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Updated: April 24, 2025
Recruitment marketing is how today’s top talent teams attract candidates—before they even apply. Just like marketers create demand for products and services, recruiters can create demand for roles. By building awareness and interest among active and passive job seekers, you can turn curiosity into applications.
In this blog, we’ll cover key strategies and tips to help you:
- Strengthen your employer brand
- Build a steady pipeline of qualified talent
- Stand out in a competitive hiring market
What is Recruitment Marketing?
Recruitment marketing is the use of digital marketing strategies to promote open roles and boost your employer brand. It helps talent acquisition (TA) teams attract, engage, and nurture candidates at every stage of the recruiting funnel.
Unlike traditional sourcing, recruitment marketing goes beyond job boards. It’s about creating content, launching social campaigns, optimizing your careers site, and sending personalized outreach that turns interest into action.
Why it matters:
- 70% of the workforce is made up of passive candidates—which means most potential hires aren’t actively looking. You need to get on their radar before they even think about switching jobs.
- Top talent expects a consumer-grade experience. If your application process or employer presence feels outdated, you’ll lose them to companies that feel more modern and engaging.
- Employer branding directly impacts candidate quality and conversion. A strong brand builds trust, which makes candidates more likely to engage, apply, and accept your offer.
4 Stages of a Recruitment Marketing Campaign
1. Build Your Employer Brand
Most candidates won’t apply to a company they don’t recognize. That’s why building awareness is the first step. Even if someone isn’t actively job hunting, your brand should be on their radar.
Here’s how to build brand awareness:
- Share authentic stories through blog posts, videos, and employee spotlights that reflect your values and day-to-day culture.
- Put your mission front and center by consistently highlighting your values, purpose, and what your team stands for.
- Choose the right platforms like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and your careers site to maximize visibility and meet candidates where they already are.
2. Generate Interest in Open Roles
After awareness comes interest. Now it’s time to hook potential candidates with content that gets them curious and excited about joining your team.
Here’s how to deepen their interest:
- Showcase employee voices with quotes and behind-the-scenes content that reveal what it’s really like to work at your company.
- Spotlight what makes your workplace stand out—think remote work options, generous PTO, team events, or value-driven perks like volunteer days and corporate philanthropy.
- Make it interactive with content like quizzes, infographics, and “ask me anything” sessions that invite candidates to engage, not just browse.
3. Nurture Candidates into Applicants
Not everyone applies right away. Some need more time, information, or a deeper connection with your brand. That’s where nurturing comes in. Build trust and familiarity by giving candidates a closer look at who you are and what you stand for.
Here’s how to start nurturing candidates:
- Celebrate your commitment to inclusion with content about DEI programs, employee resource groups, and belonging-focused initiatives.
- Show candidates how they’ll grow by featuring learning and development opportunities, mentorship programs, or clear career paths.
- Highlight what makes your culture unique—from wellness perks and work-life balance to corporate philanthropy and team building programs.
4. Convert Candidates with an Seamless Application Process
A clunky application can stop even the most excited candidate in their tracks. Make it as easy as possible for interested candidates to take the next step.
Here’s how to seal the deal with a smooth application experience:
- Make applying easy and fast with a modern Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that supports one-click or quick-apply features.
- Keep it short and sweet—reduce form fields and eliminate unnecessary steps to prevent drop off.
- Design for every screen by ensuring your application process is mobile-friendly and intuitive across devices.
How to Level Up Your Recruitment Marketing
Use the Right Tools to Scale Faster
Get more out of your recruitment marketing by using tools built to support smarter hiring workflows:
- Reach the right people by segmenting your audiences and tailoring messaging based on candidate intent and behavior.
- Measure what matters by tracking engagement across campaigns, platforms, and touchpoints.
- Scale smartly with automation tools that let you personalize at scale and keep warm leads engaged.
Clarify Your Employer Brand
Before you launch any campaign, align on your brand’s purpose and what drives your organization:
- What you promise employees: Your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) should clearly communicate the experience, value, and growth candidates will find at your company.
- What you believe in: Clarify your mission, values, and cultural DNA so candidates know what you stand for.
- Why you’re different: Highlight the unique aspects of your culture, team structure, or work style that set you apart.
Set SMART Goals
The most successful teams define clear goals from the start. Use the SMART framework to guide your planning. Here’s how it works:
- Specific: Clearly define what you want to accomplish
- Measurable: Make sure your goal can be tracked with data
- Achievable: Set realistic targets your team can hit
- Relevant: Align goals with your broader hiring strategy
- Time-bound: Give yourself a deadline to create urgency and focus
Using this framework keeps your strategy focused and actionable. Here’s how that might look in practice: Increase qualified applicants from LinkedIn by 25% in the next 6 months through employee testimonials and role-specific content.
