Marketing for staffing and recruiting agencies is crucial and entirely dependent on current trends in the hiring market. Going into 2023, these agencies will need to know the latest and most effective ideas for success in the industry when matching candidates and client companies.
To know where they need to go, many staffing and recruitment agencies start by examining the challenges they’ve faced in the past. In recent years, it’s been difficult to find qualified hires to present to clients for both experienced and entry-level roles1. Plus, changing priorities for job seekers has altered the way client companies search for candidates, thus shifting how agencies find potential applicants as well.
However, these problems can be tackled with an effective plan. Marketing for staffing agencies relies heavily on keeping up to date with the times—read our top seven ideas for how staffing and recruiting agencies can optimize their marketing of client companies and candidates.
- Leverage Employer Branding
- Automate Your Recruitment Processes
- Highlight Candidates Soft Skills
- Create & Maintain Talent Pools
- Utilize Social Recruiting
- Prioritize Diversity & Inclusion
- Prepare for Gen Z
1. Leverage Employer Branding
When a company is hiring, its reputation is essential to attract and retain the best possible talent. So, make sure to leverage the employer’s branding to draw in applicants. It’s important to potential new employees—over three-quarters of people looking for a job research the brand and reputation of a company before they apply1.
Also, look to employees at the company when it comes to finding new talent. At a good company, employees are the greatest possible advocates, and you can use that positive brand association to find the next amazing employees for them.
2. Automate Your Recruitment Processes
Isn’t it so much easier to have your bills set to auto-pay? It’s the same with recruiting job applicants—streamline the process with the magic of technology! Using automation in hiring can significantly reduce the time and money spent on the process.
Popular applicant tracking software programs like BambooHR, SmartRecruiters, Workday, Submittable, and Greenhouse are available for you to make your life, and finding good candidates, even easier1.
3. Highlight Candidates’ Soft Skills
While it’s important that candidates have the specific abilities needed to do their job correctly, they have also spent their careers developing other professional skills that are a bit harder to identify. These are soft skills, and they include abilities like collaboration, communication, and problem-solving.
It’s estimated that 66% of all new jobs will mainly rely on soft skills and that the demand for soft skills will continue to rise over the next decade1. Make sure you prioritize finding candidates with all the right skills for the job as you search.
4. Create & Maintain Talent Pools
Recruiters have long used talent pools to streamline the hiring process, and individual companies are even starting to do so as well1. That’s because keeping a talent pool—a short list of candidates who would be a good fit for the open role—is an effective way to hire a new employee.
Talent pools help cut recruitment costs, take less time to go from interviewing to making an offer, and keep quality candidates close the next time an opening arises. So make and regularly update a list of candidates you liked but didn’t ultimately hire, former employees who may be interested in returning, and professional connections who would be an asset on your team—then start with that group the next time you need to start interviewing for an open role.
5. Utilize Social Recruiting
Social media recruiting is one of the top hiring trends in recent years, with 94% of professional recruiters posting job openings and networking with potential candidates1. It offers the opportunity for recruiters to engage one-on-one with potential applicants. Plus, the popularity of social networks for professionals makes searching for candidates easier than ever before.
Almost half of the employers who use social media to find candidates for open roles found that the quality of those candidates was better than alternative methods of recruitment1. Social recruiting can be a very effective tool for companies to find the right applicant.
6. Prioritize Diversity & Inclusion
In any modern workplace, striving to incorporate a robust diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) plan is a must. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it’s important to most job seekers today. Your hiring strategy needs to put DEI to work as well.
Take a close look at your hiring practices to eliminate bias, which may involve finding and using new recruiting tools. Only a third of recruiters report tracking the diversity of their candidates, but 2023 will likely see an increase as DEI becomes more and more important to companies and employees alike2.
7. Prepare for Gen Z
You don’t have to understand TikTok to know that Gen Z is the future of job applicants and employees. And you need to be ready for them.
Get ready to speed up—Gen Z is used to everything being fast-paced—and throw out your old recruitment methods in favor of personalized candidate engagement and a mobile-optimized application2. Plus, Gen Z will expect everything to be virtual from interviews to actual work, so prepare for that.
Recruitment Marketing Trends to Know for 2023
This upcoming year may not look completely different from recent years of marketing ideas for staffing agencies, but it’s important to keep a few recent changes in mind.
- Salary is the most important job aspect to most employees1
- Remote work is a permanent, increasingly popular fixture3
- Candidates want a company that prioritizes mental health4
- There’s a talent shortage, but data can help you find people3
Marketing for recruitment agencies in 2023 will carry over some challenges, like the difficulties finding qualified candidates and the shifts in work culture from the COVID-19 pandemic, but the right strategy will combat all of that.
Ready to improve your staffing and recruitment marketing strategy? Contact Sagefrog to learn more about working with us.
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