CLEAR BLUE WATER

HOW TO STAND APART IN THE

BATTLE FOR GREAT TALENT
A recruitment marketing white paper
from PeopleScout
CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1

PART 1: ESTABLISHING YOUR BRAND NARRATIVE AS A NORTH STAR 5

PART 2: BUILDING AUTHENTICITY AND TRUST WITH YOUR EMPLOYEES’ VOICE 6

PART 3: CONNECTING TO TALENT WITH DATA-DRIVEN INSIGHTS 7

PART 4: DIFFERENTIATING YOUR BRAND THROUGH HUMAN EXPERIENCES 9

FINAL THOUGHTS: MAKING THE RIGHT MATCH 12

 RECRUITMENT MARKETING WHITE PAPER
INTRODUCTION
Creating clear blue water
Every day, we are bombarded with between 4,000 and
10,000 advertisements.1
Naturally, we don’t give every one our full attention. Our
brains screen out the majority they consider irrelevant,
so that we don’t get overwhelmed.
Recruitment messages – designed to grow awareness
and excitement around job opportunities – are just one
subset of advertisements fighting for our attention in
this intense daily contest.
In such a ruthless environment, talent attraction
techniques have evolved and adapted. Modern
recruitment marketing now draws heavily on consumer
marketing practices and technology to ensure that
recruiting organizations create clear water between
themselves and their competitors for top talent and
optimizes the chances that their messages receive the
attention of the right candidates and fuel growth in
healthy pipelines for future vacancies.
This white paper will walk you through all the principles,
philosophies and deliverables to succeed in this hugely
competitive space.
Let’s start with a big question: what lessons can we
learn from consumer marketing?
Lesson 1: Build a strategy
based on audience insight
Our expectations of brands have grown. The world we
live in is convenience driven. We ask Alexa to turn on our
favorite playlist, receive movie suggestions from Netflix
based on our viewing history and can have Starbucks
whip up our favorite order at the touch of a button –
skipping the line when we arrive.
WE ARE USED TO EASIER
We expect brands to add value to our lives by making
them easier. The most impressive are the ones that
seem to have a deeper understanding of who we are and
what we like, personalizing their communications and
1 
Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/08/25/finding-brand-success-in-the-digital-world/?sh=69eb3dc9626e
2 
LinkedIn – The Ultimate List of Employer Branding Statistics | LinkedIn Talent Solutions
1
services to our preferences. We form deeper
attachments to these brands as a result and tend to
recommend them to others because of the relationship
we’ve formed with them over time.
To replicate this type of brand attachment between
candidates and employers, talent acquisition
professionals must develop a detailed understanding
of their desired talent, analyzing data from candidate
interactions and fine-tuning marketing content and
channel strategy accordingly.
Lesson 2: Brand authenticity
and trust are paramount
We also expect brands to add value to society. Against
a backdrop of economic uncertainty, environmental
activism and a growing public debate around social
injustice, consumers are putting pressure on big brands
to have a point of view, take a stand and use their
influence to be a force for good in the world.
LOYALTY, ENGAGEMENT, ADVOCACY
When we feel a personal connection to the values that
a brand expresses and the causes that they stand for,
we reward them with loyalty, engagement and advocacy.
But trust is hard to earn in the digital era. Audiences are
more aware of industry practices, are skeptical of PR
stunts, have greater access to information online and
are quick to call out false brand claims and inauthenticity.
The same is true of candidates, who are hungry for
credible sources of information on potential employers.
If a job advert looks too good to be true, candidates can
quickly uncover any fabrication or exaggeration with a
quick search of Glassdoor, Indeed or social media.
YOU CAN’T JUST GO SILENT
Meanwhile, companies that choose not to share any
information about their employee offer online should
also beware. The most frequently cited obstacle for
candidates in the recruitment process – and reason for
deciding against an employer – is “not knowing what it’s
like to work at an organization.”2 Silence won’t wash.
 RECRUITMENT MARKETING WHITE PAPER

“ARE WE ON THE SAME PAGE?”
Candidates want to understand the narrative around
your organization, its purpose and aspirations, the
culture that they will be entering and what it takes to
succeed. They want to assess whether the opportunity
aligns to their own personal motivations.
Your recruitment marketing should immerse candidates
in your employment offer, delivering communications
and experiences that tell a consistent brand story and
leave candidates feeling like they have real insight into
the employee experience that awaits.
By increasing the number of potential buyers entering
the buying process at the top of the funnel, the buyer
is growing the probability of making more sales at the
bottom of the funnel.
Consumer marketing is essentially a numbers game;
the more people the marketing messages reach the
better, as you increase the number of possible
conversions.
Figure 1: The traditional marketing funnel adapted
for recruitment

