How to Know When Your Recruitment Marketing Needs an Overhaul

So your small business is now growing, getting closer and closer to the mid-size business status, which let’s face it, nobody really calls it that. You’re either an SMB or you’re an enterprise. But that’s not very accurate, is it? The demands of a small business are greatly different than those of a mid-size business, but nobody really differentiates that, which is frustrating.

Perhaps one of the biggest areas of change with business growth is in recruitment marketing, which is a relatively new concept in and of itself. Small businesses don’t usually have the means or choose not to spend a chunk of the budget on recruitment marketing and why should they?

They typically only employ anywhere from a few to 100 employees and many small companies, if they hope to grow, are so vulnerable in these early stages of growth, they’re going to focus their budget on building a secure foundation for growth and marketing their brand for business development.

Here at Red Branch Media, candidates are sourced a few ways: through local university career boards, employee referrals and relationships with local universities. As a fast-paced, B2B marketing agency with fewer than 20 employees, having an elaborate recruitment marketing plan is not our first priority. In fact, it would be wasteful to dedicate too much resources to it because over 50% of our staff has been with Red Branch since its inception.

But as we grow, and as small businesses get larger and expand their employee base, there will be different recruitment issues to tackle. Recruitment may take longer and we may encounter more hurdles. And as we look around, we don’t see a lot of resources for THOSE people. We don’t see surveys trying to figure out what mid-size recruitment looks like. In between the massive enterprises and the tiny agencies lies a huge swatch of recruitment marketing ideas that simply aren’t being showcased!

When a company goes beyond a few hundred employees and inches towards mid-size business, things start to change at an increasing pace, new departments are created, the client list is growing, it’s time to buy the fancy expensive technology and like a snowball effect, the need for a structured and effective recruitment marketing strategy is suddenly prevalent.

At some point, even a company with the best business strategies is going to need to recruit more employees to help their business grow, and not just any employees, but the right ones. That’s where recruitment marketing becomes the priority.

That means dedicating more resources to content marketing, email nurturing, social recruiting, mobile recruiting, career site, SEO, employee referrals, talent networks, job marketing, employer branding, recruiting events, recruiting analytics, and maybe I’ve left a thing or two out, but you get the point! Recruitment marketing is a huge piece of your current and future workforce.

But how does a company know when the time has come to step up their game? That’s the million dollar question. Here are a few things companies will have to ask themselves as they get closer and closer to enterprise status:

• How confident are you that your organization’s employer brand is effectively translated through its current recruitment marketing efforts?

• As hiring demands increase, what is your organization’s most limited recruitment resource?

• What is your organization’s biggest recruitment challenge?

These questions have been pulled from an upcoming research opportunity that seeks to understand what the “sweet spot” for growing mid-size companies is when it comes to recruitment marketing. This segment of the B2B market is difficult to plan for and navigate simply because it’s right smack dab in the middle of it all. It’s time for that to change! Help us understand what it is that mid-size companies truly struggle within recruitment marketing as they continue to grow.

Maren Hogan

Maren Hogan is CEO of Red Branch and general Bad@$$

Maren Hogan is a seasoned marketer and community builder in the HR and Recruiting industry. Maren started Red Branch Media and, before she hired all the smiling faces you see below, she ran it on her own. In marketing for over 15 years, she has deep experience in strategic campaigns and a long-term, results-based operational approach.