing content for those who can listen to something in the background. It again helps to give your business a voice and connect potential candidates with real experiences of existing employees.

This content can cover a wide variety of topics and be a source of interaction within existing employees across various departments in your client’s company.

For a listener, this can provide helpful insight into your recruitment agency’s reactions to industry trends, the people you employ and even workplace culture.

4. Infographics

When processing factual information, lots of numbers or statistics can make the content quite heavy.

Presenting this content as an infographic uses the visual element to make the important information stick, and make dense content easier to process. These are also far easier to skim and readers can still get a full sense of what points are being made.

This can be a simple way of portraying your recruitment process, immediately engaging with applicants interested in your roles and providing them with clear information or advice on how to go about applying.

Likewise, infographics can show other company processes and be part of your content strategy for SaaS, showing the development behind your products and how consultations work. These all help viewers get familiar with your company and its structure.

Embedding Content Marketing in Recruitment

We’ve seen the variety of content you could be using to reach those you want in your recruitment program. Now it’s time to implement it.

1. Create a Candidate Persona and Journey

Knowing who your content is for will shape what you’re creating and where you are promoting it.

Take time to create a detailed candidate persona, not just including your job requirements, but also their career goals, personality traits, and career history.

Are you looking for new graduates, intending to progress quickly upwards? People with a few years under their belt looking into similar roles? Do you want bubbly, charismatic salespeople or quiet, focused data analysts?

Once you’ve got the persona, it’s time to create a candidate journey map. This should highlight the key touchpoints they will have with your business.

These two documents will give you an idea of who you are creating content for and how best to engage them.

For example, younger candidates are more likely to discover your company through social media retailing, so strong profiles with quality content here may be important. Alternatively, candidates currently already working in senior roles in your industry may discover your company through specialist articles via a search engine.

2. Pool Ideas and Produce Content

The body of your content and the topics it touches on is going to have an impact on your potential applicants looking through your content. Keeping in mind your candidate persona, consider the content that would be most engaging to them at different points in their journey. It’s possible that you already have previous content that you can use by adapting it, updating information, or presenting it in a new format.

Gathering a team to collaborate on content ideas can lead to innovative suggestions and flag competitor mistakes that you shouldn’t copy.

Ask employees recently recruited or run surveys on what content they would have liked to see or found useful. Likewise, encourage employees across the company to get involved in content creation, by setting up short interviews or asking those with expertise to write a blog post.

3. Plan Your Timeline

Posting your content at the right time can affect its impact and reach. If you have upcoming job openings, having more content surrounding those roles and how to apply would be more relevant and gain more interest.

Likewise, other events, conferences, or key dates in the life of your company should be acknowledged through the content you share, the ideas you draw on, even the people you’ve mentioned and spoken to.

Posting regular updates on a blog help maintain high levels of interaction with traffic, keeping you at the top of search results. However, social media profiles may require daily updates, whereas email newsletters may find once-a-month updates sufficient. Just how your omnichannel sales team needs to keep track of multiple platforms, so too does your content team.

4. Keep in Contact with Applicants

So you’ve finished recruiting for an open role. That doesn’t mean your content marketing should end.

Encourage people to join your mailing list and provide them with personalised content suggestions. This helps to continue building the relationship between your company and prospective applicants.

Keeping in contact can also give you an avenue to invite them to events your business hosts, lead them to your high-converting product pages, as well as contact them with future vacancies.

Continuing to target them with specifically picked content maintains a sense of relationship and builds the image of your business as an expert within the industry.

Start Using Content Marketing in Your Recruitment

The more potential candidates engage with your content, the more likely they are to start the application process. Your content enables viewers to gain a wider understanding of your business, so take advantage and provide them with the information they need throughout the application process.

The content you produce, its format, and how you share it will vary depending on your business and how it reaches people. It’s through experimenting with your content and reviewing your KPIs that you’ll establish what works for your potential employees.

However, if you keep producing and refining your content, you’re bound to discover how content marketing can work for your recruitment brand.

Written by–

Xiaoyun TU – Brightpearl

Xiao is the Global Head of Lead Generation at Brightpearl, a leading retail operations platform. She is passionate about setting up innovative strategies to grow sales pipelines on platforms including Amazon FBA using data-driven decisions.