THE YEAR OF THE

How to Attract Top Talent in Today’s MarketA WHITE PAPER PUBLISHED BY LINKUP JOB SEARCH ENGINE

CANDIDATEAPRIL 2016

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................... 3

Welcome to the Year of the Candidate ....................................................4

What is Recruitment Marketing? ...........................................................6

Strategies for Your CRM Program ..........................................................................7

What is the Candidate Experience? .......................................................................9

Improving the Candidate Experience ...................................................................10

Use Your Data to Optimize Your Experience ........................................................13

What Top Employers Are Doing ...........................................................................14

Make the Year of the Candidate Work for You ......................................................16

About LinkUp .......................................................................................................17

THE YEAR OF THE CANDIDATEHow to Attract Top Talent in Today’s Market

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INTRODUCTION

Experts agree the current job market favors the job seeker over the employer. With an improved economy, business confidence has increased, which means more companies are hiring. Candidates have the ability to be choosier than the past few years, especially the top talent.

Attracting top talent in this environment is a challenge for recruiters and Human Resource Departments alike. The traditional way to sort through eligible candidates no longer yields a plethora of suitable job candidates as it once did. However, there are still jobs that need to be filled, whether you have the top talent or not.

Today’s recruiting challenge demands a two-part approach: get the candidate’s attention and treat them well enough to keep it.

Getting a candidate’s attention is no easy feat. To answer the challenges of appealing to qualified candidates for today’s recruitment efforts, we are seeing recruitment marketing emerge as a top strategy.

Recruitment marketing has and will continue to change how organizations entice talent to join them, but also modify the structure and skill set of recruiting entities as well. And it’s positioned to be the mainstream tactic for organizations’ job fulfillment efforts in 2016 and beyond.

Recruitment marketing is not new. However, with fierce competition for the available talent and diversification of channels to reach and influence this talent, the old methods of recruitment are in need of an update. Recruitment marketing provides this update. It answers the question many organizations have been asking:

“How do I get the right candidates to apply for my position in

today’s job market conditions?”

However, recruiting the right applicants is only part of the challenge. Organizations must also provide an excellent application process and candidate experience once those candidates are interested in a position. There are many ways to appeal to candidates—and many ways to lose them along the way. In publishing this white paper, we at LinkUp hope to show you how to attract top talent in today’s job market. We will provide insight into the landscape of the candidate experience, define and explore the effects of recruitment marketing best practices from some of the biggest brands in the world, and help you understand how creating a delightful candidate experience will enhance your acquisition strategies.

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WELCOME TO THE YEAR OF THE CANDIDATE

1 “2015 dubbed “Year of the Candidate” —but what does that mean for you?” uk.hudson.com. Web. 10 March

2016. <http://uk.hudson.com/2015-year-of-the-candidate>.

2 Pratt, Siofra. “We Need to Talk about Agency Recruitment.” www.socialtalent.co/blog. 10 February 2016. Web.

22 February 2016. <http://www.socialtalent.co/blog/we-need-to-talk-about-agency-recruitment-in-2016.>

For the past two years, you might have heard the phrase “The Year of the Candidate” used to describe present job market conditions. But what is it and why does it affect your recruitment efforts?

According to the recruitment firm Hudson, candidates are experiencing a new environment for job seeking that has been ramping up for the past 24 months.1 It describes a job market where managers are interested in retaining talent, thus allowing more negotiation for advancement or other life priorities (more work/life balance, for example) with current managers. Also, the market-at-large is experiencing shorter time-to-hire cycles, accelerating the interview and decision-making processes for new hires, indicating that they are concerned about staff attrition and related underperformance that can result from it. Hudson also noted that when an employee resigns, it is more likely the current employer will issue a counter-offer to keep the candidate than in the past.

