Are you looking for ways to attract and retain top talents in your organisation? Research says nearly 72.8% of recruiters need help finding job-relevant candidates. On the other hand, most of the qualified candidates are already employed and are not actively looking for new employment.
These statistics prove how challenging it is to fill open positions. Gone are the days when companies relied on job fairs, print ads, and classifieds to attract talent. Instead, you now need to switch to using different marketing strategies.
One such is inbound recruiting, which mainly uses favourable content to promote your brand and make it more attractive for prospective employees. This guide explains more about such recruitment strategies and helps you create an effective one for your company.
What is Inbound Recruiting?
Candidates see tens of job adverts regularly, which makes them no longer enticed by flashy posters and lucrative job messages. Thus, it has become difficult for companies to attract top candidates.
Thus, companies must choose different digital marketing approaches. Inbound recruiting is a non-intrusive talent acquisition strategy used today to improve engagement with future hires. It includes creating and marketing targeted content to enhance employer branding that attracts top talents.
Difference Between Inbound and Outbound Recruitment
Inbound recruiting is like inbound marketing for recruiters, where you create needs that help talents realise what they are missing. Whereas outbound recruitment is similar to sales, where you reach out to candidates with job opportunities, and they choose you.
In a candidate-centric job market, where people prefer choosing companies over annoying job messages, inbound recruiting holds the reins.
Let us take an example to understand inbound and outbound recruitment better. Suppose you are going out fishing with a net. You bait the hook and provide an attractive lure, but the fish decides to swim and take the bait. This is inbound recruiting, where the company provides lucrative offerings, and candidates go to your company themselves.
However, the scene is different if you are fishing with the trawler. You have a big net attached to a boat; you cast that net in the lake and catch fish. It doesn’t require luring or waiting longer for fish to take the bait.
Outbound recruitment is where the company fetches candidates with direct outreach methods. This method doesn’t attract passive candidates who aren’t looking for jobs actively, and you lose the top talents in the market.
Inbound recruiting | Outbound recruiting | |
| Focuses | Candidate-centric recruitment approach | Traditional company-driven recruitment approach |
| Purpose | Creating a talent pipeline for the future | Filling the company’s immediate job openings |
| Branding | It requires proactive employer branding | No such branding is needed for immediate hiring needs |
| Outreach methods | Mainly uses content marketing and improving social media presence to boost brand engagement | Uses almost all direct outreach methods like emails, cold calls, job postings, DMs, etc |
| Relationship building | Puts special attention towards relationship building with top talents | Largely focused on immediate hires and least attention towards relationship building |
| Cost | It is generally cost-effective as most investment goes towards building employer branding and online presence. | This can be a bit expensive as direct outrage methods require more resources. |
What are the Main Elements of Inbound Recruiting?
Are you developing an inbound recruiting strategy? If yes, then you must understand the key elements of this strategy to attract more candidates and build a talent pipeline.
Building a Strong Employer Brand
Employer branding is essential for inbound recruiting, showcasing your culture, values, and missions. This information must appeal to your potential candidates to motivate them to work at your organisation.
Content Marketing
People look for valuable content on search engines to understand the latest trends and market changes better. You can utilise a content marketing strategy to create and market educational content and engage potential candidates.
This may include blog posts, webinars, sharing resources, etc., providing valuable insights into your industry. Whenever candidates find your industry lucrative and have career development opportunities, they engage with you.
Career Websites
This essential element of inbound recruiting performs as a central hub for all recruitment-related information. All your leads, no matter where they come from, visit your career page to better understand your workplace and job openings.
Therefore, you must ensure an easy-to-navigate website, feature current job openings, and provide valuable insights into your culture and company values.
Social Media Presence and Engagement
Inbound marketing for recruitment agencies requires an excellent social media presence. You can share valuable insights into your workplace culture and ethics, job openings, and more on these platforms and engage potential candidates.
They further share your updates with others in the network and help to create a wider talent pool.
Encourage Employee Advocacy
You can encourage your current employees to be brand ambassadors and share their experiences online. This helps in inbound recruiting by creating a positive impression of your brand to potential candidates.
Create Talent Pools
Whenever you find potential candidates are engaging with your company, create talent communities or pools. These communities consist of people who already expressed interest in your organisation.
You must nurture relationships with them and contact them immediately when job openings arise. You can also use candidate relationship management tools to nurture and manage relationships with potential candidates.
What are the Benefits of Inbound Recruiting in Businesses?
By now, you must have understood inbound recruitment meaning; let us now see its benefits in businesses.
Attract Quality Candidates
An inbound recruiting strategy makes you attractive to potential candidates who come and apply for your openings. It allows you to showcase company culture, values, and missions that enhance brand recognition. Therefore, this strategy helps you attract high-quality candidates who genuinely take the lead to apply for your jobs.
Build a Diverse Talent Pool
Inbound recruiting urges recruiters to nurture relationships with top candidates attracted to their organisations. You can post content by keeping diversity and inclusivity in mind to attract talent from diverse backgrounds.
It differs from investing in direct outreach methods, where unintentional biases may restrict opportunities. Additionally, by promoting DEI initiatives through your content, you can create a good impression and expand your talent pool.
Boost Employer Brand
Unlike outbound recruiting, this strategy focuses on building employer brands to attract talent. They don’t sell jobs to candidates and convince them to apply.
Instead, they ask you to focus on improving your online presence, brand reputation, and candidate engagement and implementing different marketing activities that indirectly target and attract talents.
In addition to that, candidates may share their positive impression of your brand in their network. Thus, they provide additional marketing to your company and help you meet professionals in the industry.
Improve Candidate Experience
Whenever you use an inbound recruitment strategy, you foster a sense of community among potential talents. This improves their engagement with your brand and helps you build longer-lasting relationships.
Now, you don’t have to advertise jobs or cold calls whenever your organisation has a vacancy. Candidates will visit your website to keep themselves updated with job vacancies.
Reduces Cost Per Hire
Inbound recruiting is comparatively more cost-effective than outbound recruiting, primarily focusing on improving branding. This requires improving social media presence, boosting brand reputation, using content marketing, etc.
These are usually cost-effective measures that require little updates regularly and drive the best outcomes for longer periods. On the other hand, outbound recruitment strategies use direct outreach methods that need more resources and are costly practices.
How 6 Pence Helps
Inbound recruiting can be time-consuming, but its advantages will make you want to pursue it. You can meet passive candidates besides the ones actively looking for jobs and fill your vacancies anytime.
Additionally, such strategies help boost employer branding and reputation and reduce cost-per-hire. At 6 Pence, we help companies in Oman, Iraq, Bahrain, and Dubai find top talent smoothly. To learn about our process and services, contact us today!
Also Read: Employee Attrition Rate: Causes & Reduction Strategies
Frequently Asked Questions
What is inbound recruitment?
Inbound recruitment refers to the approach of making your company attractive enough for potential candidates such that they directly come to you rather than you going out and fetching them.
What is the difference between inbound recruiting and outbound recruiting?
Inbound recruiting refers to boosting employer branding and attracting potential talents through content. On the other hand, outbound recruiting refers to using different direct outreach methods to target candidates for immediate hiring needs.
