February 22, 2023
If you’ve been in the recruitment space for quite some time now, you‘ve probably experienced how uncertain the talent industry has become. Hiring teams must deal with exceptional pressure, work long hours, and race against time to fill open roles. Especially during the last five years, talent shortages followed by The Great Resignation, and now the daunting signs of recession have made talent acquisition even more tricky.
With the growing challenges of recruiting, the primary approach toward getting quality candidates is changing. Although recruiters have largely relied on inbound applications for the past few decades, it doesn’t work effectively anymore. An effective outbound recruiting strategy solves a major chunk of recruitment problems.
Like sales, outbound recruiting revolves around proactively reaching out, engaging, and closing candidates. With over 73% of candidates today being passive job seekers, recruiters cannot afford to wait for good applicants.
So the road to redemption is – embracing outbound. It’s a productive, scalable, cost-efficient, and effective approach that helps in hiring quickly and empowers quality talent acquisition.
This blog will discuss why outbound recruitment is booming and the top 8 trends you must know to ride the wave and optimize your recruitment. Let’s get started.
It’s a candidate-driven market landscape, and recruiters need to take control of their hiring. The demand for skilled talent is considerably higher than the supply, and outbound recruitment is the perfect opportunity for hiring teams to target the right candidates and hire fast.
Here are the top reasons why outbound recruitment has become the need of the hour:
By reaching out to passive candidates, increasing reach through various sourcing tactics, and building relationships with potential hires, companies can create a pipeline of top talent for current and future hiring needs. Additionally, outbound recruitment helps companies stand out from their competition by proactively seeking out the best talent rather than simply waiting for resumes.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are rapidly shaping how companies approach outbound recruitment today. These technologies automate most manual and time-consuming tasks associated with outbound recruitment, freeing recruiters to focus on more strategic and value-adding activities.
One of the key ways in which AI and ML impact outbound recruitment is through chatbots. Chatbots can be integrated into a company's career website or social media channels, allowing candidates to engage with the company and receive information about open roles 24/7. Interestingly, these intelligent chatbots can also use natural language processing to understand and respond to candidate questions, providing a more personalized and engaging candidate experience.
Another optimal use case of AI in outbound recruiting is predictive analytics. It can analyze large amounts of data, such as candidate resumes and application information, to identify top candidates and predict which individuals are most likely to be a good fit for a role. Companies can then identify and prioritize the most promising candidates, shorten the recruitment process, and improve the chances of making a successful hire.
Additionally, scheduling interviews and other recruitment-related tasks can also be streamlined using AI. The goal is to reduce the administrative burden on recruiters and improve the overall efficiency of the recruitment process.
Remember, the AI-based performance analysis of your outbound recruitment campaigns provides valuable insights into what is working and what needs to be improved.
The shift towards remote work has led to an increased usage of virtual recruitment methods, such as virtual interviews, online assessments, and video conferencing. Hybrid recruitment, which combines in-person and virtual elements, is also becoming popular as companies balance the need for personal interaction with the convenience of remote recruitment. According to a survey by FlexJobs, 69% of job seekers would be interested in a hybrid work arrangement, where they could work from home part of the time.
Virtual recruitment has become increasingly popular due to the pandemic, as it allows companies to continue the recruitment process even when in-person interviews are impossible. It also offers candidates greater flexibility, as they can participate in interviews from the comfort of their own homes. Furthermore, virtual recruitment can help companies to reach a wider pool of candidates, as geographical restrictions are no longer a factor.
On the other hand, hybrid recruitment offers companies the best of both worlds. It allows for a combination of virtual and in-person recruitment methods. This strengthens companies’ relationships with candidates and helps them assess their fit with the company culture through virtual methods while conducting more in-depth interviews and assessments.
Companies use social media to showcase their company culture and values, attracting top talent who align with their company mission.
92% of recruiters use or plan to use social media for recruitment. By leveraging social media, organizations can reach a large and diverse audience, increase their visibility, and improve their brand reputation.
If you’re wondering about the effectiveness already, job postings shared on social media receive 30% more applicants compared to conventional postings.
Here are the top reasons why you need to consider social media recruitment as an outbound recruitment approach:
With the ability to reach a wider pool of candidates, engage with potential hires, and receive higher applicant volumes, social media recruitment is a vital tactic for companies looking to make their recruitment process more effective and efficient.
One aspect that outbound recruitment can only be effective with is personalized outreach. No doubt it was a trend in 2022 too, and is only growing in 2023. Personalized outreach involves tailored and targeted communications with potential candidates. This approach focuses on building relationships with potential candidates and creating a positive candidate experience.
A survey by TalentLyft found that 70% of job seekers say that personalized communication during the recruitment process would increase their interest in a job. It not only helps companies to stand out from the competition but also makes an impactful impression on potential candidates.