Social Talent, an online recruitment social media training company, agrees that the job market is changing rapidly.2 In a recent presentation at the 2016 Recruitment Agency Expo, they discovered the following:

Social Talent described 2016 as the first year that recruiters do not control the recruitment process. Moreover, candidates’ needs and wants are taking prominent role in the hiring process, forcing recruiters to look more closely at whether their client’s offer will meet these career goals. For example, according to Social Talent, a recent industry survey says:

In the past, a recruiter would match a candidate to a client without scrutiny for these factors. However, in today’s conditions, they describe an environment where these factors will need to be met to secure a match between candidate and client.

of candidates declined offers from recruiters

77%refused the first offer they received

47%reported feeling more confident about their position in the market

59%

of candidates want greater development opportunities

26%of candidates want better work/life balance

21%of candidates want more job satisfaction

15%of candidates want a more competitive salary

14%

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WELCOME TO THE YEAR OF THE CANDIDATE

3 Fisher, Anne. “The 2016 Job Market is Looking Bright for Workers.” Fortune.com. Web. 25 February

2016. <http://fortune.com/2015/12/16/job-market-hiring-workers/>.

4 Melk, Bob. “January 2016: Software Developers and Security Talent in High Demand.” Media.dice.

com. Web. 26 February 2016. <http://media.dice.com/report/january-2016-software-developers-and-

security-talent-in-high-demand/>.

Fortune.com reports that 2016 Job Market is looking bright for workers.3 Recruiting firms describe a job environment that makes predicting what the workplace will look like beyond the next 12 months difficult. Recruitment strategies catering to millennials become outdated as they make way for Generation Z (those born after 1994) to enter the workforce in the spring. Managers are advised to emphasize non-traditional benefits when salaries lack wiggle-room, to appeal to this younger workforce. Also, experts recommend tightening up employee experience flaws as Generation Z workers take a close look at what the reality of working at a company is like through social media and other venues.

The Year of the Candidate plays out in areas besides entry-level positions as well. The January 2016 Dice Report from Dice, a career site for technology professionals, describes a ferocious contest to attract talent in the technology sector, particularly for Software Developers and Security experts.4 Because these positions are highly-skilled and in extraordinary demand, these roles are both difficult for recruiters to fill and for managers to retain. Bob Melk, President of Dice, explains that the critical element to succeeding in both these efforts is to listen to what the candidate wants in addition to the traditional elements of title and compensation. This effort will not only retain top talent in these hard to fill positions but also serve as valuable social recruiting tools as well.

“Our recent survey of technology professionals found that salary

and position are critical incentives, but aspects of job satisfaction

like housing, transit, and work/life balance are also important.

And once you’re able to hire talent for these top roles, focusing

on these areas of satisfaction will not only benefit one person.

Social recruiting is increasingly important for companies, so if your

developers are happy and excited, they’ll spread the word – to the

right people,” –Bob Melk, President of Dice

All of these indicators point to the fact that 2016 is a candidate’s marketplace. Organizations wanting to fill positions with the best possible people need to step up their recruitment game, and their candidate experience to get them.

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Broadly defined, recruitment marketing is:

What a company does to attract talent before they apply, and,

in some cases, before the candidate is even looking for a new

job. It encompasses all the tactics, channels, strategies and

campaigns that an organization uses to engage talent before

and once a job is available. It is the building of your brand but as

an employer.

Taking cues from how business to consumer (B2C) entities market to stimulate sales, recruitment marketing is the pre-applicant activity you use to build brand awareness as an employer to stimulate interest in becoming an employee. Your recruitment marketing strategy targets the top talent pools for your organization, conveys the message about the employee experience and any relevant jobs available, and influences action, which in this case is a visit to your listing or a completed application. In the past, only elite organizations (think Silicon Valley tech firms, large brands or ultra huge dot-com companies, i.e. outliers) used recruitment marketing. However, the practice is rapidly embedding in the mainstream. Recruitment marketing has been around for some time, so you may be wondering why it is reaching its tipping point now. Simply put, it’s because the current job market favors the job seeker over the employer. The goal for 2016 is to get the right job ad in front of the right active or passive job seekers and inspire them to click on it or apply. However, the tactics for doing so have changed. Today, a multi-faceted approach that strategically embraces proven marketing techniques will help recruiters streamline the candidate fulfillment process while cutting expenditures.

