Nurture starts when a lead opts in to receive communication from your organization. This opt in primarily happens when a lead joins your talent network on your career site, but also may happen by meeting with a recruiter at an event or responding to a sourcer's outreach. Effective nurture is the union of valuable content marketing and smart email marketing, and its foundation is really understanding your target candidate personas.
Here are the answers to the questions running through your head right now.
How do I get leads into my talent network?
Optimal placement can capture both passive and active candidates. Candidates engage with your employer brand and visit your career site through different mediums, so your talent network also should be promoted across different channels and on multiple pages of your career site. Inserting a talent network form in the front-end of the apply process provides an option for candidates to opt in if they don't complete the application. In addition, using calls-to-action elsewhere on your career site and content can capture a totally different audience: leads who haven't yet looked at your jobs.
What do I include on the talent network form?
Customized fields can help capture the right data for more informed decisions. You don't need all the information at once. At first, just ask for a few key fields: name, email and job family they are looking into it. Once they opt in, you have time to build on their preferences, their skillsets and their interests: you can send preference emails asking the types of content they want to receive and the types of job positions they are interested in, as well as track what emails they are opening and which links they are clicking on. Glassdoor offers candidates the option to sign up for targeted job alerts whenever there are new positions posted, as well employers the opportunity to sign up for alerts on their job postings and new reviews by candidates.
Who's doing it: Eaton's talent network form captures 1,000 contacts daily, all of which are segmented into 23 core disciplines to build better target pipelines of talent. Based on these core disciplines, the recruiting team can send more relevant messaging and job openings to find the best opportunity for the candidate and the best fit for the organization.
What content do I send to my talent network?
Personalization will drive engagement. The more targeted you can get with the content, messaging and jobs you send talent network leads, the more seamless and valuable it will be for them. First, you have to understand your target personas, as well as what information they might be looking for. Create a candidate messaging plan for the candidate journey. Mapping target personas, the questions they might have in these stages and the best ways to relay that message (a content map or candidate messaging map) is key to your nurture plan.
Who's doing it: CDW uses dozens of customized workflows for each candidate persona to personalize their communication to their talent network. The company uses a combination of employee stories, Thank You messages and recruiter outreach through email as different automated touchpoints. They also utilize their Glassdoor rating (which is very high) both pre- and post-application to better convert leads, as well as maintain talent.
What can I automate?
Automation can help drive conversions to apply. One of the key benefits of a recruitment marketing platform is to help automate nurture. Using automated email reminders or triggers when a candidate takes a certain action can greatly increase conversions without recruiters having to lift a finger. A recruitment marketing platform can send automated emails to remind candidates to finish completing their applications, as well as automatically send targeted job alerts based on candidate's preferences when new job reqs are posted.