To get started with personalized outreach, companies can:
Referral programs are a popular and effective way for organizations to source new talent. The idea revolves around incentivizing current employees to refer friends and acquaintances for open positions within the company. This often results in higher quality candidates and saves time and resources typically spent on traditional recruitment methods such as job postings and agency searches.
Studies show that referred candidates are more likely to stay with the company for longer periods and have higher job performance than those hired through other means. In fact, SHRM reports that referred candidates are 15% more likely to be hired and have a 45% higher retention rate than those sourced through job boards or other recruitment channels.
Moreover, employee referral programs can also improve company culture and employee satisfaction. When employees feel valued and invested in the company's success, they are more likely to refer top-notch candidates who align with the organization's values and goals.
If you look at the most emerging trends in outbound and the overall recruitment space, organizations chasing diversity and inclusion stand out. An inclusive workplace not only attracts top talent, but also leads to better business outcomes, such as increased innovation and employee satisfaction. Hence, it’s becoming increasingly popular among recruiters and candidates as a decision-making factor.
In order to evaluate your current diversity and plan your recruitment, here are some questions for you to begin figuring out:
Let’s go through some of the easy and instant ways you can get started with your diversity and inclusion efforts:
One of the most optimal and emerging ways for companies to reach targeted audiences with highly personalized and relevant job ads is through programmatic job advertising.
This technology automates the process of buying and displaying job ads, making it easier to reach a large audience and track the performance of recruitment campaigns. Programmatic job advertising can result in a 70% increase in candidate applications and a 50% decrease in cost per hire.
It uses algorithms to automate the placement of job ads across a wide range of online platforms, ensuring maximum exposure to the right audience.
Here’s how it functions:
For modern organizations, engaging with potential candidates is not a ‘nice-to-have’ aspect anymore, they need to strategize it even before they have an open job position to fill.
Talent communities provide a way for organizations to build relationships with top talent, keep them updated on company news and opportunities, and have a pool of qualified candidates ready to apply when a suitable position becomes available.
Take a look at some of the biggest brands successfully leveraging talent communities:
Jobvite survey suggests that the number of companies using talent communities has increased by 60% in the past two years, and 92% of companies using talent communities reported success in attracting new hires. In another study by the Talent Board, 80% of companies reported that talent communities improved the candidate experience.
With their proven success and growing popularity, talent communities have emerged as a fascinating outbound recruitment trend that organizations should consider incorporating into their recruitment strategy.
Outbound recruitment is the present and future of hiring. With the market landscape changing and most candidates being passive talent, fast-growth companies cannot wait for quality applications to kick in.
However, sourcing candidates, continuous engagement, and maintaining your talent pipeline can add to the hassle of already piling up recruitment tasks. Nurturebox enables you to accelerate and amplify your outbound recruitment efforts with complete automation of the talent pipeline. The Chrome extension works seamlessly with LinkedIn allowing you to connect with candidates through different channels, and integrates with your existing recruitment tech stack. Hence, you can focus on the human side of recruiting and automate the rest!
Also read: How to Automate Your Outbound Recruitment using Nurturebox
Amidst today’s noisy digital world, brands find it challenging to create meaningful connections with their customer base and target audience. Getting the target consumer’s attention and persuading them to buy from you gets even trickier. Hence, content marketing has become more crucial than ever for brands to attract, educate, and retain customers.
Content creation is a top priority for 80% of marketers, and there is no reason it shouldn’t be. Consistent, high-quality, and engaging content impacts your audience’s decisions through education and persuasion.
Depending on your business goals and requirements, the role of Content Marketers you hire will vary. The primary responsibilities revolve around forming consistent brand messaging and deciding upon a unique and identifiable voice, style, and pitch across various distribution channels.
From raising brand awareness to attracting a relevant audience to your website, boosting social media presence and engagement, generating leads, and building brand loyalty – content marketing drives all the growth efforts for your brand. When done effectively, it can help you:
While content marketing is a broad role with numerous areas of expertise involved, it’s vital to thoroughly understand your company’s current marketing goals and the related requirements. In this blog, we will dive deep into the step-by-step approach to hiring a Content Marketer.
A Content Marketer must be deeply passionate about telling your brand’s story to the world. The objective is to educate and nurture the target audience to establish brand authority using thought-leadership and drive more people to buy from you.
As a candidate is expected to be a mediator between the brand and the target audience, they are primarily responsible for planning, creating, and sharing valuable content to grow their company’s awareness and engagement to bring more business.
To be more specific, the role of a Content Marketer requires a perfect blend of creativity and attention to detail in an individual. It’s a balancing role, as they need to ensure creating content that resonates and strengthens business relationships, using strategies that position your business as authentic and problem-solving.
Take a look at the core responsibilities of a Content Marketer that most businesses expect them to take over:
While the practices discussed above are primary responsibilities of a Content Marketer, they also need to be proactive with
Content marketing has become the key to driving growth for businesses. Unlike a few years ago, it’s not possible now to get away with a one-person team for content marketing. You need deeply trained individuals for specialist roles.
