Panel Discussion: How to Win Top Talent in a Competitive Market with Recruitment Marketing
At PeopleConnect Live 2023, four PeopleAdmin customers hosted a panel discussion: How to Win Top Talent in a Competitive Market with Recruitment Marketing. Attendees heard from Alicia Barthel, PHR, Director of Talent Acquisition, Texas State University; Carla Major, Chief Human Resources Officer, Delgado Community College; Robin Borough, Director of Talent Acquisition, Chapman University; and Sarah Gasparini, Talent Manager, St. Catherine University. They had some amazing insights about launching recruitment marketing strategies—read on below for some key takeaways, and visit our on-demand portal to watch the full panel discussion!
What IS recruitment marketing?
“Recruitment marketing is marketing. It feels different from talent acquisition as we know it. You’re used to looking at job boards and resumes, using keyword searches, and doing searches using LinkedIn. Part of recruitment marketing is hiring a third party vendor where they can take your job postings and post them for you among 5,000 or even 25,000 job boards. They give you analytics on where you’re doing well and where you’re not. This is helpful because today, we just don’t have the recruiting pool we need to fit the jobs we have open.” – Robin Borough
Develop your brand identity
“If you don’t already have a strong brand identity, develop one. An Employer brand proposition should be the bedrock for how you’re approaching what you want to say in your job postings. What are you consistently telling candidates about what you have to offer as an employer? What are you selling to job seekers?” – Sarah Gasparini
“The difference between now and before is the candidate market. There’s a lot of competition especially in HigherEd because we don’t have the best salaries. For us, in Texas, we have all the tech companies to compete with too. Instead of applicants coming to us and flooding our applicant pools, we’re having to seek them out. Now, with the competition, we are having a hard time attracting that pool. Of candidates That’s where employer branding comes in. You want to market yourself. We’re recruiters, we’re HR professionals, and now we need to be marketers.” – Alicia Barthel
What if we don’t have the budget to hire a third-party vendor?
“We’re a community college and we don’t have the funds to pay vendors, so we make every employee a recruiter. We give our employees a one pager about the college and our brand and put them on the street to recruit faculty and staff. Any time of job fair, we invite the deans and department chairs because while we in HR can sell the college, they can sell the specifics of their department or the job.” – Carla Major
“What we’re trying to do is attend virtual job fairs or local recruiting events. Being out there, creating your network, doing community
outreach—we have so many types of needs and positions. We’re like a small town—we need landscaping, rec halls, admins, electricians. Make connections with your community by knowing your audience. Know who you need and what skills you need and what has been hard to recruit, and target that audience” – Alicia Barthel
Why is recruitment marketing important?
“HigherEd is always left behind. Recruitment marketing isn’t new, but we’re newly facing the challenges that others have been for a while which is that we have to actively attract candidates—and that means recruitment marketing.” – Alicia Barthel
“HigherEd is a business, and we need to look at it that way. It’s a competition with other businesses and until we begin to focus and think of ourselves as a business, we will struggle. The sooner you can do that, the better off you’ll be in stepping up to the competition.” – Carla Major
How to Win Top Talent in a Competitive Market with Recruitment Marketing
Hear more from our panelists by watching the on-demand recording! If you’re interested in recruitment marketing at your institution, reach out to our experts.