Through compelling and credible storytelling, you can

Awareness
establish new narratives about what it means to be an
Interest
employee at your organization, and even counteract any
unwanted negative perceptions that you might face as
Consideration
a result of your consumer brand.
Intent
Lesson 3: Don’t fall victim
to vanity metrics Evaluation

In our first two lessons we’ve taken consumer Purchase

marketing principles and applied them directly to the
recruitment world. Consumer marketing funnel
But there is one absolutely vital difference between
consumer and recruitment marketing. Let’s look at Awareness
some definitions:

Recruitment marketing: The strategy and tactics Consideration

a talent acquisition team uses to promote the value
Interest
of working for an employer – with the aim of finding,
attracting, engaging and retaining talent.
Application
Consumer marketing: The strategy and tactics a
marketing team uses to promote the value of a service Selection
or product – with the aim of selling that product
or service. Hire

So far, they feel pretty similar. Recruitment marketing funnel

But, when you dig into the mechanics of consumer and
recruitment marketing, you start to see why applying the
same rulebook word for word is dangerous.
Take an ice cream store as an example. Their goal is to
sell as much ice cream as possible. In relation to the
traditional consumer funnel, it’s in their interest to
ensure that their marketing is seen by as many people
as possible.
IT’S A TWO-WAY STREET
In recruitment, this type of marketing poses a real
challenge. Taking a new job is not like buying ice cream.
It’s a bilateral decision, where a candidate chooses
which company to ‘buy,’ but the company also has
to choose the candidate.

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 RECRUITMENT MARKETING WHITE PAPER
QUALITY NOT QUANTITY
Encouraging as many people into the top of the
recruitment funnel as you can only serves to make the
end goal of finding one perfect candidate a whole lot
harder for a recruiter.
• With more and more resumes to screen, the recruiter
becomes less time and cost efficient.
• Recruiters will spend more time rejecting unsuitable
candidates.
• Which results in less time to dedicate to building great
relationships with qualified candidates.
THE COST OF REJECTION
Beyond efficiency, there are also major financial
implications. There is a cost attached to candidate
rejections that can be calculated by analyzing the
average time a recruiter takes to review and respond
to an unsuccessful application. We know from our data
that that amount can be as much as $3 per rejection.
That might seem like an insignificant amount, but for
an organization that rejects 100,000 candidates a year,
the implication is $300,000 in wasted recruiter time.
NAMES NOT NUMBERS
But the implications don’t stop there. Unless handled
with empathy, rejecting candidates en masse can easily
stir up negativity from candidates who feel they’ve been
mistreated as a nameless number, rather than seriously
considered as a human with potential.
Simply driving traffic to your careers page might be
a great way to maximize the number of applications
you receive, but it is also a great way to maximize the
number of bad impressions you leave.
THE PERFECT MATCH
As recruitment marketers, we need to shift the focus
away from growing the number of applications we
receive, a metric that only satisfies our vanity, to
instead, ensuring our efforts are honed on the final hire.
Aiming to attract just a single application from the
perfect match might sound strange, but it’s an
altogether more sane approach.
Choose sanity over vanity. But, if we haven’t convinced
you, listen to this example:
3
Candidates are people – people who your organization
could also be trying to attract and engage as
consumers. When Virgin Media decided to investigate
the impact of rejecting candidates on their business,
they realized that 18% of their rejected candidates were
also Virgin Media customers. They also realized that a
significant percentage were cancelling their contracts
as a result of their poor experiences as candidates.
The combined financial impact of these lost customers
was estimated to total $5 million a year.
Ultimately, the end goal of recruitment marketing is
quality not quantity. Our approach should not be one
that encourages broad appeal. Instead, you need to
position yourself as an attractive opportunity to only the
right talent for your organization, and kindly discourage
the rest from applying.
Lesson 4: It’s an emotional
journey
Clearly choosing to work for a new employer is not
like choosing to buy ice cream. It’s a highly emotional
decision – one of the most significant we have to make.
After all, each of us spend on average around 40 hours
each week at work.
GOING FOR FULFILMENT
Making the wrong choice can lead us to be miserable for
those 40 hours. But a match with the right employer can
bring us an enormous amount of fulfilment – socially,
professionally, financially and even emotionally.
VACANCY ANNOUNCEMENTS ARE NOT ENOUGH
The candidate must weigh the risk versus reward of
joining a new employer. Simply growing awareness of
your vacancies is not going to be enough to convince
them to jump into the top of the funnel and progress
frictionlessly through to a successful hire.
Recruitment marketing requires more sophisticated
consideration of candidate psychology, delivering
communications and experiences throughout the
candidate journey that build trust and excitement in
the brand by responding empathetically to the needs of
the candidates. Take candidates on an exciting and
informative guided tour of your employment offer,
don’t drop them into a funnel and hope for the best!
 RECRUITMENT MARKETING WHITE PAPER