Define Roles and Responsibilities
Defining roles in advance ensures that everyone understands what they’re responsible for and there aren’t any gaps in your marketing workflow. Consider Recruitment marketing takes a team effort. Set your team up for success by defining responsibilities clearly:
- Content lead: Develops engaging blog posts, videos, visuals, and thought leadership pieces.
- Campaign manager: Oversees publishing cadence, scheduling, and performance metrics.
- Recruiters: Share content, amplify open roles, and offer on-the-ground insights into what candidates care about.
Start Small, Then Scale
Whether your TA team has 20 people or two, starting small and scaling strategically helps you make the most of your resources and stay focused on what works. Here’s how to grow your recruitment marketing efforts at a pace that works for your team:
- Start lean by focusing on low-cost, high-impact channels—think email campaigns, your careers page, and job boards where your audience is most active.
- Test your messaging by experimenting with different employer brand narratives and role-specific content to see what drives the most engagement.
- Expand gradually as you learn what resonates. Add new formats like videos, blogs, or social media campaigns once you have the team and budget to support them.
- Double down on what works by shifting more resources into the channels and tactics that consistently attract qualified candidates.
Build a Strategic Content Calendar
A well-planned content calendar helps you stay consistent, aligned, and proactive—not reactive. Use it to guide your recruitment marketing efforts and keep everyone on the same page. Here’s how to start planning yours:
- Map out your message with clear content themes like DEI, benefits, hiring events, or team culture.
- Plan your platforms—decide where each piece of content will go, from LinkedIn to email to your blog.
- Assign and align by clarifying who owns what and setting deadlines to keep everything moving.
Top Recruitment Marketing Ideas to Try
Leverage Paid and Organic Social
Social media is the cornerstone of your employer brand, but not every platform plays the same role in your strategy. Knowing where your ideal candidates spend time is key to making your efforts count.
Here’s how to get the most from your mix:
- Match platform to audience: LinkedIn is ideal for connecting with professionals and leadership-level talent through tools like LinkedIn Recruiter, while Instagram and TikTok are better suited for reaching Gen Z and early-career candidates with engaging, visual-first content.
- Balance strategy and spend: Run targeted ads to promote roles while maintaining a steady stream of organic content to boost visibility and trust.
- Test and adapt: Experiment with different content formats like videos, polls, or carousels to see what resonates on each platform, especially when showcasing culture and behind-the-scenes moments for early-career audiences.
Optimize Your Careers Page
Your website is one of your most powerful owned assets—and your careers page should do more than list job openings. It should tell the story of who you are, why you hire, and what candidates can expect.
Here’s how to tell a compelling story:
- Lead with value by showcasing your culture, benefits, and growth opportunities.
- Let employees do the talking with quotes, photos, or video testimonials that reflect real experiences.
- Make it actionable with a clear overview of the application and interview processes, including a call to action.
Empower Internal Advocates
Your people are your most powerful brand ambassadors—especially when it comes to attracting new talent. With the right tools and encouragement, they can help amplify your employer brand and open roles authentically and at scale.
Here’s how to empower your people:
- Equip them with resources: Provide branded templates, sample posts, and FAQs that make it easy to talk about your culture and opportunities.
- Celebrate the wins: Highlight employees whose advocacy results in successful hires or increased visibility.
- Keep the momentum going: Recognize participation through shoutouts, rewards, or fun competitions to keep advocacy efforts energized.
Launch a Newsletter
Email continues to be one of the most effective and cost-efficient ways to stay top of mind with potential candidates. It’s perfect for nurturing interest and building long-term connections with talent who aren’t quite ready to apply.
Make your newsletter work harder by:
- Staying consistent and relevant: Share updates on new roles, hiring timelines, and helpful resources tailored to candidate interests.
- Segmenting your outreach: Use data from your ATS to personalize content by location, role type, or engagement history.
- Optimizing for performance: Track open and click-through rates to understand what content resonates and fine-tune your approach for better engagement.
Recruitment Marketing: Your Next Steps
Recruitment marketing helps you build awareness, generate interest, and deepen relationships with candidates long before they hit “apply.” But making it all work—at scale—requires more than a strong message. It takes the right tools to deliver timely, personalized, and consistent experiences at every touchpoint.
That’s where Lever comes in. Our scalable, AI-powered platform combines sourcing, relationship-building, and candidate management into one seamless solution. Lever’s recruitment marketing capabilities help you:
- Automate nurture campaigns and targeted outreach
- Tailor content to specific audiences with segmentation
- Promote roles across channels with built-in distribution tools
Whether you’re filling 100 roles or one hard-to-fill position, Lever flexes with your hiring needs—so you can keep building pipeline, boosting engagement, and closing the right candidates faster.
Explore how Lever helps TA teams run recruitment marketing campaigns that drive real results.
