How to do Recruitment Marketing during a Pandemic

Today, during the Brainfood Marathon livestream,  I listened to a very insightful talk by Fanny Comba, employer branding strategist and Founder @ Comba Consulting about recruitment marketing and how companies should handle the covid situation. This post is a summary of all of the main points that she talked about. You can view the full webinar here.

Here are the main topic points:

1. Should I do recruitment marketing during the corona crisis?
2. I have budget cuts on my recruitment budget, now what?
3. Is employer branding really a priority when we have so many other things to handle?
4. 12 tips for HR for crisis communication

Speaker

Fanny Comba (right) - employer branding strategist and Founder @ Comba Consulting

Should I do recruitment marketing during the corona crisis?

Follow the flowchart below to find out.

In all likelihood, you will will land on You need a recruitment marketing or employer branding strategy.

The way that your company acts and communicates in this time of crisis is indicative of your ethics, values, and purpose.

I have budget cuts on my recruitment budget, now what?

There are lots of ways you can change your campaigns to still be successful, even with a reduced budget. Fanny breaks it down into 5 different categories:

Employer branding

Rethink your employee value proposition. What are your employees thinking & feeling? How has Covid-19 changed it?

Inbound recruiting

Adapt to the context of Covid-19. Change your materials from people shaking hands and meeting in person to activities that are more relevant with the current context.  

Targeting candidates

Review all of your current campaigns, see if some of them are irrelevant or could be tweaked to hit your target candidates better. One of the big ways you can save money is by improved targeting.

Social media recruiting

Prioritize on whichever channels have been most beneficial to you. Stop automated messages and programmed posts, review & tweak them. Be as authentic and as relevant as you can.

Candidate engagement & experience

Be transparent with your applicants and let them know whats happening. If you have hiring freezes, let them know. If you don't, let them know that too!

Is employer branding really a priority when we have so many other things to handle?

You should double check what your employer branding is focused on. It should be focused on most of the things in the below list.

• employee & candidate experience
• values and culture
• products/brand
• benefits
• working environment (even in Home office!)
• salary and compensation
• unique value props

Is your branding focused on these things? If so, it is likely that employer branding should still be a priority for you.

However, you should re-evaluate all of your current campaigns and recontextualize them for the current situation.

To improve your branding, ask a few questions.

• What do your employees tell their friends that they like about working at your place?
• Why do candidates decide to hit the apply button?
• What are all the things that make you unique as an employer? Have you shared them?
• Why do people stay at your company?
• Why are you proud to be part of your company?

Use all of this info to improve your campaigns.

12 tips for HR for crisis communication

• Align with management, corporate communications, branding, sales.
• Communicate internally before externally
• Become an employee ambassador
• Communicate regularly
• Review any current job campaigns (tone, style, etc)
• Use more of a human touch
• Create messages that are transparent, simple, and empathetic.
• Create valuable content and news updates.
• Do interviews & surveys with your employees and candidates to understand how they are adapting
• Develop an FAQ page on your career page to share updates with candidates
• Tell the story of what your company is doing for employees via social media
• Monitor online review sites and reply directly to comments or feedback with transparent updates on what your organization is doing

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