Recruitment Marketing is the process through which recruiters cultivate brand awareness, increase attraction, and compete with other employers to land top talent. And the best hiring professionals know that the recruitment process actually starts long before a candidate encounters the application.

When strategic recruiters build out their recruitment marketing funnel, they think about the potential candidate’s interaction with their company before they even see an open position. From a holistic standpoint, this could include their interactions with the company’s social media, their experiences with the product or customer support, engagement with advertisements, etc. As the candidate learns more about the company, they proceed down the “recruitment marketing funnel,” which ideally leads to the end of the funnel: application.

There are four stages in the recruitment marketing funnel: awareness, attraction, consideration, and application.

Stage 1: Awareness

Awareness starts with how you position yourself as an employer – your employer brand. To get candidates interested in your open roles, you must first market your company as the employer of choice. This can take place even before the candidates recognize themselves as candidates – so that when they decide it is time to go back on the market, they already have a sense of the best places to work. 

Stage 2: Attraction 

Landing the right message at the right time is essential to being top of mind and enticing potential candidates to learn more about your brand. Being active online and contributing content and/or job postings on channels where your target candidates spend the most time is essential to winning their attention and generating interest.

Stage 3: Consideration 

You’ve made candidates aware of and interested in your brand – now what? It’s time to accentuate key differentiators that position your business as the best workplace. Candidates want to learn about your culture, career development opportunities, working conditions, and much more. Having a clear, attractive career page with engaging, informative content makes all the difference.

Stage 4: Application

It’s time to seal the deal – your job is to remove any obstacles that would prevent candidates from sending in an application. In other words, be sure to employ an extremely quick and easy application process that’s very user-friendly. Optimizing the way applicants apply is crucial. After all, 1 out of 5 applicants won’t even complete the application if it takes longer than 20 minutes. You may even consider using text-to-apply technology or syncing with Indeed or Facebook Jobs to use their Quick Apply features.