Despite the economic challenges faced today, one certainty remains - candidates are highly sought after and have significant control over their career choices.
To navigate the competitive market and provide an outstanding candidate experience, leading staffing firms are adopting marketing automation techniques to effectively connect with candidates, enhance their brand image, boost their Net Promoter Scores (NPS), and accelerate time-to-fill.
Today, there are several point solutions available for automating texting, emails, and chatbots for staffing firms. But consolidating data from all these one-off staffing solutions and ensuring it’s in sync with your candidate database is crucial. Instead of adding more point solutions to your recruiting tech stack, consolidating them will empower your staffing companies to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and improve data accuracy. That’s where marketing automation comes in.
Marketing automation, in the context of staffing, is a technology that enables staffing firms to automate and streamline repetitive tasks, such as email and texting campaigns and follow-ups, using pre-built workflows and triggers. By implementing marketing automation tools, recruiters can send timely and personalized messages to candidates, schedule interviews, and track their progress through the recruitment funnel. This saves time, increases efficiency, and ultimately helps staffing firms hire the best candidates faster.
With marketing automation, staffing firms can create targeted campaigns to attract candidates with specific skills, qualifications, and experience. They can also segment candidates based on their interests and engagement levels and send them relevant content to keep them engaged and interested in the job opportunity.
Let’s look at 5 ways marketing automation can help staffing firms stay ahead of the curve.
The current market is highly unpredictable. The recent January jobs report is a prime example, revealing the creation of over 500,000 new jobs and reducing the unemployment rate to levels not seen in decades. However, in the tech sector, there are ongoing reports of layoffs and downsizing, creating a unique contrast.
Let’s face it - layoffs have caused fear and concern. Swiftly providing feedback to candidates is crucial, as they expect recruiters to respond promptly. Staffing leaders are leveraging marketing automation to provide timely and consistent communication with candidates.
Take chatbots, for example. AI-powered chatbots enable staffing firms to provide 24/7 support to candidates, answer frequently asked questions, and help them through the application process. By using chatbots, staffing firms can provide instant support and save time for their recruiters while providing candidates with instant human-like responses.
Candidates expect quick and personalized communication. Here are a few ways marketing automation can help your staffing firm deliver on that promise:
With marketing automation, staffing firms can create email templates, pre-built workflows, and triggers to automate their outreach efforts. This allows recruiters to quickly and easily send tailored messages to candidates at scale, saving time and increasing efficiency.
Recruiters can set up automated triggers to send follow-up messages, interview reminders, and other important updates. Marketing automation also enables staffing firms to send personalized messages and emails based on the candidate’s interests and engagement levels.
I cannot stress this enough - providing a great talent experience is no longer optional. Staffing companies that are intentional about great talent experience stand out against the competition. Here is how to deliver exceptional candidate experience throughout the talent lifecycle using marketing automation:
Attraction: Deploy automation to create targeted and personalized text campaigns and email campaigns to attract the right candidates.
Application: Leverage automation to create a simple and user-friendly application process, reduce application time, and provide real-time feedback on their application status.
Screening: Use AI-powered chatbots to set up pre-screening questionnaires and AI-powered resume screening tools to quickly identify top candidates.
Interview and selection: Use interview automation to set up online interview scheduling, provide personalized interview preparation content, and send real-time reminders and feedback.
Onboarding: Use automation to create a personalized onboarding experience, such as providing relevant content, an online welcome kit, and a virtual tour of the company.
Particularly in tough economies, staffing companies should maximize the value of their existing database and create reactivation campaigns to re-engage with this known talent pool. With a powerful talent engagement platform like Sense (which integrates with most ATS solutions), you can connect qualified candidates in your database to open roles through Search and Match AI. This includes silver medalists (candidates who were great but didn’t land the offer), candidates who didn’t accept offers, or on-assignment candidates to prepare them for their next opportunity. Database reactivation reduces job board spending and turns your existing database into a talent goldmine.
Marketing automation provides insightful data about your recruiting campaigns. Be sure to check metrics such as open rates and click-through rates on your texting and email campaigns. Run automated NPS surveys and correlate NPS data with the engagement and response data to uncover insights that annual surveys miss. By analyzing these metrics, staffing firms can identify areas for improvement and optimize their recruitment campaigns for better results.
By using marketing automation to streamline their recruitment processes, provide personalized communication, and measure the success of their campaigns, staffing firms can differentiate themselves from competitors and become the go-to choice for top talent in their industries.
Want to know more about how staffing firms are winning with marketing automation? Uncover advice from staffing leaders at Insight Global, Prolink Staffing, and CoreMedical Group and learn real-world use cases of marketing automation. Watch the webinar recording here!
