Inbound marketing for recruitment is a match made in heaven

Inbound marketing for recruitment can be tough to perfect. Not just for recruitment agencies, but for everybody on the recruitment spectrum. It’s a hugely personal sector that relies on creative relationship building and effective lead management.

Inbound marketing for recruitment agencies might sound like a bit of a paradox. After all, when some people think of recruiters, they may remember the last time they were looking for a job. They envision relentless cold calls and mismatched adverts emailed to them by pushy strangers.

Now, we know that not all recruiters are like that. But as I was told throughout childhood, it only takes one person to ruin it for everyone. Negative experiences can put people off recruiters full stop, and make your job that much more difficult. So what’s the solution?

What recruitment needs to be 

Take our office for instance – we’ve had our fair share of recruitment nightmares. I once turned up to an interview for a position that had already been filled (awkward!) and our managing director was recently sent a job ad for a junior SEO executive role in Bristol (we’re a Manchester-based digital agency, by the way).

In my case, the client’s needs weren’t taken into account (i.e. they had no vacancy) and in the latter, the candidate’s abilities weren’t properly considered (i.e. he’s overqualified and geographically misplaced).

Essentially, the key to recruitment is being timely, relevant and genuinely helpful. To succeed in this, you need to have an in-depth understanding of the people you’re talking to. This is where inbound marketing for recruitment can help agencies to delight clients and candidates.

What you do (recruitment marketing)

Recruitment marketing is the common term for all the strategies and tactics you probably already use as part of your job. This includes winning new clients, sourcing candidates, managing all the CV submissions and interview scheduling, and finally reviewing the results.

On a day to day view, this involves a lot of lead nurturing. There are two strategies for this.

If you’re using outbound marketing and lead nurturing processes, you’re probably spending lots of time cold-calling, chasing emails and sticking post-it notes all around your office. This tactic can be time- and resource-intensive. Not to mention it’s demoralising when you’re faced with constant rejections or unanswered messages.

In contrast, inbound marketing can attract the top talent to you, using helpful and innovative content that really resonates with your audience. People like to browse online, and job hunting is no exception. Inbound marketing pulls in people that are actively looking for jobs – so all your leads are warm from the get go. After this, inbound nurturing can provide leads with a stream of relevant and valuable information.

Inbound nurturing is a two-way street

If you implement inbound marketing for recruitment, it’s possible to paint a better picture of who your lead is. As a general rule, the more you know about a client or candidate, the better you can meet their needs.

By offering value-added content in exchange for more lead details, you can extract unique information that could help your recruitment process.

For instance, you could promote a new downloadable guide, Climbing the Career Ladder in the Higher Education Sector. Leads can fill in a form to download the guide, sharing further details such as their qualification level or pay expectations. This helps to build out a fuller picture of who your leads are, and what you can do to help them.

The result? You build your reputation as an authority in the industry and as a genuinely helpful recruiter. You also understand clients and candidates better, making it easier to fill roles. Your success rate builds your industry reputation further, bringing more clients… and so on.