Recruitment marketing is a powerful candidate attraction strategy — but how can you stand out from the crowd? We’ve got your back, with three creative recruitment campaign ideas from different sectors, to spark your imagination.
We all know the hiring market is tough right now. Across the board from small organisations to huge enterprises, talent teams are struggling to hire the right people.
Proactive recruitment marketing helps overcome skills shortages and build a brand that beckons great people to you. So you can stop chasing your tail, stop endlessly scouring job boards, and stop paying agencies through the nose.
Here are three real-world recruitment campaigns ideas, with examples from organisations making a splash.
(Not sure what running a recruitment campaign actually looks like, in practice? Here’s a step-by-step roadmap)
3 recruiting campaign ideas from local government, aviation, and social care
1 – Inspire candidates
Often when you’re looking for recruitment marketing ideas, the examples given are sexy, well-known B2C brands. Unless you’re in the same camp, that can be hard to identify with.
Well, here’s an example from the public sector: a wonderful, inspiring place to work, but often also battling a perception issue that can make it difficult to attract talent.
Richmond and Wandsworth Council were recruiting for one of the toughest jobs in local government: a Director of Children’s Services. Public sector often can’t compete with private sector on the likes of salary and flexibility. But where the public sector stands out is purpose.
What made the DCS role special is exactly that. This hire would have the potential to make an enormous difference to young people across the borough. Changing lives; changing futures.
The council brought that to life with a recruitment video featuring young people from across Wandsworth, talking about what they wanted from their new director. They sent the video actively to their ideal candidate profile; used social media to promote; and also ran a full wraparound cover in a leading print magazine. Great stuff.
2 – Provide value
One of the best recent recruiting campaign ideas comes from British Airways, via Mohammad Taher. BA created this punchy, fast-paced social media video to promote their pilot programme:
The ad was a massive hit, getting 1.1M organic views on social media. So what can recruiters learn?
- Know your channels. BA knew they were creating for social, so they could optimise everything to maximise social performance (subtitles; fast-paced editing; engaging thumbnail; how-to format; and so on.)
- Lead with value. This advert is nothing like a traditional job description. It gives insight into what candidates can expect and shares practical tips to help them apply successfully. It’s about them, not us.
- Leverage your people. The video does a great job of personalising the role and culture, using real employees. Great employer brand content takes a village: it’s not another burden for recruiters to shoulder alone. (That’s especially important for smaller businesses without huge time, budget, or people resource. Read more about candidate attraction for SMEs.)
- Include a clear call-to-action. A critical difference between a snazzy recruitment video and a recruitment campaign is the call-to-action. What do you want candidates to do? Have you made next steps clear and easy?
3 – Go analogue
When most people think of recruiting campaign ideas, they tend to imagine jazzy videos and social media content. Digital content is 100% a mainstay of candidate attraction — but old-school can be powerful too.
That’s a lesson from Mencap, a UK charity for people with a learning disability. Ellie Higgins, Mencap’s Resourcing Manager wanted to reduce reliance on job boards and explore outside-the-box channels.
We love three tactics in particular:
- Out-of-home advertising: the resourcing team collaborate with hiring managers to get ideas about where to put notices, posters, and banners in the local area. That’s a low-cost, high-impact way to attract talent that’s already close to home and invested in the local community.
- Non-recruitment open days: Mencap run open days to showcase the work that happens in different locations and departments. It brings the breadth and depth of their work to life, in a low-pressure, value-add way. All about adding that value.
- Leavers’ postcards: Leavers are one channel that many recruitment teams totally neglect. Often, the best people to hire are the people you already hired. The Mencap team run a recruiting campaign to send a personalised postcard to leavers after three months, letting them know they’re missed and would be welcome back. Many have returned, even part-time: fantastic stuff.
In today’s hiring landscape, you can’t afford to be reactive. Structuring your recruiting efforts with creative campaigns helps build your talent pipeline, overcome skills shortages, boost your employer brand, and transition your recruitment function into a value-driver everyone’s proud of. Hopefully these three recruitment campaign ideas will give you some food for thought to get started.
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