Let’s now dive into the step-by-step approach of hiring a Content Marketer. But before you even source your first candidate, you should have a clear expectation of the skillset and experience to look out for top content marketing candidates.
Apart from having relevant industry experience, a good Content Marketer must possess the following skills.
A Content Marketer’s prior skillset should be writing excellent attention-grabbing content. From long-form blog posts to website copy, ad copies, social media content, video scripts, emails, newsletters, e-books, whitepapers, and more – a Content Marketer should be able to adapt to the business’s specific requirements and create quality content.
Identifying user behavior is vital for framing the story in the right direction. So a Content Marketer must know how to identify and analyze the needs and pain points to develop a buyer persona. User research can be performed through social listening, relevant communities, in-person calls with customers, analyzing sales call recordings, and more.
Creating valuable thought-leadership content isn’t enough. Researching the right set of keywords is an essential skill to further educate your target audience on the Whys, Hows and Whats of your business, and have your website rank on Google.
Content that’s not backed by relevant data points does not build enough trust. Experienced content marketing professionals would always prefer data over hollow claims. No doubt that only data doesn’t help a content piece succeed, but it’s essential..
A Content Marketer is also expected to break down and analyze the pain points to turn keyword research into content ideas. So a professional must be able to identify and solve content gaps.
Further, they must know how to create a content calendar, decide the different types of content, and choose relevant platforms to publish and schedule marketing campaigns.
Creating a valuable content piece, for example - an ebook, isn’t enough. Your content marketing team needs to promote it proactively for bringing enough attention and engagement.
Setting up goals and plans is one thing, but continuously executing, measuring, and analyzing content performance is another. A Content Marketer should always be monitoring key performance parameters to figure out the upcoming plans with the necessary updates required.
Not to forget - stakeholders and marketing heads need the performance reports regularly. So Content Marketers must be able to collect and comprehend all the data to make it worth presenting.
Let’s sort out the priorities first, and decide the type of content marketing candidates you want to recruit. From exceptional research skills to storytelling, communication skills, relationship building, audience engagement, and more capabilities must be comprehensively considered. Identify and break down the skill requirements for Content Marketers:
Forming a candidate persona by answering all these questions would ensure you are not shooting in the dark while sourcing candidates. Further, it helps you determine the traits of the ideal candidate, and plan your sourcing and recruitment strategy further.
Next step is determining your role requirements suiting primarily to organizational needs and business goals. A content marketing professional is expected to own the entire content strategy, creation, and distribution. But what about your business’s unique requirements?
You might need someone comfortable with frequently creating long-form content pieces like blogs, ebooks, or whitepapers, or creating engaging video content based on your industry trends.
Talk to various relevant stakeholders for seeking the complete detailed company requirements for the role.
Before you enter the recruitment funnel, outline your talent acquisition process. Identify various strategies, channels, and other informational insights you would need – and maintain a collaborative document.
As you update the tactics and tweak your recruitment process for meeting hiring requirements optimally – keep your document up to date.
Once you have finalized the role requirements with respect to your current content marketing goals and team, you can start sourcing candidates. Preparing the job description is the first task you’ll need to do.
Here are the necessary components you must have in your job description:
Role
The job of a Content Marketer is to perform competitor research, create user persona, and write plagiarism-free content for blog articles, social media, and the company website. They need to stay updated on the latest SEO techniques.
Responsibilities
Requirements
Soft Skills
Once you have the tailored job description in hand, it’s now time to do the groundwork and source candidates. Create an attractive job post to promote your job across job boards and social channels.
Prepare an impactful job post and also execute paid job ad campaigns if required. The next step would be promoting your jobs on various job boards and hiring platforms. You can leverage the following platforms for hiring Content Marketers:
Not to forget - almost 3/4th of the workforce includes passive candidates, so you cannot miss out on passive talent sourcing as well. Reach out to qualified candidates on communities, LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Facebook to offer them suitable opportunities.
Once you have filtered candidates based on their experience and skills listed on their profile, it’s time to evaluate them deeply. Ask them to create a content strategy for your website, along with a value-adding content piece like a small blog. The topic of the article must fall within the scope of the strategy.
Interview the candidates whose profiles got shortlisted. Keep in mind the parameters covering skills, relevant experience, and personality traits of candidates.
Reach out to selected Content Marketers and communicate about the compensation.
Further, extend your offer letter to all the candidates who have been selected. In the case of passive sourcing, extend to only those who were aligned with you on the compensation and are willing to move forward.
Ensure having a deadline for the joining date and mention the necessary documents required by your recruiting team.
Inbound candidate sourcing doesn’t work effectively anymore. Do you also find challenges in closing quality candidates through job posts even after spending on ads?
Don’t worry, passive candidate sourcing can be an optimal solution for hiring top content marketing candidates.
Nurturebox is a one-stop talent sourcing and engagement platform which is powered by automation. Here’s how you can source product managers from LinkedIn using Nurturebox:
