Your Comprehensive Guide To Outbound Recruitment Campaign

January 30, 2023

Mass layoffs have been taking over the market, and recruiters are crushed under the weather. On one end, they have to wave off some talented people due to business reevaluation. On the other end, they must maintain a healthy talent pipeline to fill job roles for future requirements. The market is facing a slow hiring season, but it will boom again in some time. Recruiters need to forecast, plan, and be prepared for the same.

The dynamic job market demands a specific strategy to source and hire people that meet the job requirements and helps recruiters find their ideal candidate. Outbound recruitment is gaining popularity, and recruiters invest their resources to get desired candidates by proactively sourcing and engaging with them. Additionally, they get to tap the unique opportunity to communicate with passive job seekers.

Do you wish to start passive hiring? Are you planning to source and engage qualified candidates actively? Where to start your outbound recruitment campaign?

In today's blog, we will discuss what an outbound recruitment campaign is, and the top 5 strategies to plan your next campaign.

What is an Outbound Recruitment Campaign?

Outbound recruitment means actively reaching out to qualified candidates and nurturing a relationship to hire them in case of a vacancy. Recruiters use various sources, primarily LinkedIn, to source desired candidates and engage with them. They communicate about company values and work culture to persuade the candidates to either switch or join the company.

An outbound recruitment campaign means strategically planning and proactively building relationships with qualified candidates. Recruiters forecast and decide the job profiles they want. They source and engage with them to fill vacancies as and when available. The vital part is building relationships by showcasing the company’s value and consistently communicating with them.

But how does this approach help the company when the recruiters have to work harder than the traditional approach?

The traditional or the inbound approach involves job posting and getting applications. Recruiters put an ad on different job boards and wait for applications. Then, they review all the applications and go through a screening process to select candidates for further rounds. Recruiters conduct interviews, assessments, and other tests based on job complexity. Finally, they hire the most qualified candidate that matches their needs.

Here is the difference between inbound and outbound recruitment .

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Earlier outbound recruitment focused on reaching out to candidates when the companies had vacancies and hired people. This was an easy and fast way to hire people for short-term vacancies. However, outbound recruitment evolved, and it's not just a quick fix to fill job roles.

Recruiters plan and forecast the business need to source and engage with qualified candidates way before time. It's a long-term strategy to build relationships and hire easily during vacancies.

Recruiters save time on screening and going through various CVs and applications. Alternatively, they can save on the tools for screening automation as well. Moreover, they need not spend a single penny on advertisements and posting vacancies on job boards.

Here are the top 4 benefits of hiring candidates via the outbound strategy.

Scalable- Outbound recruitment focuses on planning, forecasting, and recruiting people based on business needs. This helps recruiters to create a scalable recruitment plan by hiring for multiple roles at the same time quickly. They need not go through hundreds or thousands of applications and headstart with a list of qualified and interested candidates. Recruiters can hire various people at the same time without any hassle or complexity.

Qualified Candidates- Outbound recruitment gives the recruiters more control over the kind of candidates they engage and hire because they can individually source and hire people. Instead of waiting for their desired candidate, who might not even know about the company, recruiters cut to the chase and directly get in touch with their ideal employee. This is helpful for job roles that demand a specific skill set, as recruiters can pick the desired candidate. Moreover, they can target passive job seekers as well.

Mitigate the Screening Process- Recruiters no longer have to spend time reviewing thousands of applications and screening hundreds of CVs before finding their desired candidate. Additionally, they need not invest in tools for screening. Outbound recruitment allows recruiters to source the desired candidate based on their requirements. This saves their time and effort in screening a myriad of candidates.

Promote Employer Brand- Inbound recruitment demands companies to work on their employer brand and create a healthy work environment. Contrarily, outbound recruitment involves recruiters communicating the EVP, company culture, work environment, etc., with the qualified candidates. This promotes the employer brand and strengthens it as a by-product. Recruiters engage with candidates and provide a personalized experience to foster relationships and employer brand.

Outbound hiring is a continuous process that helps companies to fill vacancies faster and deploy marketing and sales techniques to persuade desired candidates. Recruiters blend employer brand and cold emailing to engage and hire their ideal candidate.

But how do recruiters execute a successful outbound recruitment campaign? How can they secure a qualified candidate? Let us look at some strategies to plan your next outbound recruitment campaign.

Top 5 Outbound Recruitment Campaign Strategies

An outbound campaign is only successful when recruiters change their mindset from a reactive to a proactive approach. They must value each candidate and provide a personalized, valuable experience. Instead of waiting for applications and screening them, they can hunt down their desired candidates and get them to join the company when the vacancy arises. Here are the top 5 strategies to ensure an efficient outbound recruitment campaign.

Data-driven Sourcing Plan

Data can enhance the efficiency of any planning stage. Recruiters must gather data and consider them while drafting strategic sourcing plans. But what kind of data will provide insights that will help in hiring?

Forecast- Company data enables the recruiters to forecast and understand the business needs.

Candidate Persona- Companies can easily make an ideal candidate persona by looking into records and the performance of the current top and poor performers.

Personal Information- Recruiters can refer to social media and other channels to gather information like average salary, typical education background, job change frequency, etc. A basic LinkedIn search can help to provide a personalized experience and create a custom-made sourcing strategy to meet business needs.

Track Metrics- Data like the source of hire, retention rate, etc., can help recruiters to understand weaknesses and strengths. For instance, if the source of hire is mainly employee referrals with a high retention rate, the recruiters will incentivize the employees to give referrals. Moreover, recruiters must try to expand the sourcing channels.

Build a Healthy Pipeline

A recruiter can not depend upon a single source to hire, engage, or hire people. It will not enable them to exploit the job market and find desired candidates. They can expand their source channels by checking individual platforms such as Inbound org. ( for digital marketing), GitHub ( for a software engineer), etc. Moreover, they can look for networking opportunities and diverse communities to tap diverse candidates on channels like LinkedIn communities, referrals, etc.

However, networking with so many candidates can be difficult. Recruiters must maintain proper data for all the candidates, the conversations, and every relevant detail to provide a personalized and creative experience. Additionally, recruiters must integrate the tools and sourcing information to create a comprehensive database.

Nurturebox can help recruiters to integrate their HR stack to provide a seamless hiring experience. Recruiters can get away with the admin task of remembering all the conversations, engaging consistently, maintaining records, and so much more. Finding the desired candidate was never this easy!!

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Active Engagement

Engagement is vital for outbound recruitment and decides if candidates will join the firm. If these candidates are not consistently engaged, they might forget about the company or question the brand’s prestige. Candidates value recruiters who take time to build relationships and consistently communicate.

Personalization is also the key to adding true value and providing a memorable experience to each candidate. Generic content won't help the company, and sending the same message to 100 candidates will spoil the brand's reputation. Moreover, personalization means an improved response rate and strengthens the employer brand.

Recruiters must take their time to research the candidates and weigh upon performance indicators such as work experience, industry experience, background interest, etc. Generally, all this information is available on LinkedIn or any other professional job board. However, recruiters can deploy specific tools to do in-depth research and make their tasks easier.

Specific Message

Passive hiring is not just about finding candidates, telling them about job roles, consistently communicating, and getting done. The exact message matters a lot and impacts the response rates too. A generic message that doesn't appeal to the reader will get no attention. However, a personalized message tailored to persuade a specific candidate will have a higher success rate.

But how to write a specific message for outbound hiring?

Share the job role benefits and employee value proposition.
Start with the skills required and express interest in their work experience and current skills.
The message should be short, crisp, and not contain complicated elements of HTML or other irrelevant information.
Follow up within one-two weeks, which will enhance the reply rate and help in case the original message gets lost in the inbox. Ensure to mention the previous touch point.
Don't spam with irrelevant information or resources that might not add value.
Add a specific CTA and persuade the candidates to get on a call or discuss further. Avoid loose threads or too many confusing CTAs.

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Add Tools To Streamline the Hiring Process

Outbound recruitment can be overwhelming with so many steps and having to engage with all the candidates. Adding a few tools to the HR tech stack will help improve the efficiency of the process and make the job easier. Moreover, recruiters can easily scale the whole process when required.

Instead of going through a lengthy sourcing and hiring process, recruiters can deploy to integrate and take over admin tasks. This enables the recruiters to focus on high-value tasks. Recruiters can hire quickly and easily without spending time verifying email lists or maintaining candidate lists and get everything done from a single interface. Moreover, tools like ATS can help to reach out while simultaneously scrapping emails.

Finally, recruiters must measure the results by using metrics to refine the campaign further. Our tool Nurturebox provides analytics with performance insights for recruiters to know what's working and what's not. They can undertake A/B tests to try various strategies and make data-driven decisions based on open, click, and conversion rates.

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Executing a Successful Outbound Recruitment Campaign With Nurturebox

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A successful campaign is about sourcing candidates from various resources and communicating effectively. These two steps help the recruiter to create awareness, interest, and desire in the candidates for the open job role. It will become easier to hire quickly. However, this won't be efficient without proper planning and the right tools.

Start by creating a recruitment plan, which includes all information regarding open roles, forecast business hiring needs, budget, etc. The next step is defining goals for the campaign. It can look like expanding each department with a junior-level employee in 2 months. It could be as specific as required. Finally, recruiters can end the planning stage by outlining the candidate's persona and picking sourcing and engaging channels.

A candidate persona is about the job role company is hiring for, including the responsibilities, experience, and other valuable information. Recruiters go through various sourcing channels to individually pick the desired candidate and engage with them.

Nurturebox is the ultimate tool for recruiters who want to source and engage candidates and proactively hire qualified candidates. It helps recruiters by integrating all the HR tools and seamlessly hiring people from a single interface.

Recruiters can download the plugin and start sourcing and engaging without remembering additional information. They get all the information, such as communication channels, past conversations, contact details, and much more, from the plugin. Want to get rid of admin tasks and hire effortlessly? Get started with Nurturebox to find your next ideal employee!

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:

Build positive brand awareness
Make your audience stick around for longer
Get better traction on social media
Gain more trust of your audience than ever
Generate qualified leads
Improve conversion rates
Boost business visibility with SEO
Position your brand as an authority
Cultivate loyal brand fans

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.

What is The Role of 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:

Research and Competitor Analysis: The first and foremost step to creating a content marketing strategy is effective initial research. It not only helps a Content Marketer understand the nuances of the industry through competitor analysis but also study and understand the target audience thoroughly. ‍
Building Content Marketing Plans: Once the competitor research and target audience analysis is done, a Content Marketer needs to work on the different plans for all the business objectives, targeted channels, segments of the audience, and the bigger marketing strategy. A content marketing plan typically consists of:
Specific goals along with a pre-decided timeline
Various channels to be targeted for content distribution
Types of content to be created
Budget for the entire staff, outsourced services, and paid promotion (Collabs and Ads)
Creating Editorial Calendar: Creating, managing, and maintaining a content calendar is one of the most crucial responsibilities of a Content Marketer. It is a centralized visual document that enables effective collaboration among the marketing team and helps Content Marketers ensure on-time production and delivery.‍
Content Creation: Once the strategy and calendar have been approved by relevant stakeholders, Content Marketers need to do the on-ground work. This task usually depends on the scale of your company and content marketing strategy. Suppose an organization already has a set of writers, then the Content Marketer doesn’t need to create content by themselves.‍
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Producing quality content that educates your target audience and resonates with them, isn’t enough. You need to optimize your content creation to make it search engine-friendly. While most companies need a dedicated SEO specialist for keyword research and planning, Content Marketers need to closely collaborate with them and should be well-versed in the basics of SEO.

While the practices discussed above are primary responsibilities of a Content Marketer, they also need to be proactive with

Content editing and ensuring adherence to a certain style guide
Continous publishing and distributing content
Measuring and analyzing performance

How to Hire a Content Marketer: Step-By-Step?

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.

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Step 1: Create a Candidate Persona

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:

What are the educational qualification criteria for the role?
How many years and what type of work experience do you want in candidates?
What are the specific skill sets you’re looking for?
Which industry experience would you primarily prefer?
Are there any tools your candidates should be hands-on with?
What are some personality traits that will fit your company?
Where do they look for a new job?
What are their career and life goals?

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.

Step 2: Document the Role Requirements and Decide on Your Recruiting Process

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.

Step 3: Prepare a Content Marketing Job Description

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:

Job Title: The position you’re looking to fill. For example - Content Marketing Specialist or Content Marketing Manager.

Roles & Responsibilities: An outline of the candidate’s day-to-day activities. From ideation to implementation and the impact on the organization, everything should be covered.

Skill Requirements: Skills and abilities a candidate must have to perform the job successfully.

Perks and Benefits: The compensation details, perks of the job, and any other benefits.

About the Company: Why should a candidate consider working with your company?

Content Marketer Job Description Template

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

Develop, write and deliver persuasive copy for the website, email marketing campaigns, sales collateral, videos, and blogs
Build and manage an editorial calendar; coordinate with other content crafters to ensure standards
Measure impact and perform analysis to improve KPIs
Include and optimize all content for SEO
Contribute to the localization of processes and content to ensure consistency across regions
Review and implement process changes to drive operational excellence

Requirements

Proven content marketing, copywriting, or SEO experience
Working knowledge of content management systems like WordPress
A well-maintained portfolio of published articles, blogs, copy, etc
Proven experience of working under pressure to deliver high quality output in a short span of time
Proficiency in all Microsoft Office applications, Google Suite
Fluency in English or any other required language

Soft Skills

Excellent verbal and written communication skills
Excellent writing and editing skills
The ability to work in a fast-paced environment
The ability to handle multiple projects concurrently
Strong attention to detail and the ability to multi-task projects and deliverables

Step 4: Source Candidates

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.

Begin with what to expect from the role at your company?
Why should candidates apply for the position?
Highlight the growth opportunities
State the company vision and mission
Briefly describe the recruitment process

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:

LinkedIn
Indeed
Instahyre
ZipRecruiter
Monster
GlassDoor
CareerBuilder

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.

Step 5: Evaluate Candidates and Interview Shortlisted Ones

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.

Step 5: Make the Hire

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.

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Get the required documents and set up the offer agreements with candidates
Organize an orientation session for the onboarded candidates
Introduce them to the entire team and the marketing teams they will be working with
Guide the new candidates about your company management tools and communication channels
Provide candidates with forms for benefits and perks like Health Insurance.

Supercharge Your Hiring for Content Marketer with Nurturebox

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:

Install the Nurturebox Chrome plugin and sign up.
On your LinkedIn profile, start sourcing Content Marketers with boolean searches stating the required experience from targeted locations and including other criteria
Add the qualified candidates to your sourcing campaign pipeline with just a click
Automate the candidate engagement through email, Whatsapp and LinkedIn direct messages for reaching out and nurturing candidates at scale.