Everything you need to know about recruitment marketing
You might be wondering what marketing has to do with recruitment, and whether this is something that even applies to school districts.
Recruitment is about finding and hiring people. Marketing is about raising awareness of an idea, a product or a service. When you put recruitment and marketing together, you’re using marketing tactics to get top candidates interested in working for your district.
You’ll be a more effective recruiter when you look at the recruitment process through a marketing lens.
When you’re planning your recruitment marketing strategy, you’ll consider how you want to raise awareness of the position within a targeted audience, promote (or “sell”) the benefits of the job, and offer such a compelling value proposition that the best candidates who are out there will take the time to apply for the position.
Raising awareness
Successful recruitment marketing starts with raising awareness of your school district as a great place to work, as well as raising awareness of the specific positions available. That means everyone in your organization who has the potential to interact or connect with job seekers can and should be involved in recruitment marketing either explicitly or implicitly. These people could include principals, district HR staff, senior leaders in various departments, and teachers at your school.
Whenever someone interacts with your districts’ employees, it will influence their perception of your organization and what it is like to work there. Furthermore, every employee in your district has the opportunity to recruit candidates – formally, if that’s part of their official position, and informally, by talking with people in their professional and personal network about your district. (Read more about strategies to build your employer brand.)
Of course, you may also have designated staff who are responsible for recruitment marketing, and they will use specific strategies to achieve goals.
The three steps of recruitment marketing
- Understand your target audiences (in this case, your prospective job candidates). Who are you trying to reach? What interests and motivates them?
- Define your goals and objectives. For example, your recruitment marketing goal could be to highlight your organization’s reputation as an institution at the forefront of educational technology.
- Decide which strategies are best suited to helping you meet these objectives. In the recruitment marketing context, strategies could include:
- Email marketing and e-newsletters
- Social media advertising
- Digital branding on social media, websites, and blogs
- Recruitment advertising by cross-posting jobs on sites that your target audience visits
- Social media profiles and business pages that promote your organization
- Attending career fairs
- Launching an employee referral program
Let’s talk strategy and tactics
Strategies describe the approach you take to achieve your goal, whereas tactics refer to the specific actions you will take.
For example, let’s say your strategy is to use social media to jumpstart your employee referral program. The specific tactics you will use could include using Facebook groups to encourage district employees to use consistent messaging when they’re talking about your district and its opportunities. Another tactic to promote your employee referral program could be sending e-newsletters with job listings to employees and encouraging them to forward the e-newsletter to their peers, friends and other prospective candidates.
Different tactics require different approaches. Consider who in your organization can help and is best suited to a particular approach. The more people you include in your group, the more touchpoints your organization has, and the larger the network of individuals you will be able to connect with.
Check out the articles in this section on these topics and learn how to turn job awareness into job offers!