Or, in other words, leveraging marketing for your recruitment efforts will ensure better candidates and better hires.

Savvy organizations have adopted a Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) strategy to deliver their recruitment marketing message. Not to be confused with a Customer Relationship Management System (also called a CRM), Candidate Relationship Management serves as a way to keep an open dialog between your company and potential candidates.

WHAT IS RECRUITMENT MARKETING?

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As we mentioned before, the days of listing an available position and waiting for the clicks or applications to come rolling in have passed. It is no longer sufficient to communicate with candidates only when there is a position available. Marketing your message to potential candidates is an essential part of your CRM strategy.

Determining this message takes its cues from traditional marketing best practices. In many ways, you should consider your employee experience the product and your desired candidate the audience. Your approach should mimic the sales funnel you use in the consumer side of the business.

Sales professionals use the sales funnel to identify where a prospect is in the sales cycle and focus their efforts on those with the best potential to close. A recruitment funnel would serve the same purpose but instead identifies where in the hiring cycle a potential employee is. It should also help you focus your recruitment marketing efforts on the best talent matches.

Like any marketing campaign, one of the first things you need to do is decide the demographics of your target candidate.5 Details like industry, experience, and geography will affect your message and how you market. It’s a good idea to do research on these different segments’ preferences as well. Once you know to whom you are talking to, you need to decide what you want them to know. It should answer all of the following questions about your employer experience:

What is your unique selling proposition for the candidate experience?

How does it benefit the applicant to join your team?

Which key elements of your employment package do you want to highlight?

When do you have positions available?

Where do they go to learn more and apply?

Using this information as your guide, you can create a consistent brand for your recruitment marketing message to use across channels to attract members of your target group.

STRATEGIES FOR YOUR CRM PROGRAM

Prospective Talent

Potential Candidates

Potential Employees

Begin by attracting any potential talent to your organization. These are the people interested in your recruitment marketing message.

Identify the best matches to your target demographic criteria. These matches are the focus of your marketing efforts and message, which should aim to move them forward in the recruitment process.

The conversion from potential candidate to a potential employee occurs when these targeted potential candidates click on your listing or apply for the position.

5 Masud, Sajjad. “How to Create an Effective Recruitment Marketing Campaign.” www.huffingtonpost.com.

3 April 2013. Web. 1 March 2016. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sajjad-masud/how-to-create-an-effective-

recruitment_b_2959518.html>.

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STRATEGIES FOR YOUR CRM PROGRAM

Many elements can work together to create a message that reaches your targeted audience. Once you have identified your target employees and your unique selling proposition for your organization, you can begin the practical steps to initiate marketing efforts.

Here are five important tips for disseminating your recruitment marketing message:

1 Partner with marketingRecruiting will always live with HR, but today’s environment necessitates tapping other internal sources to improve hiring outcomes. Befriend the marketing team and collaborate with them on writing your job descriptions. You’ll be amazed at the results. Ultimately, formalizing the relationship between marketing and HR can create synergies that will help you develop innovative recruiting practices.

2 Create quality contentContent marketing will help you attract and retain job seekers while hopefully converting applications into hires. Blogs, social media, video, white papers and eBooks that are job-seeker focused will position you as a thought leader while at the same time making a lasting impression. This combined result helps attract employees today and well into the future.

3 Incorporate email automationAutomated email is a reliable tool that nurtures the relationship you have with job seekers. The potential candidate has come to look around and learn more, belying their interest in your organization. Email helps you keep them interested in your company by staying in touch. Use it to keep job seekers “warm” and ultimately influence a conversion to an application. Your operational emails can work on your recruitment marketing efforts, too. Include a call to action in your employee signature that invites recipients to click on a link join your organization’s social media recruitment community or to access applicant resources.

4 Leverage re-targeting strategiesRe-targeting within your outreach efforts is important. To accomplish this task, put a conversion tag on your career page and re-target visitors across social media and online. Use brand-building copy about how great it is to work at your company. The message combined with the frequency of reach encourages targeted applicants to return to your site and apply.

