What is Inbound Recruiting And How Do You Do It?

9 Tips to Attract, Engage, Convert, and Hire

By now you’ve heard the term Inbound Marketing. It’s not a “new idea,” but it still seems foreign to many companies. Essentially companies implement strategies around content, SEO, social media, email marketing, and blogs to drive people to their site by ranking highest on the Google Search Results Page. Hence, getting people to the website to convert and become customers.

Bottom line, you want to rank #1 on Google, so you want to be the results your audience is looking for.

Think about it, when you go to search, you are looking for one of two things:

1: How to do something yourself.

OR

2. How to have someone do something for you.

Search Examples of How to Do Something Yourself:

• Tips on how to hire salespeople
• What questions to ask when interviewing salespeople
• Where to recruit salespeople

*Searches along these lines are for someone to learn more about something, learn how to do something themselves, and get the answers they need. This is true for any question and any industry.

Search Examples of How to Have Someone Do Something for you:

• Top sales recruiters in Boston
• Recruiting firms that specialize in sales
• B2B sales recruiting firms near me

*These searches are looking for someone or some company that can help you accomplish your goal and alleviate a pain point or struggle. This is true for any type of search that requires outside help.

Your goal is to provide relevant content to potential customer searches, delivering value.

Inbound Recruiting

The goal of inbound recruiting is the same as inbound marketing: driving traffic, building awareness, nurturing relationships, and converting your audience into top candidates applying to your jobs.

The inbound marketing blueprint can also be used when it comes to recruiting top talent for the company.

What is Inbound recruiting, you ask?

Inbound recruiting applies the same techniques used in digital marketing to drive job seekers to your company website and open jobs. It requires you to engage candidates at every stage of the recruiting funnel from attracting, to nurturing, to converting, to closing, to retaining. It’s about building an ongoing conversation. It’s important to promote your employer brand, create shareable content, and build relationships.

*Important: Inbound recruiting does not replace outbound recruiting efforts. Instead the two most work together like sales and marketing.

So how can you build a killer inbound recruiting strategy?

9 Tips to Attract, Engage, Convert, and Hire:

1. Mobile Friendly Company Website

Having a company website may seem obvious and like a no brainer, but believe it or not some companies still don’t have a website. There is nothing less reassuring than when you Google a company and their name does not show up and there is no website. How do you expect to recruit top candidates, let along grow sales without a company website?

You can build beautiful websites for free and low cost with Wix, Weebly, Adobe Spark, Website Builder, Squarespace, and Webnode.

If you have a website, consider making it mobile optimized. Job seekers are now searching on their phones more than ever before. According to LinkedIn, over 70% of active job seekers have visited a company career site on their mobile devices. More than 40% have applied to a job on their mobile device.

Are you losing candidates because your website and content isn’t mobile friendly?

{Download 2017 Recruiting Trends Report>>}

2. Careers Page

If you have a website, that’s great! But if you don’t have a Careers Page, shame on you. Your careers page enables you to attract more candidates, educate them on your company and culture, and encourage job seekers to apply.

Long gone are the days of simply posting a job and waiting for candidates to apply. It’s a job seeker’s market, and with unemployment at an all-time low of under 5% in most cities, you need more than a job to attract top talent.

If you don’t have a careers page, make one. This is where you should list all of your open jobs, and share reasons why job seekers should join your company.

Share information about your company’s vision, core values, awards around culture and diversity, the leadership team, community outreach, team building activities, and perks and benefits.

*Important: Make sure your careers/jobs page is easy to find on your website. Don’t bury it!

Check out these companies with awesome career pages:

Airbnb

Wordstream

Bullhorn

Seismic

Amazon

Tesla

ezCater

Acquia

What will entice top talent to leave their current role to join your team?

3. Candidate Personas

When writing your job descriptions and building out content to promote your company, jobs, and culture you need to understand who you are trying to attract and hire.

Just as in marketing where you identify your ideal buyer persona (your audience and buyers), you need to blueprint your ideal candidate (someone who has the hard and soft skills that align with the role and company).

Do you understand the characteristics and qualifications that best align with your role and company?

For instance, can you breakdown the sales characteristics your open Enterprise Sales Executive job requires? If not try this free Predictive Sales Hiring Assessment.

For each role you are looking to fill, have a strong grasp on who performs well in the role. Who are your top performers? What is their background? What are some soft skills they possess?

Many times companies fail to hire top talent because they have unrealistic expectations around who is the perfect fit.

Don’t get so caught up in “perfect.” No such thing exists. Instead focus on driving candidates to your company and open jobs.

