In recruitment, strategy and creativity go hand in hand. And that's exactly what happens when we look at cleverly devised campaign strategy combined with the recruitment funnel. This funnel helps you attract the right candidates and then successfully place them. But that means you have to creatively adapt your campaign strategy to this funnel to have a chance of success. In this article, we will explain all about this and show you which campaign metrics will help you determine the effectiveness of the recruitment funnel, per phase.
The recruitment funnel
Let's start right away with the most important element: the recruitment funnel itself. Like any funnel, it consists of a structured process where candidates pass through several stages. These go from the very first contact, to the final (hopeful) hire. These are the stages:
- Awareness: creating awareness among potential candidates.
- Interest: arousing interest in your organisation and vacancies.
- Interview: Encouraging candidates to apply and schedule an interview.
- Offer: Selecting and assessing applicants, after which an offer is sent to the right match.
- Hire: The final hiring and onboarding.
When looking at setting up a recruitment campaign strategy, you naturally start with thorough preparation. First, understand who your target audience is and what drives them. Use detailed market research and data analysis to understand the needs and preferences of your potential candidates, so you can really get inside their heads to know what they want. This will put you in a perfect position to set up targeted and effective campaigns.
1. Awareness
Above you can see briefly the phases of the entire funnel, but we will now go into that in more detail, starting with the awareness phase. Imagine this: as a candidate, you are not yet at all familiar with your company and you want to make a kind of 'soft landing'. That means you don't want to be immediately targeted with product-specific ads you don't understand anything about anyway.
So what should you do? Brand awareness is the answer. This phase is all about making your brand visible and strong employer branding tells the real story of your organisation. Especially respond to the pain points your target group experiences and write a blog about them, or have employees share experiences in a video so that the approach is smooth and not too direct. How can you actually evaluate whether your marketing efforts make sense? You can do so using the campaign metrics below:
- Number of visits to your work-at-home page
- New followers on your social media channels
- Effectiveness of recruitment channels
2. Interest
Once you have attracted attention, it is time to generate interest. You do this by making potential candidates curious. What means do you use to do this? Think interviews with experts, informative webinars and stories of the faces behind your organisation. This will give candidates a good idea of the working environment and culture, something that is often left behind in simply producing job ads. For example, when candidates are interested, they are more likely to look at your company's Instagram page, as that channel better reflects the working atmosphere. These are important campaign metrics at this stage:
- Number of applicants per position
- Internal vs. external applicants
- Number of employee referrals
- Percentage of failed applications
3. Interview
Analytics are key at this stage, and recruitment automation can be a huge help here. As well as interviewing your shortlist of candidates, it’s important to nurture these candidates and ensure they remain interested in your company. Provide candidates with plenty of additional details that they’ll find interesting, such as specific information about the role, the working environment and the company culture.
Once you have gathered all the useful info about your candidate, you can conduct an interview that really shows you are taking the time to understand their needs and aspirations. Follow this up with a message (e.g. via an email campaign) that contains more information about the next steps. You can test these KPIs:
- Number of applicants that meet the job requirements
- Number of candidates who are qualified and suitable for the job
4. Offer
The candidate should not only have done good research on your organisation, but also on what competitors offer in terms of pay, work-life balance and fringe benefits for similar positions. In this case, you can collect short work-at-home videos of your employees to show why your organisation is the best choice. You can target them through a campaign with these videos, they are by now very familiar with your organisation and will be open to what you have to say. Important metrics in this phase are the following:
- The ratio of offers made to offers accepted
- Acceptance rate
- The relationship between candidates and negotiations
5. Hire
New employees are the best ambassadors of your brand you could wish for. They see all the benefits and have chosen your company for a reason. So make good use of these newcomers. Make videos, collect quotes, make sure they are heard - and do this via social media. This way, you keep increasing awareness of your brand and constantly replenish your talent pool. The analytics are extremely important in this step, make sure you have the following metrics in focus:
- Drop-out rate
- Performance statistics of new employees
- Time to fill a vacancy
- Time to hire
- Source of the hire (via which channel?)
- Quality of hire
- Cost per hire
Tools for your recruitment funnel
Developing an effective campaign strategy using the recruitment funnel requires a well-thought-out approach and continuous optimisation. By understanding and making the most of each stage of the funnel, you can attract the right candidates and successfully place them. Authenticity and consistency are crucial here. Technology also plays a key role in supporting and optimising your campaigns. Recruitment marketing software can help you strengthen your employer brand and make your results measurable.
We’ve also put together a handy guide with practical tips on how to get the most out of your recruitment campaign. Are you ready to improve your campaign strategy using the recruitment funnel? Get in touch with us – we’d be happy to help.
