Recruitment marketers who want to make a real difference to the sales and recruiting process of their businesses need to read these recruitment marketing insights.
Recruitment leaders who are looking to generate more from their marketing function can use Lisa's insights to help them drive marketing ROI.
Vanity v Sanity
Recruitment marketing can often stray into "vanity" world. It's never been easier to "spray and pray" with marketing due to automation and AI. The sheer volume of platforms you can use for recruitment marketing, and the communities you can access and attract, can keep even the most well-intended marketer too busy to generate ROI.
But with 69% of online content never even being read, and the vast majority of emails never being responded to, it's never been more important to be targeted with your recruitment marketing and focus on the sanity!
Lisa has done a lot of work with recruiters over the years helping them shape their recruitment marketing strategies, so I made her a rare coffee and asked her 9 questions about recruitment marketing ROI.
9 Questions I Asked Lisa About Recruitment Marketing ROI
1. What is the Function of Recruitment Marketing?
Crucially to attract, engage, convert, and retain your 3Cs – candidates, clients, colleagues.
And to help your sales and recruiting teams turn them into the 4th C – cash!
2. What is the Number 1 Benefit of Recruitment Marketing?
Leads (candidate and client) are key...
But often the expectations of what recruitment marketing can do are too low and KPIs are mistakenly around followers, impressions, blogging… The benefits of recruitment marketing need to be SANE not VANE.
3. How Should You Measure ROI on Recruitment Marketing?
Stick to “sanity stats”: Leads generated. Relevant subscribers signed up. Automation click throughs. Don’t not be fooled by people telling you that it’s difficult to measure ROI in recruitment marketing.
4. What is the Difference Between Outbound and Inbound Recruiting?
It is the difference between the more traditional approaches to marketing (email marketing / events) and digital (social / web). Push and pull!
It’s all about whether you’re interrupting someone’s day with your messages or whether they perceive that they initiate the contact.
The key to successful recruitment marketing, whether it be in or out bound, is that the candidate / client feels that they are the initiator... But actually the marketer has stealthily exposed the candidate's / client’s and drove them to click / call you.
5. Is Recruitment Marketing Only for Large Companies?
All recruitment companies need recruitment marketing.
And every recruiter needs to be a recruitment marketer in some way. (Another blog for another day...)
Recruitment HIIT has some cool hacks to help recruitment consultants market themselves, their brand, and their services, too!
6. What’s the Number 1 Pitfall in Recruitment Marketing?
Too much content, not enough marketing! And too much marketing, not enough sales!
7. What's Your Number 1 Hack for Content in Recruitment Marketing?
69% of content is never even seen, so wasting time creating new content, especially in the current market, is nuts!
Repurpose old content. Repurpose other people's content.
Create blogs out of blogs eg. "3 Insights We Found Online That Every Accountant Needs to Read this Week"
And if you really need to create your own content, ask your recruiters to ask the right questions on their screening and sales calls and then craft insightful blogs to attract and engage your community. eg...
What 's the best tech every teacher uses to create lesson plans?
How do you think AI will affect your job in the next 5 years?
How has your legal firm been affected by WFH?
My Recruitment Training platform, Recruitment HIIT has some cool hacks to try, too!
8. What is the Recruitment Marketer’s Essential Tech Stack?
You can get lost in the tech, but as a starter I'd suggest:
Trello for planning.
Google Analytics for website ROI.
Bullhorn Automation (if you have Bullhorn).
An SEO toolkit like SEMRush/AHRefs to turbo boost content – and Keywords Everywhere is flipping awesome!
Speedy video and image software such as Canva to "stretch" content – remember, “less content, more marketing!”
I mentioned other tech in
My Recruitment Training platform, Recruitment HIIT.
9. How Can Focus Your Time and Attention and Not Stray into Vanity Territory?
Plus, I say to my clients who are looking to hire / get more from marketing and need focused revenue-generating outputs.
“Imagine if your recruitment marketer had only 1 hour a day to make a real difference, what should they do? Then times that by 7 and that’s the job spec”.
Often recruitment marketers spend too long doing things that people have asked them to do that offer no real value to recruitment and sales. Stay focussed on the WIIFMB - what's in it for my business?
Automation Buddy
We are Automation Buddies set on helping ambitious recruitment businesses who want to increase speed and sales.
We coach to inspire amazing automation ROI, and are a safe pair of hands to build your automations so you can recruit and sell more.
