What Is Recruitment Marketing? 10 Inspiring Examples.

The process of finding and attracting great talent is complex, and that’s where recruitment marketing comes into play. Similar to how marketers attract clients, recruiting and hiring teams need to proactively promote their employer brand to draw in high-quality job candidates.

People are key to the growth and success of any company, and building a team of diverse yet complementary personalities, passions and skill sets is one of the most challenging aspects of any business. Because in-person networking is less popular than it used to be, it’s more difficult to get the attention of potential applicants and communicate the qualities that set an employer apart. That means crafting a successful recruitment marketing strategy is more important than ever.

What Is Recruitment Marketing?

Recruitment marketing is the process of promoting your employer brand with the use of marketing methodologies throughout the recruitment life cycle to attract, engage and nurture relationships with qualified talent.

Thorough planning, a clear vision of employer brand and targeted content are key to recruitment marketing. Being able to communicate the specifics of vacant positions is just as important as being able to explain your organization’s mission and values. 

Recruitment doesn’t stop at making people aware that your company is hiring and has benefits and perks. Recruiting teams need to continue nurturing the connections their marketing efforts build in order to encourage active participation in their talent pipeline.

Recruitment Marketing Funnel

The recruitment marketing funnel illustrates the journey from generating initial awareness of the employer brand to fostering job candidates who become active participants in the hiring process by submitting applications and interviewing for open positions. It covers four stages.

Stage 1: Increase Awareness

Top talent can be found all over the world. However, in today’s job market, 70 percent of candidates are passive job seekers, meaning they aren’t looking for jobs.

In order to get great candidates to apply for an open role, companies need to first market their company as a potential employer on platforms where passive candidates spend their time.

Above everything, it’s crucial to create great content that candidates will actually want to read, listen or watch and make your company stand out as a desirable employer.

Stage 2: Generate Interest

Now that you’ve got their attention, you’ll want to provide prospective candidates with information that will increase their interest in your company. You’ll need to have a content game plan that is consistent and closely tied to your employer branding campaign.

The last thing you want to do is lose candidates because they’ve forgotten about your company or they aren’t clicking with your content.

Mapping out a robust content calendar with set deadlines will both ensure your story is being told in a thoughtful way, and it’s a surefire way to continuously generate interest among passive and active candidates.

Stage 3: Nurture the Decision

Your net is cast, now it’s time to reel  in candidates. At this point in the funnel, you’ll want to provide more specific information on your company as a potential employer. Now’s also the time to promote your open roles, benefits, perks, compensation and anything else a candidate needs to know before making an informed decision to apply.

Stage 4: Drive Action

While candidates may seriously consider your company in their next career move, there are several obstacles that prevent candidates from applying.

First of all, applying to jobs takes a significant amount of time. Candidates must create role-specific resumes, cover letters and portfolios that may never be reviewed. One solution — simplify the application and decision process. Cut out any unnecessary qualification and application requirements, and give applicants all the juicy details of your offer. This also creates a positive candidate experience and may greatly influence their decision to join your company. 

Even if a candidate makes it this far and applies but ultimately opts out of doing an interview, don’t stop there. Add them to your candidate pool. It may not have been the right time or circumstance for them to pursue your company, but they may be interested in the future.

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Recruitment Marketing in the Age of AI

Artificial intelligence is transforming recruitment marketing just as it has reshaped the broader workforce. HR teams now use AI not only to automate routine tasks, such as interview scheduling and resume screening, but also to personalize how they attract and engage talent. Generative AI tools can craft tailored outreach messages, job descriptions and career site content designed to resonate with specific candidate profiles.

Candidate relationship management (CRM) systems enhanced by AI can also analyze data such as a candidate’s work history, skills and online behavior to predict interest levels and suggest the most effective communication strategies. This level of personalization helps recruiters build stronger relationships and maintain engagement throughout the hiring process.

By automating repetitive work and improving the quality of candidate interactions, AI allows HR professionals to focus more on strategic goals, such as employer branding and talent retention, rather than administrative tasks. While ethical and transparency concerns remain, AI-driven recruitment marketing is quickly becoming an essential tool for organizations seeking to compete for top talent in an increasingly digital landscape.

How to Develop a Recruitment Marketing Plan

Before you even start thinking about developing a recruitment marketing plan, you need to define your employer brand. Employer branding is crucial for managing and influencing your reputation as an employer of choice and therefore, should encompass every aspect of your recruitment marketing plan.

Once you’ve got your employer branding down with a clear mission statement, core values and employee value proposition, start creating your plan with these six recruitment marketing tips.

• Set goals: Do you want to add hires, or increase the candidate pool?
• Define roles: Set specific qualifications and expectations.
• Establish target candidates: Outline the ideal persona to fill the role.
• Identify recruitment channels: Is social media or events the best to use?
• Allocate resources: Document expense and results of paid or organic services.
• Create a content calendar: Note team assignments with deadlines.

Set Recruitment Marketing Goals

Decide on goals for your recruitment marketing campaign. Examples could be increasing the candidate pool or connecting with potential applicants who better match the skills and experience needed to fill open roles. To assess how effective your efforts are, establish a system for measuring progress, such as tracking metrics like the number of applicants per opening or application completion rate.

Define Job Requirements for Open Roles

Formulate job descriptions that explicitly explain the responsibilities and the required versus preferred qualifications needed for the position. Sit down with your team and relevant managers or department heads to ensure everyone is on the same page about what will be communicated to prospective candidates.

