Inbound Recruiting and How to Attract Top Talent

Inbound recruiting applies marketing principles to human resources. Instead of contacting potential candidates directly (outbound), you attract them to your organization through various actions.

What is Inbound Recruiting?

Inbound recruitment is a recruitment technique or methodology that seeks to arouse the interest of candidates in joining the company, by presenting an interesting, attractive and different scenario for candidates.

This means shortening process time and improving efficiency.

This method prioritizes the search for the most suitable talent for a vacancy.

It uses specialized media where candidates who want to be part of the company are located, usually digital: a study conducted by PageGroup in 2023 showed that 44% of Mexicans find jobs on social networks.

In addition, the objective is to be able to seduce the candidate, in order to capture their attention (even if they are not looking for a job), which means creating a solid employer brand image that is carefully worked on by the human resources department.

Differences with Traditional Recruiting

The arrival of inbound recruitment has changed the focus of traditional recruitment methodologies, such as outbound recruitment. Here are some important differences:

• Proactive vs reactive approach: Inbound recruiting focuses on proactively generating useful and engaging content to attract potential candidates, while outbound recruiting involves actively seeking candidates to fill vacancies, which includes posting job ads and consulting databases.
• Focus on the person rather than the business: While outbound recruiting tends to put the business at the center, inbound recruiting places the person at the center and the recruiting experience is designed to meet the interests and needs of candidates.
• Medium/long term vs short term: Inbound recruiting seeks to establish medium and long-term relationships based on high work commitment, while outbound recruiting, whose objective is to fill vacancies quickly, does not necessarily focus on generating links in the medium and long term.
• The focus on communication: While inbound recruiting uses social networks with different strategies, its own job pages, referral programs, email personalization and the use of audiovisual resources in a close manner, for example, outbound recruiting mainly uses job portals and ad boards.
• Employer brand positioning: One of the main goals of inbound recruitment is to make the company appear as an attractive place to work; on the other hand, the outbound method may simply echo the overall reputation of the company in the market.

Why Inbound Recruiting Is Important:

• Proactive talent acquisition: Instead of waiting for a position to become available, build continuously a talent pool.
• Candidates Committed to the Brand: Attracts candidates who are committed to the brand.
• Diversification of Candidates: Attracts candidates from different fields, thus broadening the focus.
• Competitive advantage: In today's job market, the battle is being fought for the best talent. A proactive approach helps you stay ahead of the curve.
• Long-term commitment: Cultivate a pipeline of interested candidates who can be engaged and converted when the need arises.
• Positive Candidate Experience: Compared to traditional methodologies.
• Improving the Corporate Image: Candidates have businesses.
• Recruiting Process Success Rate: Increase the success rate of the recruitment process.

1. Recruiting on jobboards

Job boards are a fundamental tool for inbound recruitment. By posting detailed and engaging job offers on platforms like LinkedIn, Indeed, and specialized sites, you can attract a large number of candidates. Make sure your ads are well-written, clearly outlining the responsibilities, requirements, and benefits of the job to attract the right candidates.

It is also essential to give as much context as possible about the company's culture, benefits, rituals and to incorporate interviews or articles.

2. Building a solid ATS

Unlike traditional methods where you recruit for a specific position when needed, creating an ATS (Applicant Tracking System) allows you to maintain a pool of potential candidates. This proactive approach ensures that you always have a list of qualified candidates ready, thus significantly speeding up the recruitment process when a new position opens up.

Advantages of an ATS:

• Speed: When a vacancy occurs, you can quickly find suitable candidates in your database.
• Profitability: Reduces the need for frequent job postings and lengthy interview processes
• Quality: Allows rare skills to be identified and cultivated over time, ensuring a perfect fit.
• Compatibility: Reduces the risk of incompatibilities between the new employee and the position

Here are the top 10 ATS on the recruitment market.

3. Attracting potential candidates

Building a solid resume database starts with attracting potential candidates. This goes beyond simply posting job ads; it's about establishing a strong employer brand that inspires candidates to engage with your business. Here's how to do it:

• Improve your employer brand image: Candidates often assess a company's reputation, work environment, employee reviews, and average salaries before applying. A strong employer brand can significantly increase your attractiveness.
• Ongoing commitment: Use job postings not only to fill immediate vacancies, but also to attract ongoing interest. Even if there are no current vacancies, a compelling employer brand can encourage candidates to express interest in future opportunities.

Steps in an Inbound Recruiting Strategy

There are 4 phases or steps in an inbound recruitment strategy, take note:

Attract

This step aims to attract traffic to your job page and the job offers you have; and, clearly, quality traffic made up of your target candidates, because that's where the effort is concentrated.

It is recommended that you generate content that provides value and clearly shows what it means to work in your company and thus attract the attention of the candidates you are looking for.

This can be done through the company page or the job page, social networks, external channels and more.

Convert

If the right candidates have found you, it is time to turn this into a conversion, for example, that they apply for one of your offers through the digital tools that you consider most appropriate, such as an attractive and clear digital job offer, forms, the use of responsive mobile tools, etc.

Hire

You already have the candidates, some have applied and it is time to recruit. At this stage, the selection process comes to a close and you reach those who will ultimately work in the organization.

This must be achieved with rapid application management and constant and personalized communication.

Have an IT platform for recruitment such as Talent Relationship Management, automated emails to respond, a review of the database that already contains talents, and an analysis of the information and results of the recruitment process.

Get involved

It is not the final step in the process, but rather an element that must be present at each stage of the process and take into account that all candidates (whether they are finally hired or not) can be excellent promoters of your business.

You can achieve this by constantly taking care of the candidate experience, by having a referral program for current employees to recommend candidates, by conducting surveys to find out what employees at your company and those who participated in company selection processes think of your company, for example.

Also, consider conducting an ongoing analysis of the inbound recruitment strategy to detect potential failures, find successes and thus adjust the talent recruitment strategy based on the results.

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