Has your hiring been put on hold for a temporary period? If so, you might feel like all your recruitment marketing efforts should equally be put on the backburner.
However, when faced with a hiring freeze, it’s more important than ever that you don’t lose momentum with your employer branding strategy.
It takes a long time to develop your employer brand so don’t be tempted to pause on your recruitment marketing activities as well as your actual hiring; after all, you don’t want to risk wasting your hard work. Just like your company’s own marketing team wouldn’t stop marketing your business at any point, you shouldn’t stop marketing yourself as an employer just because you’re not actively recruiting for any roles.
Imagine two or three months down the line when you might need to start hiring again; this task will be much harder after a long break in recruitment marketing. Equally, what if a vital member of your team decides to move on and you need to urgently replace them?
Maintaining your employer brand’s visibility in the recruitment marketplace is essential. To help you do this while on a hiring freeze, Webrecruit recommends considering the following tips:
Encourage your employees to post on employer review sites
Many organisations encourage their customer base to provide testimonials so why not use this opportunity to encourage your colleagues to leave comments on an employee review platform, such as Glassdoor.
When the time comes to recruit again, applicants will likely check out your Glassdoor profile to see what’s being said about your company. This could very much influence their decision to apply so take this opportunity to focus on building up your reviews so you can make a great first impression.
Share photos of your team
Just because you’re on a hiring freeze, it doesn’t mean that people won’t enjoy a sneak peak into what life is like at your business.
Share photos from previous company socials, your office or home office set-up (if remote working) and the technology your team uses. People want to see the faces and personalities that make your company so great!
Encourage jobseekers to register for job alerts
Don’t lose out on interested jobseekers who are keen to come and work for you just because you aren’t advertising any vacancies at the moment; let them register to receive job alert emails.
Many applicant tracking systems and careers sites have job alert functionality which allows interested individuals to sign up to receive emails about relevant vacancies that your company is offering. This ensures that candidates are kept engaged and are notified as soon as a relevant role does become available.
Tell stories
Storytelling is a great marketing tool and there’s no better person to tell the story of working for your organisation than one of your employees. Encourage your colleagues to talk about their experience of working for your company; let them write blog posts and share their stories. Make sure you don’t edit their words too much; the stories should be authentic.
If you’re feeling creative, work alongside your Marketing team to produce a series of videos or on-brand images featuring quotes from their stories, alongside images.
Nurture your existing talent pool
Do you already have a sizeable talent pool but limited opportunities for the candidates within it? Don’t neglect them, keep in touch!
Aim to send monthly updates and communicate exciting things that your company has been doing. Even if it’s a while before you hire again, they’re going to want to know about any cool projects they could potentially be involved in when you do start to recruit again.
Keep it regular
As with any kind of marketing, consistency is everything. Rather than sharing four pieces of employer branding content in one week and then nothing for a month, aim for one post a week.
This could be a social media post where you share photos of your team or an article written by one of your employees. It doesn’t need to be all or nothing. Keep it consistent and play the long game.
Research future options
Your hiring might be on hold for the moment but this quiet period could be the ideal time to start putting together a business case for recruitment technology and/or a careers site for when things pick up again. Utilise your time by laying the groundwork now. Luckily, Webrecruit has got you covered!