Outline the Ideal Candidate Persona

Develop a candidate persona that covers the ideal skills, characteristics and experience you’re hoping to find in the person who will fill a job opening. The candidate persona can include factors like education, current employment status, geographic location, communication style and career goals. Conducting research and surveying the employees who will be directly managing or working alongside that person can help to fill in some of the blanks. 

Identify Recruitment Marketing Channels

Based on your recruiting goals and the types of positions you’re hiring for, identify the most valuable marketing channels to target. Will you find the best people for the job on LinkedIn? Should you try to create Facebook groups to build a community of candidates? Or will your efforts be best served by in-person networking?

Allocate Recruiting Resources

Assess the resources available to your team and then determine the costs and necessary manpower associated with potential recruitment marketing activities. Do research and data analysis to understand the value that comes from different channels and tactics before deciding how to most efficiently allocate money, people and time to produce worthwhile recruitment marketing campaigns.

Create a Recruitment Marketing Content Calendar

Create a content calendar to maintain a schedule of when and how often content will be emailed to subscribers or promoted on social channels. This practice ensures a diversity of content while also holding team members accountable for fulfilling their recruitment marketing responsibilities. Keeping a content calendar can also provide a helpful record to inform future recruitment marketing activities.

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10 Best Recruitment Marketing Examples

When it comes to recruitment marketing, we’ve seen it all. There’s a lot that goes into creating an effective plan, so we’re sharing some of the best recruitment marketing campaigns, tactics and examples that we’ve learned from our experience as well as from other recruitment experts.

Kruidvat “Apply with Your Bestie” Campaign

Dutch drugstore chain Kruidvat encouraged job seekers to apply for jobs with their friends and family to find enough workers for its retail locations. Through its “Apply with Your Bestie” campaign, the company also streamlined its application and interview process, using WhatsApp to connect applicants with recruiters within 24 hours. Following the success of the campaign, Kruidvat still uses the practice and has seen a significant boost in job applicants.

CVS Health Leverages TikTok to Increase Qualified Leads

Beginning in 2019, CVS Health started using TikTok to recruit for hard-to-fill roles and to meet seasonal retail demand. Working with Recruitics, a digital marketing agency, the company produced short-form ads aimed at capturing candidate interest and encouraging them to inquire about open positions by texting a specialized number displayed in the ad. The campaign generated more than 2.4 million impressions and reduced CVS’s cost per lead to $20.60.

UBS Recruits After Credit Suisse Acquisition

Following the acquisition of Credit Suisse in 2023, UBS needed to ramp up hiring to avoid client disruptions and, in doing so, placed a strong emphasis on recruitment marketing. The campaign, called “Recruiting at Speed,” targeted students, career changers and workforce reentrants and used multilingual content, paid social ads and senior leaders as the face of the campaign to persuade individuals to apply. The campaign surpassed the company’s initial goals, leading to more than 300 hires.

Goldman Sachs Reaches Job Seekers with Spotify Ads 

Looking to recruit younger workers, Goldman Sachs turned to Spotify ads to attract prospective candidates. When clicked, the ad directed users to a career quiz that helped determine which division best suited them. The Spotify campaign continued Goldman’s social media recruitment efforts, which had previously used Snapchat for a similar result. The company’s goal was to reach its target candidate demographic as efficiently as possible.

Ikea’s Career Instructions Campaign

Print content is often seen as outdated, but when used correctly it can leave a lasting impact on job seekers. Take Ikea’s “Career Instructions” campaign as an example. When the company expanded across Australia, it needed to recruit employees and attracted job seekers by placing recruitment content resembling furniture assembly instructions inside its product boxes. According to the company, the campaign led to 4,200 applications for 280 positions and greatly benefited Ikea’s employer branding.

Google Poses Challenge to Lure Skilled Talent

Skills testing is nothing new, but in 2004 Google turned its tests into a recruitment marketing strategy. The tech company placed a billboard with a math equation that, when solved, directed people to 7427466391.com. On the website, users were prompted with another equation that, when solved correctly, led to an interview with the company.

Microsoft Builds Talent Community on Social Media

When it comes to recruitment marketing, relying on corporate social media accounts alone won’t cut it. Corporate accounts are designed to appeal to customers, not candidates, so companies need dedicated social media profiles for recruiting. Developing a community of followers isn’t easy, but it pays off in the long run. Microsoft, for example, runs the Microsoft Life Facebook page with more than half a million followers who can be leveraged whenever needed.

Salesforce Impresses Candidates With Events

People have plenty of options for how they spend their free time and hosting a traditional job fair or networking events won’t open the floodgates of top talent. Creating a compelling online or in-person event not only leaves a lasting impression on attendees but also reverberates throughout their personal and professional networks via the best source — word of mouth. That, in turn, may lead them to your careers page to apply. Salesforce, for example, holds annual TrailblazerDX conferences to showcase its latest developments and provide networking opportunities with other professionals and industry leaders.

Snapchat Targets Competitors’ Talent

Snapchat used its own social media app to target engineering talent at Uber and Pinterest. The company designed custom geofilters that appeared only around Uber and Pinterest headquarters and displayed playful messaging such as “This place driving you mad?”

Cisco’s “We Are Cisco” Campaign

“We Are Cisco” is a long-running recruitment and employer branding initiative that showcases the company’s culture to attract talent. The campaign promotes employee-generated content such as testimonials, achievements and backstories across various channels to highlight the company’s diverse and supportive workforce. According to TrueLoyal, the campaign has successfully increased engagement rates and driven traffic to key sites.

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