10 Unique places to reach candidates right now
In today’s digital world, more and more companies are investing in employer branding programs and recruitment marketing content — which means that the channels you’re using are more saturated than ever before.
So if you want your content and messages to get in front of your target candidates, then you need to get increasingly unique with the types of content you're creating and the channels you're using to reach them. That’s why we’ve put together a list of ten unique places to reach candidates right now. Let’s dive in.
Did you know that 52 million people actively use Reddit across 100,000 active communities? With so many active communities, with a simple search like “developers,” “growth marketing,” or “sales,” you’re bound to find some that relate to your talent audience.
Even better, many people go to Reddit specifically for news aggregation and answers to questions about topics in their community. This presents a great opportunity for savvy recruiters looking to establish themselves and their companies as authoritative sources within the community.
You can do this by participating in community conversations, but this can also require a lot of time invested for potentially limited ROI. A better way to get in front of and connect with your ideal audience here is with targeted ads.
With Reddit ads, you can target by location, interests, as well as by communities that exist on the platform. Plus, the ads (which can be text or visual-based) appear quite natively, meaning they fit in well with the organic user content, making them appear more authentic.
Twitch
As a live streaming platform where the most popular searches are “games,” “computers,” and “technology,” Twitch is a great place to connect with potential developer talent.
Similar to YouTube, Twitch plays ads before their streams, which is where we recommend starting with ads of your own. For example, Indeed created an ad showing how a streamer found a designer to make her streams more engaging through Indeed’s career search engine. This ad not only created a case study for why Twitch is great for recruitment but also why you can find a job on Twitch!
And remember, while gamers may represent a high percentage of Twitch’s users, there are all kinds of other audiences on the platform, such as those related to music, food and drink, and sports. So, even if you’re not in the market for developers, it’s still worth exploring.
TikTok
Given its user base, there’s no better way to connect with Gen Z and Millennial audiences right now than on TikTok. While companies are starting to play around with the platform, its relatively untapped nature from a recruitment marketing standpoint offers a competitive edge for companies to take advantage of now.
For those unfamiliar with the platform, TikTok is a video-sharing social network similar to Instagram where users can make fun videos with lots of cool filters, text overlays, music, and other features. With authenticity at the core of a lot of TikTok content, companies are now starting to use the platform to showcase their company culture and give an inside, behind-the-scenes look into life at their organization.
This type of content lends to a more youthful or comedic branding, but if your brand is more mature, it can also help you appeal to a younger demographic. If you're looking for an example of TikTok done right, we recommend checking out The Washington Post as their page really nails things from an employer brand perspective.
If creating a page and maintaining an organic content strategy isn’t possible for you at the moment, TikTok now also offers advertising services you can use to get in front of a younger audience online more directly.
Clubhouse
Clubhouse, an invitation-only audio-chat iPhone app launched just last year, lets you create and join “rooms” where you can listen to presentations, join discussions, and even host a talk yourself.
Being so new, few companies have launched recruitment marketing efforts on the platform, which means low competition for the companies who do. Since the app is invite-only it can give your brand a feeling of exclusivity, which may be attractive to some of your target personas. Not only that, but there’s also no recording allowed, meaning everything you offer is "one time only” which can tap into those feelings of FOMO.
While there’s currently no in-app advertising functionality, here are a few ways you can leverage the platform for recruitment:
Host info sessions about your organization
Have SMEs from your organization facilitate a round-table discussion on a topic in your field
Join as a guest on another group
Because there are thousands of people looking to engage and connect in real-time discussion on the platform, another way to think of Clubhouse is as an alternative for your virtual events.
Programmatic display ads
Why place a single job ad on a job board when you can have multiple creative ads follow your target audience all around the web? This essentially describes why programmatic display ads belong in every recruiter’s tool belt.
Depending on your settings, you can have your programmatic ads distributed across blogs, news sites, and all sorts of other places where your target audiences are hanging out online — all automatically without having to lift a finger!
You can also use programmatic ads to retarget people who have visited your careers page and follow them around the web with ads. In fact, you've probably been targeted by these types of ads yourself better if you've ever left something in your shopping cart with a major e-commerce brand! Similarly, you can use programmatic to target people who visit your careers site and draw them back in to complete an application.
