“Inbound strategy” is a terminology mostly used in Marketing. It is the process of acquiring new customers organically through a combination of blogs, SEO, social media, and other content marketing strategies. Based on that concept, Inbound Recruiting requires the recruiters to generate attractive content and strategically publish them on various recruiting platforms to entice the candidates’ attention. These are the reasons why the recruiters used Inbound Recruiting as an effective recruitment tool.
What is Inbound Recruiting?
Inbound Recruiting is an approach to create targeted, branded content for the organisation's recruiting process. In other words, it generates an outstanding candidate experience through employer branding content and marketing strategies that help the organisations to build relationships with top talents.
The purpose of Inbound Recruiting is to engage qualified candidates and convert them into job applicants to expand the talent pools.
How to create an Inbound Recruiting strategy
There are 4 steps for getting an Inbound Recruiting program up and running in your company.
Be proactive with your sourcing strategy
If your company has a traditional recruiting process, you can first look for candidates from the usual recruiting pages. The next step is to amp up your game with great content about your company’s fringe benefits for the employees.
Additionally, your company should have appealing job descriptions to help the candidates to understand what inside your workplace is like. And not just writing about the job and the benefits, there should also be content about your business, the culture, the people, etc.
Once the articles are published, share them wide and far. This way, even if the candidates do not have the needs for a new career during this time, you will be the first one they think of when the opportunity comes.
Tailor your messages before reaching out to candidates
A personal touch in the communication between you and the candidate can make your message stand out. The basic formula for any personalised message can begin with introducing yourself and your company, telling the candidates why they are “special”, and listing the reasons why they would enjoy working for the company.
Hence, the candidates will have a good first impression of you because most of the emails they (and including us) have received are merely automated messages.
Check in with the candidates at different times
In truth, although you connected with the candidates, they are not ready for the job change. In this case, persistence pays off! Keep track of the candidates’ profiles to stay on top of their news, to see if their circumstances have changed.
This action reveals that candidates know you have not forgotten about them, and thus, increases the chance they actually apply for a vacant spot in your team.
Devote your resource to the best performing candidate sources
Applying the inbound method into recruiting, measuring how well different candidate sources and recruiting content perform is also a critical aspect smart recruiters have to pay close attention to.
There will be sources and platforms that outperform the others. By teaming up with your marketing function to get these figures and data, you can proceed to allocate resources and invest in the best channels that guarantee the highest results.
Two key recommendations for the Inbound Recruiting process
Include onboarding in your Inbound Recruiting process
Onboarding is a helpful tool that, if done right, can help the future employee to speed through the entire process of becoming part of the company since their very first day. Onboarding is a more natural and fluid way for the employees to integrate into the company and have a positive experience.
Keep on analysing your Inbound Recruiting process
Your talents’ demands and needs are constantly evolving. Thus, you Inbound Recruiting strategy should also evolve. Analyse your Inbound Recruiting methodology constantly to enhance your chance of attracting the right candidate for each job offer.
Other recommendations including designing the job offer in a visible and accessible way, developing and publicising a value proposition, and developing a contextual recruitment strategy.