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The recruiting game is usually not considered glitzy or particularly exciting, but in reality, it can be one of the most dynamic industries you can work in. This is especially true for recruiters who do not work in-house for a single company but who run or work for an independent recruitment agency which brings together companies (their clients) and employees (candidates).
Double Marketing in the World of Recruitment
While recruiters are usually not seen as particularly interested in marketing, they actually benefit from marketing more than experts in most other industries. The reason for this is that they are marketing their services in two directions.
On the one hand, they have to market their services to companies which pay them commissions and keep them in business. This is your basic B2B marketing with a few idiosyncrasies, like any other industry.
However, the thing that is unique to recruiters is that they need to do marketing in the other direction as well. Namely, their success depends on their candidate pool and in order to get the best candidates, they need to convince them that their services will get them placements the quickest.
In essence, recruiters do double marketing which means that they can also doubly benefit from SMS marketing too.
Marketing to Companies
Since it is the companies that are cutting the checks, the recruiters will want to do everything in their power to market their services to as many well-paying companies as possible.
For one, SMS marketing for recruiters works because finding the mobile phone numbers for a company is as easy as Googling them or even opening the local yellow pages. There is no need to investigate which email is the right one. In addition to this, with SMS marketing, it easier for recruiters to target HR people at the different companies, thus directly reaching hiring managers.
There are also many ways in which recruiters can use SMS marketing to improve their chances of landing a new client company.
For example, they can create separate lists of companies and individuals based on the industry they cover. For example, a recruiter can have a list of IT clients who are always on a lookout for new coders and developers, a list of healthcare clients who wish to know when new healthcare specialists enter the job market, a list of food industry clients who are looking for chefs, cooks and waiters, etc.
Then, when a new candidate from their pool leaves their current job, they can send out an SMS to everyone on the appropriate list, telling them in short about this new client and how they can find out more. This is taking advantage of the SMS marketing trait where it can turn into a conversation.
Recruiters can also send quick messages to their potential clients, telling them about their most successful candidates and companies that have benefited from their recruitment services.
In addition to this, recruiters can also send their clients messages that will be a mix of customer service and marketing by, for example, inquiring about how their latest placement was doing and whether they might be interested in similar candidate suggestions.
The list of potential actions is endless.
Marketing to Candidates
Besides battling for clients, recruiters also battle for the best candidates as they will directly influence how successful they are. If a recruiter does not have a great list of candidates, they can never hope to cater to their clients’ needs.
Through SMS marketing, recruiters can dramatically expand their candidate base, approaching the best talent in the field with their success stories that can be either succinctly put into a short sentence or that their potential candidates can learn about through the use of SMS keywords. Once again, the two-way nature of SMS marketing can be a huge boon here, allowing potential candidates to immediately find out more if they are interested.
Recruiters should also seriously think about visiting local job fairs and sharing their SMS mobile keywords with job seekers who can then find out more about the recruitment agency and who will then automatically become part of the SMS list for the recruiter.
Recruiters can also entice potential candidates to switch their current jobs or at least learn a bit more about the recruiter’s client company. For instance, if a recruiter’s hypothetical client company (a restaurant) starts using a piece of modern, streamlined restaurant roster software; they can inform their food industry candidates about this new fact that will make this company a prime workplace. Seemingly minor things like that can make a huge difference and can lead for new hires for the recruiter.
Finally, recruiters can also use follow-up messages to stay in touch with the candidates they placed somewhere, ensuring that they stay with the recruitment agency should they decide to change employers.
Closing Word
Recruiters and recruitment agencies have a lot to gain from using SMS marketing. The fact that they have to advertise their services in both directions makes SMS marketing more than just an interesting notion. Furthermore, the fact that they are dealing with engaged individuals on the both sides of their business makes SMS marketing even more beneficial for recruiters.
AUTHOR: James D. Burbank is the editor-in-chief at BizzMarkBlog. He has spent more than a decade in the trade show industry and he has had his share of lunches with recruiters. You can also find him on Twitter – @JBurbank2019.