PUTTING LESSONS INTO PRACTICE

The scope of recruitment marketing is broad;
myriad tactical activities are involved, such as digital
advertising, social media management, candidate
experience, SEO and content marketing.

This white paper will not be a step-by-step guide to

implementing these tactical tools.

Instead, our aim is to empower you with a framework for

developing an effective recruitment marketing strategy.

We’ll explore four pillars of recruitment marketing

strategy, helping you to avoid the common pitfalls of
tactical, vanity-based metrics, and focus on creating
high quality interactions with candidates that lead to
brand loyalty, employer preference and superior hires:

Part 1 Establishing your brand narrative as a North Star

Part 2 Building authenticity and trust with your
employees’ voice
Part 3 Connecting to talent with data-driven insights
Part 4 Differentiating your brand through human
experiences

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 RECRUITMENT MARKETING WHITE PAPER

PART 1: ESTABLISHING YOUR BRAND NARRATIVE AS A NORTH STAR

Getting the foundations right If we were to imagine that your recruitment marketing
is like asking someone on a date, your employee value
To attract top talent, you need to tell a vivid story about proposition and brand would be the reason why they
your unique employee proposition, or EVP. This say yes…or no.
proposition should clearly communicate the compelling
The channels you use to communicate with candidates
elements of your employment offer and the behaviors
are an important part of your recruitment marketing
and values you expect of candidates in return.
strategy. But, unless your employer brand is attractive,
This narrative allows candidates to make an informed the channels and format of the content are irrelevant.
decision about whether your organization is somewhere
Without a clearly defined employer brand story, the
they aspire to work and somewhere they can make
guiding North Star of your strategy is missing.
an impact.
Luckily, the first white paper in this series is dedicated
But, it also ensures that the people who do go on to
to employer brand and defining a compelling employee
apply are in tune with your company values, are
value proposition to take to market.
motivated to be a part of your team’s mission and take
on the particular challenges associated with their role. If you don’t feel confident about the power of your
current EVP, we suggest starting with that white paper
WHY YOU?
to get those foundations in place.
Recruitment marketing is the task of telling that story:
why talent should want to work for you. It’s about telling it:
• To the right people, at the right time.
• Consistently, with targeted content and experiences
that develop a candidate’s understanding of – and trust
in – your company.
• In exciting and unexpected ways to stand out from the
competition.

SHARED VALUES
As we discussed earlier in this white paper, changing
jobs is a significant life event fueled by a complex and
highly emotional decision-making process. More than
ever, candidates are searching for an employer that
exhibits a shared set of values and work that they find
meaningful. This is even more apparent in the Millennial
and Gen Z members of the workforce.

HEARTS AS WELL AS HEADS

A well-articulated employee value proposition can
provoke an emotive response from candidates, give
them a first glimpse into your company culture and
differentiate you from your competitors for talent.