4. Employer Branding

Do people know who you are and how you treat your employees?

If a candidate sees your job while searching and applying on the job boards, they are going to do two things. First, they will check out your company website. Second, they will see how current and past employees view their experience on Glassdoor.

{Related Article: Employer Branding and Recruiting}

Candidates want an inside look at the company. They want to see trust and transparency.

• How is the leadership team regarded?
• Is there room for growth?
• What is the average tenure?
• What is the salary, PTO, and benefits like?
• Does work-life balance exist?

Share what makes your company unique and how you value employees. This will also give you a lot of insight into the strengths and weaknesses or your company culture and where you can improve. Think of it as a self-audit.

{How to Build a Sales Culture of Success}
Bonus Tip: Attend and sponsor career fairs. Meet college students and get involved with campus events.

5. Content Marketing

Blogging is one of the best, “easiest”, and most cost-effective ways to grow traffic. It’s also a great way to engage and nurture prospective candidates. Invest the time.

What type of content are you creating and sharing with potential candidates?

When candidates apply to your open jobs, you want to make sure you are nurturing them throughout the entire recruiting process. Create content that helps them prepare to interview with your company. Remember to share and promote that employer brand that you are working hard to build and grow.

Share content like blogs, videos, infographics, and tip sheets with candidates. Give them a culture code like Dell does for candidates to look at. If candidates are already in your CRM or ATS system, you should be able to track their activity and send them helpful content to move them through the recruiting process, based on their actions.

It’s also great information for you as a company to understand where your candidates are coming from and if they are reading the content you send. It’s a great indicator of a candidate’s level of interest in the role.

6. Job Boards

This is not the silver bullet of recruiting. The “perfect” candidate will not automatically appear in your inbox. However, it is an option to advertise your open roles.

You will need to spend budget on posting jobs, and spend time sorting through resumes.

However, if your job title is creative, your description is enticing, and your posting in the right places, you will increase visibility.

Incorporate best SEO practices when creating jobs. Be found in the search results.

{How to Drive Traffic to Your Job Posts}

There are free and paid job boards like Indeed, Monster, CareerBuilder, and Ziprecruiter.

Consider using niche job boards that will help you recruit for your particular industry.

Post a sales job for free on DADOMATCH>>

7. Social Media

Social media has become commonplace for interactions. It’s a great way for companies to build a brand awareness, employer branding, and a strong community.

If you’re not sharing your jobs or company updates on social media, you’re missing an enormous opportunity to expand your reach and connect with candidates.

LinkedIn is the #1 professional networking site. Job seekers are actively and passively searching for new opportunities.

Make sure you have a LinkedIn company page and are sharing updates, featuring jobs, and highlighting your company culture. Ask your network to share and help spread the word.

On Facebook and Instagram, highlight your company culture. Share videos and images of your team, awards, company outings, and community involvement. Don’t be afraid to show you humor either…like in this best places to work video.
Bonus Tip: Try hosting a happy hour. Either at your office or at a local bar, share that you are hosting a happy hour that includes 2 free drinks and apps. Invite interested candidates to come. It will give you a great chance to meet people in an informal approach and spread the word. It will give candidates a chance to meet people in your company and have a feel for your company culture.

8. Email Campaigns

Email marketing is something you should be using to engage current clients as well as prospects. It’s also an awesome tool when it comes to recruiting.

Why not tap into an audience that is already familiar with your company, products, and solutions to assist with recruiting efforts?

Let your audience know that you are hiring. Ask them to share, to apply if interested, and maybe even incentivize with a referral bonus.

Referrals are a strong source of recruiting efforts. Who is recommending your company?

More email tips: You can get specific when emailing your audience by segmenting by location, industry, and title. If you’re looking for a VP of Sales in Boston, and you partner with people in the sales community, target that email campaign to that specific audience. If you’re looking for engineers, the same method applies, and so on and so forth.

{Recruiting Email Templates That Work>>}

9. Track Results

Where are candidates coming from?

If you really want to test, grow, and optimize inbound recruiting efforts, you need to be able to track and measure.

Track the source of most of your new hires. Do they come from referrals, job boards, LinkedIn, online search, or email campaigns? Understand what your greatest and weakest channel is and how you can improve ROI.

Track on Google, in Pardot, and your Applicant Tracking System. Recruiting is both sales and marketing so incorporate best practices around both.

Want to use a sales recruiting strategy that does all of this for you?

Contact Treeline, Inc.

Get the traffic, qualified candidates, data, and analytics to hire top sales talent. Partner with a sales recruiting firm that is simplifying recruiting so you can focus on growing your business.