5 Use programmatic software Marketing technology, such as programmatic software, is a game changer for recruitment marketing efforts. This technology allows recruiters to target, optimize and convert applicants, an effort that equates to higher-quality applicants and a lower cost-per-hire. If you want to learn more about this vital tool, check out our Programmatic Buying white paper.

You can’t get the hire if you don’t get the application or conduct the interview. So, now that you have the targeted candidates’ attention, how do you move them to the next step? How do you convert their interest into applications, interviews, and ultimately into filled positions that reflect the best talent the job market has to offer? The answer to these questions, it seems, lies in the quality of your Candidate Experience.

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WHAT IS THE CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE?

6 “The Candidate Experience 2012.“ www.thetalentboard.org. 2013 February. Web. 23 February 2016. <http://

www.thetalentboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Candidate-Experience-2012-FINAL.pdf>.

A candidate experience is what happens to an applicant from the time they apply for a position with your organization through the interview and consideration process. It is the impression left by the actions your company takes in the hiring process. These impressions form an overall perception of your company in the mind of the candidate. In other words, the applicant’s perception of your hiring process defines your candidate experience. Furthermore, these candidate perceptions will also reflect on your brand and, if they are hired, their overall feeling about their work experience with your company.

Some of the key areas that impact these perceptions occur in the following areas:

Availability of information

Ease of the application process

Technological interfaces and user experiences at the various incoming channels

Outbound communication efforts by the organization and hiring managers

Interactions with current employees during hiring process

Like most experiences, the candidate’s experience is stimulated by emotions. These emotions are in turn stimulated by the five senses. So, how your candidate experience sounds, looks, feels and operates can make or break the emotional engagement a candidate experiences with you. When the emotional engagement is positive, this feeling translates into a positive candidate experience. Positive candidate experiences result in reapplication by the candidate for a different (and possibly better-matched position) if not hired, and also referrals to other job seekers in his or her network. Negative impressions create negative feelings, which in turn create negative candidate experiences. These negative experiences result in neither reapplication nor referrals.6 Furthermore, you can bet applicants will talk to their friends about the experience, which means others may be deterred from applying.

Negative candidate experiences occur in moments through the process. For example, it could be a clunky application system or lackluster communication in the interview process. Maybe there is no rejection letter, leaving the candidate hanging instead of giving them closure.7 Companies big and small across the country create many types of negative candidate experience moments, usually without intending them.

7 Lauby, Sharlyn. “Top 5 Candidate Complaints about the Hiring Process.” www.icims.com. 14 November

2013. Web. 22 February 2016. <https://www.icims.com/hire-expectations-institute/blogs/blog-top-5-candidate-

complaints-about-the-hiring-process>.

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IMPROVING THE CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE

8 Lauby, Sharlyn. “Top 5 Candidate Complaints about the Hiring Process.” www.icims.com. 14 November

2013. Web. 22 February 2016. <https://www.icims.com/hire-expectations-institute/blogs/blog-top-5-candidate-

complaints-about-the-hiring-process> .

9 Foreman, Chris. “The Impact of Mobile Recruiting on Click-To-Apply Rates.” www.eremedia.com. 7 May 2015.

Web. 1 March 2016. <http://www.eremedia.com/ere/the-impact-of-mobile-recruiting-on-click-to-apply-rates/>.

10 Ibid.

Most companies are unaware just how unpleasant or cumbersome their candidate experience is. To improve awareness of the state of your present candidate experience, we recommend undergoing the application process for yourself. Start by putting yourself in the applicant’s shoes and go through the process (Yes, that means applying for your jobs!). Be prepared to have an eye-opening experience about the different moments in your candidate experience and the surprising (and often negative) messages they send. However, finding these less-than-satisfactory moments is an important part of the improvement process. If there is a theme to improving the candidate experience, it would be to eliminate bureaucracy. You want a process that is streamlined, easy, informative and efficient. All of these factors are vital to creating a positive impression in the mind of your candidate. Assign roles to members of the team to handle the various parts of the application process. Be sure to use the expertise of marketing whenever it seems appropriate. Outline the responsibilities of each member of your team so there is no miscommunication. The following are 10 tips to address common unsatisfactory areas in the candidate experience:

Simplify the application. One of the top five complaints of applicants is enduring a lengthy application process.8 If the application process is convoluted, consider a redesign. Use plug-ins to fill in the application. Cut the unnecessary questions and requirements. If your industry calls for a detailed application due to regulatory requirements, consider adding a short video clarifying your application steps on the website.