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 RECRUITMENT MARKETING WHITE PAPER
PART 2: BUILDING AUTHENTICITY AND TRUST WITH YOUR EMPLOYEES’ VOICE
Your employees are
influencers
When considering whether to apply for a role,
candidates will be evaluating the authenticity of your
brand claims and developing perceptions of what it’s
really like to work for you.
GET THE REAL STORY
When it comes to the credibility of your messages, the
sources that deliver them are all important. Appetite for
glossy corporate advertising is low, and candidates are
looking for trusted spokespeople to reveal the real story.
• Nearly 7 in 10 people globally use one or more
advertising avoidance strategies.3
• Personal experience, earned media and peer-to-peer
conversations are far more influential than owned
media and paid advertising in the battle for brand
trust.4
• Industry experts and regular employees are seen as
significantly more credible spokespeople for a brand
than the company’s CEO.5
HEARING FROM THE COALFACE
We see parallels to the need for authenticity in the
consumer world. Before a large purchase, many of us
will turn to online review websites or social media
influencers to verify that the benefits of a product are as
described by the company.
Similarly, candidates are savvy to corporate cliches and
empty promises. They will use resources like Glassdoor
and Indeed to hear the opinions of existing employees
who have road tested an employee experience before.
Empower employees
to be your voice
You can’t control everything that is written about your
brand online, but you can empower your most engaged
employees to be the voice of your brand by sharing their
own experiences.
3
 Edelman–https://www.edelman.com/research/brand-trust-2020
4
 Edelman–https://www.edelman.com/research/brand-trust-2020
5
 Edelman–https://www.edelman.com/research/brand-trust-2020
6
 LinkedIn–https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/blog/linkedin-elevate/2017/what-is-employee-advocacy—what-is-it-for—why-does-it-matter-
7
 Jobvite–https://www.jobvite.com/blog/sourcing-and-nurturing/4-reasons-to-invest-in-employee-referrals/
6
PERSONAL STORIES ARE TRUSTED
Personal stories will provide you with credible evidence
to support your employee value proposition and build
credibility amongst your external brand audiences.
It’s easy to overcomplicate advocacy; the key is to make
it a fun and celebratory process:
• Make sharing simple; there are many content
amplifications tools that will allow employees to
access your employer brand content and repost it to
their own social channels in seconds.
• Introduce a little competition; award points to
employees for sharing their own stories and reposting
those of their colleagues.
• Make advocacy rewarding; what do your advocates get
in return for being active brand ambassadors? Social
media training? Networking opportunities?
• Don’t just expect employees to go off and create great
content. You’ll need to offer support – consider setting
content creating challenges with detailed guidelines
to keep them energized and engaged.
Advocacy = amplification
We’ve established that advocacy strengthens your
employer brand credibility, but it is also a powerful way
of reaching new and hard-to-reach talent audiences.
PERSONAL VOICES GO FURTHER
On average, employees have a combined network that is
ten times larger than a company’s corporate channel
following. What’s more, brand messages are typically
re-shared an average 24 times more frequently when
distributed by employees versus corporate channels6.
Tap into this incredibly effective marketing channel by
co-creating content with employees, ensuring it is the
type of content that they will be proud to share and giving
them the authority and technology with which to share it.
It’s not just the reach that is important here. Hires made
on employee recommendations have a statistically
higher rate of conversion, shorter time-to-hire and enjoy
longer retention rates.7
 RECRUITMENT MARKETING WHITE PAPER
PART 3: CONNECTING TO TALENT WITH DATA-DRIVEN INSIGHTS
Sign me up
We know as consumers that brands are competing
fiercely for our attention, and we expect them to come to
us with relevant news and offers in order for us to part
with our cash. We don’t actively check in on a consumer
website for updates on new products or offers, we’re
becoming more passive in our consumerism.
And candidate behavior is following suit – let’s not forget
that candidates are consumers after all! The fact is that
top talent doesn’t need to actively look for new
opportunities because, like in the consumer world,
offers have started coming to them.
THE LINES ARE BLURRING
Passive and active candidate status is no longer so clear
cut. While some people are actively looking for jobs, to
label everyone else passive and disinterested in new
opportunities would be incorrect.
750 MILLION PERSONAL BRANDS
LinkedIn is an excellent example of this. Over 750
million members8 now have profiles advertising their
skills and experience to potential employers. These
individuals may not be actively searching job boards,
but they are actively managing their personal brand
and inviting recruiters to assess whether they would
be a good potential match for their open roles.
TALENT EXPECTS AN APPROACH
Candidates expect to be approached with new
opportunities. Take the highly competitive tech market
for example – over half of all software engineers in
North America are approached by recruiters at least
once every quarter9.
In such a competitive market, you need to engage your
future workforce before the demand to hire them exists.
WARM AUDIENCES NOT COLD NUMBERS
But we aren’t suggesting that candidate sourcing is the
answer to creating a healthy talent pipeline. Asking your
recruiters to search for potential candidate profiles on
LinkedIn or other websites and cold contact them to
8
 LinkedIn–https://about.linkedin.com/
9
  Intelligence Group, Global Talent Acquisition Monitor–https://intelligence-group.nl/en/about-intelligence-group/data