If getting started with programmatic ads seems complicated, there are resources and tools like MediaSmarts, AdRoll, and The Trade Desk to help simplify the process. Or, if you use Google programmatic ads, you can learn from the plenty of free "how-to" guides provided.
Professional associations
While the options above highlight some of the newer places to reach candidates online, there’s nothing wrong with going back to the basics. Connecting with industry associations affiliated with your target industries is still a great way to get in front of talent.
For one, these groups often have websites and newsletters where you can place job ads. They also often host local chapter meetings and events where you can connect with industry leaders and talent. You may even get access to member directories with job titles and company names that you may be able to leverage.
However, the key to working with professional associations is to actually become a part of the community. In joining them, there is an expectation that you’re going to do your part to help the group as much as you take advantage of their services. Similarly, you can't just show up to one-off events and expect to get results. Instead, you need to be prepared to cultivate a long-term commitment.
Slack and Discord communities
A growing source for industry advice and job opportunities are communities on messaging platforms like Slack and Discord. Similar to Reddit, people on these platforms form communities around specific topics to meet new people and share tips and resources.
Therefore, finding and securing invites to the right groups on these platforms is another way to connect and build relationships with your target audience. For example, there is a very active Tech Slack group for anyone who works in the tech industry in Kitchener, Ontario. In this group, there’s a channel called #jobs that people use specifically for recruiting, where you can post jobs ads or employer brand collateral.
To find these groups, you can try asking your network on LinkedIn for any good communities in the geographies or verticals you're hiring for, or you could start with a simple Google search to see if anything comes up.
Podcasts
Spotify announced that the amount of podcast content their users consumed more than doubled in 2020. With this in mind, if you’re not using podcasts to reach candidates, you’re seriously missing out.
If you’re not sure how to put podcasts to use, here are just a few examples:
Be a guest on an already existing podcast catering to your target audience
Launch your own podcast
Advertise job openings through sponsoring podcasts
For inspiration, Hire Scholars, an organization focused on helping companies attract early career talent has a podcast called The Internship Show. On the show, they feature different employers and create snackable, bite-sized podcasts that are typically 2-5 minutes long that offer career advice and insights into organizations that prospective interns and early careers talent are actively seeking out.
Guest blogs
Guest blogging puts you in front of an already established, on-brand audience without having to put in the work to build that audience in the first place.
If you can get your team members or leaders featured on expert industry blogs, then you'll be sure to land in front of some folks in your target talent audience who are looking to expand on what they know — and potentially check out your company as a result.
For your guest blogging strategy to work, you should be prepared to do some prep work beforehand, such as researching the best blogs by industry, contacting the blog owners and pitching them your idea; interviewing your employees, and even ghostwriting for them.
This might sound like a lot of work, but the benefits of a successful campaign make it all worth it. Not only can you reach a passive talent audience with messaging that compels them to consider your organization for employment opportunities, but with real employees in the bylines of your guest-posted content, you can also showcase to the talent reading the brilliant colleagues they might be working with.
Google PPC ads
Retailers have taken advantage of Google PPC ads for ages, yet they remain a largely untapped area for recruiters. With the ability to incorporate candidate behaviour into your targeting, leveraging Google PPC ads is an excellent approach to reaching target talent audiences.
In fact, 70% of job searches start on Google, which is why your ad targeting is so important, especially in the Google for Jobs era. By targeting the right keywords related to the roles you’re hiring for, you can ensure that when a candidate starts their search on Google, they’ll see your roles in their search results first.
Even if your prospective candidates aren’t actively looking for a role, you can target keywords they’re regularly searching for so that your organization becomes top of mind for them.
As more and more companies take advantage of employer branding programs and recruitment marketing content, cutting through the noise and reaching candidates is only set to get more challenging in the future. Fortunately, expanding your efforts to include the ten examples above is a great way to stay ahead of the curve.
For even more employer brand and recruitment marketing tips, be sure to check out The Employer Brand Shop Talk Podcast where we interview leading industry practitioners to learn about their approach to employer branding.
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About The Employer Brand Shop
The Employer Brand Shop is a boutique recruitment marketing and employer brand agency located in Kitchener, Canada. Our team helps organizations around the world attract and engage talent using creative marketing strategies