6 Reasons Why Recruiters Should Focus on Content Creation

When trying to source the best candidates for a role, recruiters sometimes forget that a well-planned content strategy can make their job a lot easier for them. This is because engaging and informative content attracts top talent in a way that saves time and effort. But this isn’t the only benefit of prioritizing content in your recruitment marketing strategy. If you can consistently deliver high-quality content, you can add value to your business in all sorts of ways. Indeed, there are six reasons why recruiters should pay more attention to content creation.

1. Positing Yourself as a Thought Leader

One of the key aspects of any successful marketing strategy is positioning your business as a trusted source of advice and knowledge. And this is no exception for recruiters. Sharing up-to-date, accurate insights about your industry lets not just clients, but also prospective employees know that they can trust you for useful information.

You want to offer the kind of news, articles, blog posts, and thought pieces that they can’t find anywhere else. Original and interesting content will keep them returning to your website, and it will boost your overall reputation. It lets your audience of prospective customers and employees know that you’re one of the movers and shakers in your field. Working with you will mean joining a savvy team at the forefront of changes in the industry.

2. Money-Saving Potential

It is estimated that recruiters spend around 30% of their budget on job boards. That is a significant cost! Especially when you consider that job boards may not always be an effective way to source top talent.

Fascinating and relevant content, on the other hand, can engage the right kind of candidates – those who are genuinely passionate about the role and industry in question. By relying more on content, rather than job boards, you can cut down the cost of scaling your candidate pipeline, as well as ensure you’re attracting applicants who are a good match for a role.

You’ll be discovered not only by active job seekers who are browsing job boards looking for a new gig, but by passive candidates, too. These are the best and the brightest. They don’t need a new job at the moment – they’re simply looking to stay ahead of the curve and find some tips and tricks that can help with their current projects. But you might be able to sway them into taking an interview with your company, especially if your content hooks their interest!

3. Nurturing Candidates

Many recruiters believe that, in order to be proactive in the recruitment process, they need to constantly bombard applicants with follow-up emails and phone calls. But while this approach may seem hardworking and dedicated, it can appear pushy and pressuring for candidates, causing them to be turned off.

Recruiters should, therefore, take a different approach. Rather than chasing candidates with repetitive requests or offers, you can ‘nurture’ them with information on topics they care about. Think of it as marketing your company and your open positions to your candidates. This is where content creation comes in. Providing expertly written content will set you apart from your competitors“, especially if you cover topics about your company, open positions, and industry that really resonate with the candidate.

For example, maybe you want to highlight interviews with employees about company culture and work-life balance. Or, maybe your company made headlines in a popular industry blog. You can even share reviews of your company from employees on Glassdoor, or of your company’s products and services from customers on Yelp, TripAdvisor, TrustRadius, Google, or wherever they share feedback! It’s a non-invasive method for encouraging candidates to get in touch.

4. Keeping Candidates Interested, Even If You Don’t Have a Role For Them Yet

Finding a strong candidate is the first challenge for any recruiter. After all, according to the Goldsand Digital survey, 65% of recruiters say that talent shortages are one of the biggest obstacles they face. The next challenge confronting recruiters – perhaps an even bigger one – is keeping strong candidates interested.

When you find top talent, you want to be able to stay in contact with them, even if you don’t have the perfect role for them at the moment. By regularly sending them valuable content, you can keep them interested in a potential role that could arise. Furthermore, recruiters tend to have quite busy schedules – they simply don’t have time to constantly call candidates for quick updates, making sure they don’t disappear.

Posting content, and sending an email newsletter or tagging relevant candidates from your address book, can be a much more efficient way of sustaining a candidate’s interest. If you work at a recruitment agency, this will help you maintain your relationship with candidates so that they see you as a trusted, helpful advisor who’s worth working with, rather than just applying to companies directly themselves.”

5. Building a Base

When formulating a recruitment marketing strategy, you want to make sure that your content is broad and diverse in nature. If you only publish content about jobs you’re currently hiring for, then you will limit your pool of candidates. The goal should be to build a base of candidates who are suited to both existing roles and any future roles. When recruiters create content that is limited only to current vacancies, many people who are already in the database based on their interest in previous openings may find the content irrelevant, and stop reading.

In order to ensure that people want to visit your site again in the future, you should post content that appeals to a much larger demographic. This includes content that’s about your company or agency, or content that’s relevant to job seekers and people thinking about professional development and career goals more generally.

6. Increasing the Perceived Value of Your Business

If your company or recruitment agency is smaller than others, this doesn’t mean that you will automatically be overshadowed. In fact, you can massively enhance your chances of being perceived as a big player by publishing – and effectively marketing – thought leadership content. You want to add insightful commentary to the most important topics of the day, as well as ensure that this content is reaching relevant influencers.

While other competitors may have more employees, more funding, or more clients than you, if you can reliably publish high-quality content, then you can add credibility in a way that size alone can’t achieve. The recruitment space may have traditionally been dominated by the largest players, who can offer the most perks. But this is changing. Recruiters are starting to realize just how big an impact a content strategy can have on their perceived value and authority.