Cater to all users. It is important to offer ways to apply both on mobile platforms and desk or laptop options. According to ERE Recruiting Intelligence, there is a mobile explosion for job seekers. From 2010 to 2014, there was a 40% increase in the number of people who applied for jobs online.9 Unfortunately, mobile click-to-apply rates are much lower than desktop users, coming in according to Appcast.io at 1.5 percent. Some of the biggest factors were platform issues (such as the inability to store data and resume later), a lengthy application (25 questions or less was better than more) and a poor design for small screens.10

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IMPROVING THE CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE

Offer a talent community option. Talent communities are groups of people that communicate about the job seeking process. Talent groups can be as simple and easy as a Facebook Group or more extensive to include features such as recruiter chats and events. Considered a method of social recruiting, they are more than an email list or phone contacts. They are two-way interactions, facilitated by a social media platform (e.g., Facebook closed group page or Twitter Hashtag use). Helping to form a group is a good strategy for reaping the benefits of their social networking power, which can be facilitated by picking a platform and inviting your employees to participate in specific forums among other tactics.11

Combat brandjacking. Brandjacking in recruiting is where criminals post false job ads to obtain personal information from job seekers. This type of identity theft puts candidates’ private info at risk and can damage your candidate experience.12 Monitor your brand, pay attention to brandjacking and deal with it accordingly. Collaborate with your IT security and see if they can write a script to scour the internet for improper use of your mark and brand,” says Liz D’Aloia, CEO of HR Virtuoso, a mobile recruiting company. She also recommends establishing a method by which candidates can alert you of potential scams and fraud associated to your brand.

Prioritize communication. The lack of communication is another top applicant complaint.13 It’s important to communicate with candidates throughout the entire process, not just if you want to move forward with an interview. These points occur throughout the application process. For example, send a short email that thanks applicants for their submission or that lets them know they are under consideration for the position. And remember, good communication is branded communication, whether by phone or email. Some organizations use automated emails for this effort. Also, D’Aloia recommends using texts to communicate with candidates. “If you’re interested in the candidate, the best way to contact them is usually via text,” says D’Aloia. “Consider the benefits of texting in response rates. According to connectmogul.com, the average person responds to a text message in 90 seconds, compared to 90 minutes for an email .”

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11 Thygesen, Kes. “Why Your Company Should Create a Talent Community.” Mashable.com. 7 April 2013. Web. 1

March 2016. <http://mashable.com/2013/04/07/create-talent-community/#e6KKlMXFoaqn.>

12 “Brandjacking: The new generation of corporate Identity theft.” Blog.linkup.com. 17 July 2014. Web. 22

February 2016. <http://blog.linkup.com/2014/07/17/brandjacking-the-new-generation-of-corporate-identity-

theft/#sthash.yQ88AgMX.WDzcKXiW.dpbs>

13 Lauby, Sharlyn. “Top 5 Candidate Complaints about the Hiring Process.”www.icims.com. 14 November

2013. Web. 22 February 2016. <https://www.icims.com/hire-expectations-institute/blogs/blog-top-5-candidate-

complaints-about-the-hiring-process>.

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IMPROVING THE CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE

14 Sullivan, Dr. John. “16 Steps to Help You Give Job Applicants Solid Feedback.” www.eremedia.com. 25 July

2013. Web. 22 February 2016. <http://www.eremedia.com/tlnt/16-steps-to-help-you-give-job-applicants-solid-

feedback/.>

Clarify the process. Every company has a different hiring process, and it can be helpful to candidates to clarify the steps from start to finish, so they know what to expect. That could include a flow chart on the website’s careers page, an email after an application is received or a handout at the interview.