READ ABOUT OUR AUTOMATION BUDDY SERVICE
media centre
Read more-
Blog
Automation RoI Webinar Series: Unlock Bullhorn Part 2 ~ Create a Virtuous Circle of Candidates
Recruiters and leaders — ready to do less admin and make more placements?Do you need to be less reliant on LinkedIn and Job Boards, and have a more engaged, valuable database of candidates?Then Part 2 of our "Unlock Bullhorn with Automation" webinar series is for you. We'll fixate on candidate management and engagement.REGISTER NOW💡 Why Candidate Management and Engagement MattersIn our recent Bullhorn Tips Webinar, we asked recruiters about their candidate management strategies.The results?🙈Most recruiters said their CRM was out of date.🙉Even more admitted their candidate engagement was reactive at best.🙊And LinkedIn and job boards still dominate, draining time and budget.AKA vicious cycle. You source externally, internal data gets colder and becomes irrelevant, sourcing becomes slower and costlier. And the cycle repeats.📊 Candidate Management by the Numbers:70%+ of placed candidates already exist in your CRM.It costs 6x more to source a new candidate than to re-engage.Recruiters spend up to 1/3 of their time on admin.Re-engaged candidates are 2x more likely to be placed.Now ask yourself: What if that cycle could be flipped?💥 From Vicious to Virtuous: Using Automation to Flip the Recruitment ScriptInstead, imagine a virtuous circle where:✅ Your CRM is rich with warm, engaged talent.✅ Your pipeline is always ready, without needing a new job ad.✅ Candidates actually reply to your emails.✅ Admin drops, and placements rise.That’s the power of Bullhorn Automation.Join us for this free webinar and learn how to use Bullhorn Automation and smart workflows to build—and sustain—a thriving talent pipeline.This is part of our "Unlock Bullhorn" Automation webinar series.📅 Webinar Highlights🛠️ Real-Life Automation Tips to Drive Recruitment Workflows:Automate outreach to dormant candidates (without sounding robotic).Keep silver medalists engaged for future roles.Trigger real-time updates when candidates change jobs or locations.Build loyalty with consistent communication at every stage of the journey.Drastically reduce sourcing times and costs.💸 Turn Data Health into Data WealthThis Webinar is for you if:You’re tired of LinkedIn / Job Board over-reliance.You want to scale your placements—not your sourcing costs.You want a Bullhorn CRM to be a database and not simply be a data dump.📍 Save Your Spot!When? 21 May 2025: 16:00 BSTREGISTER NOWPS. Want to go even further? Check out our"Unlock Bullhorn with Automation"series.🔍 24 April 2025: Automate sourcing to find qualified candidates faster and with less effort.Watch the recording💬 21 May 2025: Engage with candidates on autopilot and nurture relationships effectively.Register Now📈 Date TBC: Boost lead generation using automation to improve conversion rates.💡 Date TBC: Streamline your recruitment processes for maximum efficiency and profitability.Automation Buddy / Bullhorn RoIWe are Automation Buddies set on helping ambitious recruitment businesses who want to increase speed and sales.We coach to inspire, and build your automations so you can recruit and sell!Plus, through our Bullhorn Vision service we help generate serious ROI from your Bullhorn, data, and people.READ ABOUT OUR AUTOMATION BUDDY SERVICECONTACT US ABOUT BULLHORN ROI
-
Blog
Recruiters! 10 Reasons Why Candidate Engagement is Critical
Recruiters and their leaders who want to spend less time and money sourcing, and more time placing, need to read this blog and think about why they need to create a virtuous circle of talent.On our recent Bullhorn Tips webinar, where we focused on candidate management tips, we asked the attendees about their current candidate management strategy.The results were unsurprising, but also disappointing.They told us that their candidate database was...And that their candidate management strategy was...In other words, not future proof or focussed on creating a robust, easy to deliver pipeline. It's mainly focussed on live, active candidates who are imminently placeable... and Linkedin / Job Boards continue to win at the expense of the recruiter and their profits.Recruitment Data Wealth💵💶💷If we've learned anything (at least since 2008) we need a clean, warm databases to see us through easy and tough times.We need engaged, loyal, happy candidates who are easy to find, happy to recommend, refer, and show up!Some recruiters call this "Data Health" - I call it "Data Wealth".I've seen a lot of tech and data hitting the recruitment market, but still do not see enough process improvements to capitalise on it. We just keep buying more, rather than exploring how we actually need less, but need to work it better.It's Time to Move from Vicious to Virtuous!Recruiters still waste crazy amounts of time sourcing and advertising, but not enough time engaging and managing.And ironically, by not engaging, and letting hot data cool off, the industry creates silos of "cold" data. Hence sourcing is key and reliance on external systems is high, costs increase, placements take longer... Vicious cycle!What if, though, we take a moment? Let the stats below sink in, and engage with our systems and data in a proactive way. Could recruiters create a virtuous circle of engaged candidates staying loyal and placeable, meaning less need for job adverts, Linkedin, sourcing, and insanity?Yes!🔢Candidate Management Stats Every Recruiter Should Know78% of placed candidates are already in your CRM. – Yet many recruiters go straight to LinkedIn or job boards before checking their own database.Only 30% of CRM records are typically up to date. – That means 70% of your candidate data might be incomplete, inaccurate, or out of date.60% of recruiters admit to rarely revisiting past candidates. – This leads to missed opportunities and duplicated effort.It costs 6x more to source a new candidate than to re-engage an existing one. – Save budget and time by starting with your CRM.43% of recruiters say poor data quality negatively impacts their ability to place quickly. – Dirty data slows down sourcing, shortlisting, and matching.48% of candidates who apply to a role never hear back. – Proper candidate management helps ensure consistent communication and better candidate experience.80% of candidates say they’d reapply to a company with a good hiring experience. – Engagement doesn’t stop at “not selected”—it builds your future pipeline.Recruiters spend up to 1/3 of their time on admin. – Automation and smart candidate management free up time for relationship-building and placements.Re-engaged candidates are 2x more likely to be placed than cold-sourced ones. – Prior placements and silver medalists are often your hottest leads.Companies that nurture candidates improve quality of hire by 20%. – Keeping in touch with passive talent builds a stronger, more prepared pipeline.The stats above are from a variety of sources, including IBM, TalentBoard, Bullhorn, and LinkedIn.Even just one of the stats above should be enough to make you stop and think "how can I create a virtuous circle of happy, engaged, and placed candidates?"💻Watch our Bullhorn Tips Webinar and use Bullhorn to manage and engage your candidates.Click to WatchRecruitment and Bullhorn TrainingWe deliver the best live Bullhorn ROI webinar training, and you'll find other tips and tricks in Recruitment HIIT, our online recruitment training platform.Plus, through our Bullhorn Vision service we help generate serious ROI from your Bullhorn, data, and people.TRY HIIT FREE HERECONTACT US ABOUT BULLHORN ROI
-
Downloads
Your Recruitment Training Playbook