Struggling to find candidates? Try these 6 marketing tactics to promote your vacant role.

Looking to fill a job vacancy in your small-to-medium business? As an SME owner or hiring manager, it can sometimes be tough to compete with larger companies when it comes to attracting the best candidates. In a highly competitive recruitment market, getting your role seen needs to go beyond the ‘post-and-pray’ method: posting a job ad on various job boards, writing a post to your LinkedIn followers, and then keeping your fingers crossed that the right people might see it.

However, with a little marketing creativity you can raise awareness of your brand and attract top talent to your business. Here are six ideas from our team here at Talent Blueprint for new and innovative marketing tactics you can use to promote your next job vacancy.

1.???Create a video job ad

In today’s digital age, video content has been king for several years and this doesn’t look like ending any time soon. Creating a video job ad can help your business stand out from the crowd and connect with potential candidates in a more engaging way. You can showcase your workplace culture, interview current employees, highlight the job responsibilities, and provide a glimpse behind the scenes into what it’s like to work for your company.

A?CareerBuilder survey ?found that job postings with videos had a 34% greater application rate.?Gen Z, in particular , considers employer brand videos key to discovering new brand and new job opportunities.?

Videos don’t need to be professionally shot – they just need to be genuine (with some decent sound and lighting). An overly scripted, professionally produced staff testimonial video is less likely to resonate with people than something they shot themselves with their own camera phone.

Depending on the type of candidate you are trying to attract there are a multitude of ways you can use this video to reach a wider audience, including:

• If you’re trying to reach a younger audience, post videos to TikTok and Instagram Reels.
• Post to YouTube for general brand awareness – after all, it is the world’s second largest search engine after Google.
• Post to LinkedIn, still the #1 social media platform for recruitment.
• Post to your website – on your careers page, home page, and/or blog.
• Send it out to your email database.

There are lots of great tools around to help you create recruitment videos online such as?Flexclip ?and?Videomyjob .

2.???Vary the way you talk about the role on social media

From LinkedIn and Twitter to Facebook and TikTok – social media platforms are still the number one way potential candidates network and research companies they might want to work for (and how you can get in front of passive candidates, too). If you always write about every role you’re recruiting in the same old way, think about how you can change the message to better match the role and attract more candidates.

Check out these 10 examples from Sprout Social on how to say ‘We’re hiring’ on social media .

3.???Run a competition or game

Everyone loves to win a competition, right? Some big brands around the world have been successfully recruiting using competitions and games to recruit top talent, including?Jaguar ?and?Uber . Does your business potentially lend itself to an fun and engaging competition, or enticing potential candidates to solve some kind of puzzle?

One of the most famous job competitions of all time is the Ogilvy ‘World’s greatest salesperson’ competition. As one of the largest advertising agencies in the world, Ogilvy have some of the world’s most creative minds at their disposal, and with this campaign they didn’t disappoint.

To attract the most skilled salespeople in the business, they used social media advertising in combination with their YouTube channel to invite potential candidates to sell a brick. The prize for the winner including a coveted three-month paid internship with Ogilvy.

Check out the campaign here.

Even if you don’t have the creative marketing nous of Ogilvy, think about what competitions, puzzles or contests you could potentially run and share online. They’re fun and engaging and are going to help your brand, and the role, get seen.

4.???Paid digital advertising

Organic reach of posts on social media can be pretty dismal. If you’ve tried point two and are posting on your social media channels and still not getting seen, it might be time to put some money where your mouth is and pay for some digital media.

It can be costly so it’s critical to get your messaging and your target audience right. But the benefit is that you can be extremely specific, targeting specific users based on job title, location, education level and more.

Paid digital advertising could involve:

1. Sponsoring ads on YouTube.
2. Running some paid ads (including video content created in point 1) on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram or any other social channel where your target audience hangs out.

5.???Host an Open House (live or virtual)

Hosting an open house, either in your office or virtually online, is a great way to introduce potential candidates to your business and give them a behind-the-scenes look at your workplace. If hosting online, you can use video conferencing tools like Zoom or Google Meet to host a virtual tour and Q&A session. This allows candidates to ask questions and get a feel for your company culture before they even apply for the job.

For example, Brisbane based architect? Fulton Trotter Architects run an annual Open House for architecture graduates where they invite them into their studio to get a look behind the scenes and what it’s like to work for the company.

6.???Guerilla marketing

Guerilla marketing is all about trying to catch people’s attention and take them by surprise, and in the process hopefully leaving a lasting impression of your company….and your role.

The best part of guerrilla marketing tactics is that even simple, cheap ideas can be effective. Take this example from 麦肯锡 As part of a graduate recruitment campaign they ran in Switzerland, they decided to reach students where they hang out – at the universities.

At the heart of their campaign was a pencil with an exceptionally long eraser. Printed on the side was a message ‘We’re looking for students who aren’t satisfied with just any solution’ and the company email address. This simple messaging was effective in helping McKinsey to target high-quality candidates from the best universities.

What ‘out-of-the-box’ marketing tactics have you tried? Were they effective, or a waste of time?

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For other recruitment tips and insights for engineering, construction, energy & resources SME teams, download our 5 Step Recruitment Blueprint today at www.talentblueprint.com.au