Support candidate preparation. Help ensure interviews are as productive as possible by sending out a standard communication package to candidates a few days before their interview. This packet could include company history, product profiles, hiring team bios, etc., as well, so they can concentrate their research efforts on what you think is most important.

Convey the culture. Both you and the candidate want a good personality fit, so it is beneficial to add to your website video, images and copy that conveys company culture. Some examples include employee bios and experiences, company awards and special outings, and, of course, a mission statement.

Facilitate a pleasant and welcoming interview. Plan the interview process to leave candidates feeling elated. Have a specific person to greet and guide candidates to each meeting. For long interviews, plan breaks that include water, coffee, and snacks. Always offer an office tour to help candidates better understand the job atmosphere.

Provide tactful rejections. While rejection sounds harsh, it provides much-needed closure for candidates.14 Consider telling the applicant how many people applied, as it can be easier to deal with rejection when you know the competition was fierce. If applicable, let them know that you will keep their resume on hand for future consideration, but also encourage them to continue to apply. You never know when they’ll be a good fit for another job. Topics of these emails can also include recruiting events, company culture, profiles of employees or recruiters, as well as, other jobs that fit their qualifications.

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USE YOUR DATA TO OPTIMIZE YOUR EXPERIENCE

Improving your candidate experience is an ongoing process. It can be helpful to think of it as a journey rather than a destination. Even if you arrive at your desired candidate experience as determined six months ago, what makes a candidate experience superior will likely have changed. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that once you tackle some of the broader areas of improvement to your candidate experience, addressing the newer areas often requires less of an overhauled approach than your first efforts, and more fine tuning. Leveraging your data and analytics to ascertain where these adjustments should occur is an important part of this optimization effort.

The candidate isn’t the only one who can benefit from feedback. You, the company, should want it, too. Solicit feedback on the candidate experience via phone or email, or do so in a survey sent to the candidate post-interview.15 Use the results to analyze and improve processes. However, remember that if you ask for it, you need to take action on it.

The Applicant Tracking System (ATS) data can also help fine tune your process. The ATS software is typically considered an electronic database of candidates. However, they can also use this data as a way to implement a CRM strategy that keeps the candidate engaged with the organization.16 When this data is accessed on a regular basis, recruiters or HR professionals know whether the candidate has the skills and experience needed for an open position and other relevant details, such as whether the candidate is available at the moment. Having this information readily available allows the staffing professional to produce a short list of potential candidates, maximizing productivity and efficiency.

Other areas that provide essential details for your candidate experience include recruitment advertising data and conversion tracking details. In both cases, having the information on what is working to connect with your target audience and produce desired outcomes can help you hone your strategy to focus on what is successful—and cut what isn’t.

16 Sung, Bennett. “Leverage Your Applicant Tracking System for Better Placements.” www.jobscience.com.

19 August 2014. Web. 22 February 2016. <http://www.jobscience.com/blog/leverage-your-applicant-tracking-

system-for-better-placements/.>

15 Ibid.

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Uber has become a brand that employs a rich recruitment marketing and candidate experience to work for their efforts to attract talent. Over the past couple of years, they have risen to prominence as an employer that provides a great experience for their drivers. Just as they have innovated the employer-employee relationship, they apply the same thinking to their recruitment efforts.

“At Uber, we try to build an application experience that matches the

time and place a candidate engages with us. Today, we need to be

accessible to top talent while they’re on their laptop, public transit,

or even in an Uber. Lightweight is key.” –Andrew Levey, Global

Careers Brand Leader

They also design their application experience to appeal to the type of candidate they are trying to attract, but without submitting to the traditional ideas of what that application should be. For example, their engineering recruitment efforts resemble a game more than an application.

“For engineering talent, we’ve seen success with coding

challenges built into the Uber app. If you complete the challenge,

you have the option to give us your contact information and

the ‘Ok’ to reach out to you about career opportunities. No

cumbersome application process needed—just the start of a

conversation,” Levy said.