7
gauge their potential interest in a job opening isn’t the
best use of a recruiter’s time. These recruiters will find
themselves playing a numbers game. If they contact
enough candidates with the right job title surely one will
eventually have to show interest in the role?
This approach is entirely reactive to hiring demand and
puts pressure on recruiters to process a vast number of
candidates. This becomes a highly impractical solution
for organizations that need to fill high-volume roles and
the workload multiplies.
Instead of playing the numbers game and hoping that
the right person is out there somewhere, wouldn’t it be
better to have an existing relationship with the people we
think would be perfect for the job? And better still know
exactly their level of interest in new opportunities so when
we do approach them, we know it’s a welcome advance?
This is all made possible if we build high-quality,
data-driven talent pipelines that provide recruiters with
live insights on candidate interest levels and improve
their efficiency.
1. Jump in the (talent) pool
Consumer marketers have long been reaping the
benefits of content and email marketing, cultivating
email subscription lists and delivering targeted content
via marketing automation tools to nurture and maintain
relationships with potential buyers.
CREATE LONG-TERM RELATIONSHIPS
Imagine our ice cream shop. We don’t all buy ice cream
every day. But, when we do come to purchase it, we’re
far more likely to opt for this particular brand when we
have been subscribed to their newsletter. A newsletter
that shares updates on new flavors, the sustainability of
the dairy farm where the milk is produced, the family who
started the company, the values the company lives up to
and so on. Through the consumption of content, we build
connections with brands and a preference for their products.
While these subscription communities (commonly
referred to as talent pools in the recruitment space) are
common practice in the consumer world, they are a tool
less effectively used in recruitment.
 RECRUITMENT MARKETING WHITE PAPER
KEEP IT LIVE
Plenty of organizations have legacy databases of
candidate profiles. The reason that these lack value is
that they do not contain the type of live insights to inform
recruiters of candidate interest. Without this vital data
to streamline their efforts, we are essentially asking
recruiters to perform the inefficient candidate sourcing
process we’ve already dismissed as wasted effort.
HARNESS AUTOMATION
Data-driven talent pooling relies on automation
technology to succeed. Armed with a profile of your
future skills requirements, hyper-targeted
programmatic digital ads allow you to reach out to
candidates that fit your requirements and invite them
to engage with your marketing content. You can use
automation tools until the point they become ready to
explore new work opportunities, at which time you can
present them with a job to suit their profile and connect
them to a human recruiter, before they start to engage
with other potential employers.
Used to full effect, talent pools enable you to maintain
contact and nurture relationships with all of the
candidates you consider to be top talent for your
organization, long before a hiring demand occurs and
a hiring manager starts to draft a job description.
2. Convert with content
Automation technology is also vital in the follow-up
engagement and nurture of your candidate audience.
This technology allows you to monitor candidate
behavior and deliver content to candidates that is
relevant to their psychological needs at any given time in
the recruitment process.
TAILOR BY BEHAVIOR
Not all content is created equal. Some content is
designed to grow positive sentiment around your brand;
other content is designed to prepare candidates for a
successful interview. The latter is clearly only relevant
for candidates who have a serious intention to apply for
a role at your organization.
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A marketing automation tool will continually analyze the
behavior of your candidates to assess what content is
more relevant to them at that point in time and is most
likely to encourage them to engage further.
These systems provide recruiters with a rich data set
that clearly indicates the number of candidates they
currently have at each stage in the recruitment journey.
It will also flag to recruiters when candidates are
exhibiting the type of interest signals that indicate they
would be open to being contacted directly about live
opportunities.
These indicators could include activities like clicking on
an interview hints and tips article or how to apply page.
These activities show a higher level of interest in the
company than just visiting the careers home page or
opening an email, for example. This type of data allows
recruiters to focus their efforts exclusively on having
high-value conversations with warm candidates ready
to hear about roles.
3. Test and learn in real time
As you gather more data, the algorithms in automation
technology become more intimately acquainted with the
behavior patterns, content preferences and underlying
motivations of your candidates.
LEARN WHAT WORKS
This allows you to make more accurate predictions of
candidate needs and continually improve the efficiency
of your content strategy: learning in real time which
headline is likely to be most effective, what type of
imagery they find most appealing, what channel they are
most responsive to or what time of day they like to engage.
PERSONALIZE EVERYTHING
Machine learning tests and learns instantaneously,
continually ingesting candidate responses to such an
extent that your content marketing reaches a level of
dynamic personalization where each candidate journey
is totally responsive to the individual candidate in
question, and no two candidate experiences are
necessarily the same.
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PART 4: DIFFERENTIATING YOUR BRAND THROUGH HUMAN EXPERIENCES

