May 12, 2022
With steep competition for talent and an increased amount of noise about open roles, today’s talent acquisition teams can’t just sit back and let candidates come to them. They need to be advocates, and even promoters, of their employer brand and what their company offers. In fact, in a recent survey, 86% of HR professionals indicated that recruitment is becoming more like marketing. The role of marketing, in a general sense, is to build more awareness and increase consideration about a company. But what does increasing awareness and knowledge about a company look like, from a hiring standpoint?
Below, we take a look at the challenges Foursquare faced in keeping up with larger, more well-known companies for talent, and how automated recruiting technology helped them overcome these challenges to expand awareness with candidates in a targeted way.
Many are familiar with Foursquare as a social check-in app, but today it is the leading location data and technology company, providing products and services to leading brands like Apple, Airbnb, and many more. Foursquare competes with more well-known brands like Google and Spotify for talent, and LinkedIn alone wasn’t providing enough opportunities to reach candidates, especially for hard-to-fill and senior roles. Cliff Jadoo, Foursquare’s Director of Engineering & Product Recruitment, wanted to increase brand awareness and add more diverse candidates to his long-term pipeline. To do so, he realized a need to go beyond manually sourcing through LinkedIn Recruiter, without adding hours to already busy days.
“When I email candidates, I sometimes get responses like ‘I had no idea that Foursquare did X, Y, and Z,’” said Jadoo.
Jadoo was recommended to Fetcher by a colleague, and he was initially intrigued by Fetcher’s automated sourcing combined with humans-in-the-loop. Fetcher’s team of trained sourcers work with the platform’s algorithm to guide and verify his search results. Diversifying the top-of-funnel was also a top priority, and Fetcher provides the ability to add multiple diversity variables within a search. Getting started with Fetcher in early 2021 was simple.
“A product should be able to be used without watching a one-hour tutorial, which was true for Fetcher. You can just intuitively understand the workflow,” added Jadoo.
Now using Fetcher, Jadoo quickly scans through the batches of candidates auto-sourced by Fetcher, and provides feedback in the form of a thumbs up or thumbs down. That means he can reach out faster to candidates he wants to talk to and get Foursquare in front of them sooner.
“Just being able to do that initial outreach, even if that candidate isn’t interested, they will at least have Foursquare in their mind,“ added Jadoo.
Jadoo has a unique approach to measuring the ROI of Fetcher. Rather than looking at the number of offers made or accepted, increasing brand equity is a key indicator of success for him. Fetcher has allowed Jadoo to multiply his sourcing efforts and increase diversity at the top of Foursquare’s funnel. That means more people are in Foursquare’s talent pipeline and can be strategically contacted through email, LinkedIn, and networking events.
“Sales outreach and recruiting outreach share a philosophy. Sales tools are selling a product, whether it’s tangible or intangible. With recruiting tools like Fetcher, they’re helping you sell a company, at the end of the day.”
Jadoo has found that at least six to eight touchpoints are needed to convert a candidate. With the competition for tech talent at an all-time high, Fetcher is enabling Foursquare to maximize its brand awareness and compete with much larger companies.
Download the full Foursquare case study to learn more.
How can you ensure the right candidates know that you’re hiring and understand what your company offers? Check out the strategies below for reaching and resonating with more candidates.
As Foursquare experienced, increasing outreach to passive candidates can help you quickly spread awareness for open roles. Even if a candidate isn’t ready to make a switch quite yet, at least your company is on their radar. With an effective outreach strategy, you’ll make passive candidates feel noticed, and leave a lasting (positive) impression.
Promoting the contributions of current team members is an authentic way to build employer brand awareness. Share employee stories in emails, and from your brand’s social accounts. You can also encourage individual team members to do the same. Encouraging employee advocacy allows you to expand awareness to your team’s networks in an organic way. And employee voices are three times more credible than a CEO’s when it comes to the reality of working at a company.
LinkedIn is the obvious place to garner more attention for your open roles, but consider where else potential candidates might be active. For instance, if you are hiring for marketing roles, investigate which Slack workspaces, Facebook groups, or other forums are popular with marketers. These are places where hiring managers can build a presence, engage with a community of talent, and share open roles.
Learn more ways to compete with large organizations for talent from business leaders and HR experts.
Ready to get in front of more candidates, faster? Reach out to us to schedule your demo of Fetcher today.
Check out our other blog posts for more talent acquisition tips and insights into recruiting trends.
At Fetcher, our mission is to introduce companies to the people who will help them change the world. Our full-service, recruiting automation platform automates those repetitive, top-of-funnel tasks, so you can focus more on candidate engagement & team collaboration. Simplify Sourcing. Optimize Outreach. Hire Top Talent. Learn more at fetcher.ai.
Recruiting Strategies, Workplace Trends