WHAT TOP EMPLOYERS ARE DOING

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WHAT TOP EMPLOYERS ARE DOING

Another big name in recruitment marketing is Google. Their hiring process is so competitive, Hollywood made a feature film about it. Despite the fact that Google has a great reputation as an employer due to excellent employee engagement and that they have little to no need to market their open positions, they are proponents of clear communication and constant CRM. Their Google Careers page is an excellent example of how to explain your hiring process to potential candidates. From how Google interviews to what characteristics they want to how the team decides whom to move to the next stage, they are transparent and informative, so the candidate has proper expectations for their experience.

As their page says:

“We believe that if you hire great people and involve them

intensively in the hiring process, you’ll get more great people.”17

Luxe, an executive management and search firm that specializes in luxury and lifestyle brands, markets themselves as having an insider’s perspective of their niche industry. They also communicate to their clients what they provide as far as candidates and hiring process management. On the candidate side, they have a rigorous process to zero in on the best matches for their client’s jobs. As recruiters, they have defined a target for talent and use their recruitment marketing strategy to attract the talent they want, while deterring the talent they don’t.

A unique part of their recruitment and placement process is their coaching service. Designed to address a “wide range of professional needs,” they help their placements transition into their new roles, as well as helping candidates adapt their skills to be more attractive to various companies.

“We know that a cultural fit between a brand and its employees

is vital,” their website reads. “This is why Luxe Avenue seeks

individuals who can adapt and prosper in the culture of its clients’

organizations.”18

18 “Brand Incubation | Synergies.” www.luxeavenue.com. Web. 1 March 2016. <http://www.luxeavenue.com/.>

17 “How we hire.” www.google.com. Web. 1 March 2016. <http://www.google.com/about/careers/lifeatgoogle/

hiringprocess/.>

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MAKE THE YEAR OF THE CANDIDATE WORK FOR YOU

So 2016 is the Year of the Candidate, which means recruiters and HR professionals are competing harder for the talent available for their organization. However, a more competitive talent acquisition market need not mean a higher price per click or app. It does mean that you have to examine your recruitment marketing messages and efforts along with your candidate experience to appeal to the best candidates to be future employees of your company.

A good recruitment partner is always a good idea when taking on new strategy. LinkUp is a leader in the recruitment marketing space and has experience attracting talent in today’s competitive market. Experience is great, but one of the best things about partnering with LinkUp is that we send the candidate directly to your website to apply, which allows you to build your talent pools and community directly. Furthermore, since the candidates are on your site, they experience your recruitment marketing brand messaging and your deliberately designed candidate experience.

Starting a new strategy in recruitment advertising need not be an overwhelming task. When you have your message, work with the marketing department to combine the important points you want to make with the overall brand impression your organization wishes to project. Using this content, you can then market to your future employees using many of the same tools marketing uses to get the attention of customers. Be sure to retarget and refocus your efforts along the way as the technology available to you today can ensure you are getting every bit of value for the time and money you invest to attract the best talent tomorrow. Resolve to make 2016 the year you breathe new life into your company’s candidate experience also. When you create a candidate experience, one that addresses all the interactions within a candidate’s journey from application to new hire orientation, you can garner top talent and improve your reputation among professionals throughout the industry.

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ABOUT LINKUP

LinkUp is owned and operated by JobDig, an employment focused media, technology, and advertising company that has been serving employers and job seekers since 2001. With LinkUp, the company continues its history of innovation in the industry with completely unique paid search advertising solutions for employers and the highest quality job listings available on the web today for job seekers in addition to labor demand analytics and related products.

Totally unique in the space, LinkUp only index jobs from company websites. Right now, our search engine includes over 3 million jobs indexed directly every day from 50,000 company websites.

As a result, the jobs in our search engine are always current, there are no duplicate listings, and we’ve eliminated all of the job board pollution that you see on almost every other job site on the web. With a much higher-quality user experience for job seekers, we deliver to employers the strongest value proposition in the industry - the highest quality candidates at the lowest cost in the market.