Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware of the upcoming policy change Indeed announced several weeks ago. While industry professionals are speculating about the reasons behind Indeed’s announcement, the impact is clear:
Effective January 7, 2019, if you want your jobs to be on Indeed, you must be sponsoring your jobs on Indeed.
So now what do you think?
This policy change may seem scary, but it also offers new opportunities for you to evolve your recruitment marketing strategy. As you plan for 2019, here are three options for improving the social recruiting component of your system in the year ahead:
Want more candidates applying to your jobs…without paying more for job advertising? It would be best if you had inbound recruiting—creating and sharing content to attract active and passive job seekers to your website…and your jobs.
Step 1: Content strategy
Inbound recruiting (and all inbound marketing) is about content. What can you create that will capture the attention of your ideal job seekers and get them interested in your company?
When creating a content strategy, consider both active and passive job seekers. Active job seekers will be interested in specific job opportunities and why they should work with your firm.
But passive job seekers are interested in something other than jobs. To engage them, you need to create content that answers the questions they have about their career and personal issues that matter. We suggest you define personas* for different types of candidates you serve and then craft content plans for each audience.
Step 2: Content sharing
Creating content is one thing. Getting people to find it is another.
A content-sharing plan addresses getting your content in front of your target audiences, including email, SEO, social media, pay-per-click advertising, and leveraging influencers. Content sharing should include organic (free) sharing and paid distributions to reach target audiences.
What’s a Persona?
A persona describes common demographic characteristics, personality traits, interests, challenges, and attitudes. It’s a profile that defines a typical customer. You define personas to help your team understand the types of candidates (or clients) you are trying to attract.
When you think of social networks and recruiting, you probably think of LinkedIn. It was a network built for professionals, and LinkedIn offers a variety of solutions to help you recruit. LinkedIn’s tools can be pretty pricey, but they are often essential if you’re doing direct recruiting.
When it comes to replacing traffic from Indeed, we suggest leveraging LinkedIn’s free tools to their most total capacity:
If you missed it, Facebook is now a significant player in the jobs market, and for many of our clients, it’s a top source of qualified candidates. Here are a few ways you can use Facebook to attract talent:
So as you know, Facebook job ads can be targeted by location and title but not by other demographic factors that could be deemed discriminatory. Display ads that are not job-specific (e.g., attempts to attract passive job seekers based on sharing content) can be targeted more specifically to a target audience.
Instagram just passed Snapchat as the #1 social site for millennials, and it’s rapidly growing in usage with other demographic sectors. Here’s how you can leverage Instagram for recruiting:
The average adult spends just over 2.5 hours a day on their mobile phone. We even check our phones 80 times a day…when on vacation!
If you want to connect with talent, go where they are…on their phones. To improve mobile engagement with candidates, consider these tactics:
Is your staffing or recruiting firm looking for more ways to evolve your recruitment marketing strategy – and survive Indeed’s policy change? We’ve created a comprehensive, free eBook: “Indeedmageddon: Strategies to help staff and recruiting firms to prepare for the loss of free job posts,” to help.