Take talent on a journey DON’T TREAT PEOPLE AS COMMODITIES

How does this apply to recruitment marketing? Well,
Let’s reimagine the marketing funnel as the journey
every recruiter can implement any number of automation
of a single candidate. Armed with your compelling
tools to provide candidates with information and direct
employee value proposition, the task throughout this
them to the next step of the recruitment process – it’s
journey is to bring the promises of that proposition to
efficient, but not necessarily effective. At best, automation
life for candidates and reinforce your brand messages
without a human touch may encourage a preference for
so that they build a preference for your organization.
our brand, but the candidate connection is unlikely to have
In other words, rather than just telling candidates any real depth. At worst, it could leave candidates feeling
why you should be their preferred choice of employer, like a processed commodity on a recruitment conveyor belt.
you should be showing them at every touchpoint.
Furthermore, it’s highly unlikely that a conveyor belt
Figure 2: The candidate journey experience gives an impression of your organization that
aligns with how you want
PPC
Referral scheme to be perceived and what
Radio and Print
Interviews your EVP promises.
Social Ads Social Network

Ads on generic Website Welcome/

on and offline
Social Media
Induction
Blog
STAY TRUE TO YOUR
platforms pack
NORTH STAR
Attraction Engagement Application Onboarding
Strangers Visitors Candidates Employees Advocates Remember when we
referred to your employer
Referral
scheme
Website
brand as your North Star?
ATS
Internal
PR Word of Mouth Intranet communication
This is exactly what we
One-to-one
Trade
shows
engagement meant by that: use your
employer brand and
value proposition as a guiding force when crafting all
KEEP THE HUMAN ELEMENT
of your recruitment communications and experiences.
While we’ve just established how technology can be The more consistently and distinctively your value
leveraged to tap into candidate motivations and proposition is expressed throughout the candidate
personalize content marketing to great effect, one risk journey (and beyond into the employee lifecycle), the
factor is the loss of the human touch that drives emotive more that your brand reputation will align to the identity
connection with a brand. that you want to portray.

Take the following analogy. If you claim to be an employer that cares about
employee wellbeing, show candidates from the start
A taxi driver arrives at your doorstep, taking you to
by supporting them through the recruitment process
an unknown destination. You are dropped off and
with deep empathy. If you claim to be an employer that
introduced to a stranger who puts you on a bus to
fosters innovation – ensure your communications are
another unknown destination. There you meet yet
fresh and different.
another stranger who puts you on a flight to a place
you only become aware of on arrival. The way that candidates experience your organization
throughout the candidate journey will show them
The taxi, bus and airplane are all doing their job
everything they need to know about how your company
efficiently and taking you where you need to go. But
treats customers and colleagues. That perception, once
that goes unnoticed when the passenger is anxious
created, is hard to shift.
about the entire journey, not knowing who they might
meet next or where they could end up.
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HUMANIZE THE TECH
As technology continues to advance further, and our reliance
on automation and intuitive systems grows stronger, the
retention of the human touch in our recruitment process
is the only way to differentiate from competitors and
build meaningful relationships with candidates.
Putting yourself into the shoes of a candidate and
mapping out the psychological journey they are likely to
experience throughout your recruitment process is a
good place to start. This can help you tap into ways to
improve the experience and elevate it above that of your
competitors. Ensure you are also asking candidates for
feedback on their experiences. The data from candidate
surveys will identify the areas you need to prioritize for
improvement. Some highly impactful measures include:
• Adding 360 tours of your office environment to
increase familiarity.
• Providing hints and tips for the assessment process
to help reduce anxiety, reduce adverse impact and
improve candidate performance.
• Using video featuring existing employees to give a
more credible insight into the reality of the employee
experience.
• Using chatbots and job matching tools to support
the navigation of your careers site and help reinforce
candidate attachments to your organization.
• Creating virtual events to make candidates feel
welcome ahead of their first day in the office.
• Gamifying assessment stages to elicit surprise
and excite candidates about what’s to come next.
Technology should be an enabler of human interaction,
not a replacement. Every automated email, no matter
how functional in nature, should be empathetic to the
candidate’s thoughts and feelings at that point in time
and inspire excitement about the next step in the process.
STREAMLINE AND PERSONALIZE
Consumer purchase journeys have been utterly
transformed in recent years. We can make in-app
purchases of items spotted on Instagram and Facebook.
Brands save our preferences and payment details, so we
only ever need enter them once. Amazon even offer
one-click purchases, the ultimate in a frictionless
consumer experience.
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To some extent, employers are able to create the same
type of experiences for job applicants. A single,
homogenous candidate journey is not what candidates
want. Each candidate will discover and research your
brand though different channels; they will enjoy
engaging with different kinds of content and will want
different pieces of information in order to inform their
decision making.
This brings us back to Part 3 of this white paper, around
data. The more insight you gain from your audience, the
more you can personalize their recruitment experience
and streamline it to fit their needs and motivations.
As we have seen in talent pooling, AI and automation can
be used to interpret candidate behaviors and intentions.
This data can be used to personalize your careers
website as candidates progress through it, showing
them only the content, roles and vacancies relevant to
their interests. Data can be used to continually optimize
your candidate journey and learn from the interactions
of each candidate to improve their experience.
TWO-WAY IS THE ONLY WAY
One potential pitfall that recruiters often run in to with
the automation of recruitment communications is when
the candidate journey becomes a one-way conversation.
The candidate is provided with a regular stream of
information from the employer, but the interaction is
wholly one-sided. It takes us back to that conveyor
belt experience.
Explore ways of facilitating two-way conversation,
starting with low-touch interventions that don’t require
recruiter resources – such as FAQ pages or chatbots
that can answer common concerns of candidates at the
start of their journey and show they are understood.
As candidates progress and their interest increases,
deploy higher-touch interventions like candidate Q&A
webinars with existing employees or an online chat with
a recruiter. You can then move to one-to-one recruiter
phone calls when candidates are at the peak of their
interest and will benefit most from a human interaction.
Candidates want to feel seen and that they are joining an
organization that values their unique skills and experience.
 RECRUITMENT MARKETING WHITE PAPER

DIGNITY IS EVERYTHING

If you treat candidates with dignity and show them how

their time is valued, most will walk away from the
recruitment process feeling positive about the brand you
represent, whether they were successful or not.

For candidates who didn’t get the role, find ways to nurture
and add value, whether that is by offering helpful
feedback or encouraging them to apply for future openings.

Even asking unsuccessful candidates to complete a

survey and provide feedback on their experience of the
recruitment process is a subtle way of telling candidates
that their opinions are valued and can result in a positive
final impression.

This means you’re more likely to be the beneficiary of

positive word-of-mouth advertising from that individual,
as well as making sure they are more likely to re-engage
with you in future should another, more appropriate,
opportunity arise. That could be next week, next month
or next year. The long game matters.

A human-centric approach is different and will certainly

stand out among the numerous companies who still
facilitate an impersonal hiring process.

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 RECRUITMENT MARKETING WHITE PAPER

FINAL THOUGHTS: MAKING THE RIGHT MATCH

You may only need one candidate to fill a vacancy, but,
chances are, at the end of the recruitment process you
were left with some excellent silver medalists. Don’t
lose these talented individuals – you’ve already invested
so much in getting them this far.

See if you can match silver medalists to other roles,

teams or locations, either now or in the near future.
This way, you continue to reduce time-to-hire and
deliver an exceptional candidate experience in the
process, one that shows the individual that they are
valued by your organization.

This comes back to our ultimate goal of being connected

with every person who you consider to be top talent at
all times, no matter where they are in their personal
career journey.

When these four strategic pillars are working cohesively

together, they allow you to:

• Seek out top talent and start conversations with them

where they like to consume content.

• Convert candidates to the next stage of the

recruitment process by delivering content that
responds to behavioral triggers and underlying
candidate motivations.

• Differentiate from competitors with human

experiences that bring your employer brand to life in
unexpected and exciting ways.

It will also reduce the strain on your recruiters, allowing

them to focus on building relationships with only the
most highly engaged candidates. Ultimately, it will
transform their role from reactive cold sourcing
candidates from across the internet, to proactive
matchmaking from a warm audience that already favors
your organization as an employer and understands what
you have to offer.

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PEOPLESCOUT CONTACTS
To find out more speak to your Client Manager or call Lee Griffiths,
Head of Talent Advisory Global Center of Excellence on +44793 314732
or email TalentAdvisoryCoE@peoplescout.co.uk