How a Marketing Company Approaches Its Own Recruitment Marketing

This article is for people who feel they have a problem with recruitment, and it sets out how we at NowVillage, a marketing company, go about recruitment marketing.

NowVillage was founded in 2020 and is still a young company, but because our business is marketing consultancy we have focused from the start on recruitment marketing, bringing marketing thinking into hiring.

On recruitment marketing you can find plenty on the theory and the thinking, but little that helps with “so how do we actually do it? What would it look like for us?”, which makes it hard to picture.

This article is written to give you a concrete picture, in enough detail that you can apply it in your own company.

We hope you find the following useful.

※ If you want to start with what recruitment marketing is, see the following as well.
Related article:
[With examples] Start recruitment marketing today: what it actually involves

1. Results

After running the work described below,

comparing March 2023, before it, with April 2023, after it, we got the following results.

Hires agreed: 0 ⇒ 4
Applications: 2.14x
Share matching the hiring persona*: 28% ⇒ 46%
* People with experience as a marketer, designer or engineer

The detail of what we did follows.

2. The work as a whole

The diagram below sets out the work as a whole.

We defined the steps needed in recruitment marketing as

STEP 1: product strength
STEP 2: expression
STEP 3: promotion
STEP 4: analysis

and prepared them starting from STEP 1.

Product strength = how appealing the company itself is

Expression = in what form you put out the information the company holds

Promotion = how you get that information to users

Analysis = what information actual applicants are drawn to

. The detail of each step follows.

Two points here.

① Build them up in this order: product strength ⇒ expression ⇒ promotion ⇒ analysis
② Put varied expression in front of people through varied channels

2.1 Build them up in this order: product strength ⇒ expression ⇒ promotion ⇒ analysis

In marketing people often say it matters to improve the product and the landing page before you run ads.

Running ads costs money, so the idea is to improve the product and the landing page, raise the chance of purchase, and spend when the return on investment is as good as it can be. People put it as: raise your batting average before you step up to the plate.

The same thinking applies to hiring.

The first choice tends to be the costly work, job adverts and recruitment agencies, that is, strengthening promotion. Before that,

it matters to improve product strength and expression with a medium to long-term view.

Work on product strength and expression does not turn into numbers straight away, so management has to treat it as an investment.

With hiring staying as hard as it is, we think the quality of that approach, one that sets return on investment aside for a moment, is what decides whether you hire effectively.

2.2 Put varied expression in front of people through varied channels

The ways people gather information have become more varied.

There is variety in the form, some prefer text and some prefer video, and

variety in where they look: job adverts, aggregation sites, social media.

You, reading this, probably also have

• ・a wish to skim it as text

• ・a wish to take it in visually from a deck

• ・a wish to gather it all at once from a video

and so on: a preferred form that depends on the kind of information.

You probably also have a preferred place to look: Google, Yahoo!, social media.

To match that, hiring too needs more varied ways of getting your information across.

That is,

For variety of form: the employer expresses its information in various ways, writing, decks and video, to create deeper contact with more people.

For variety of channel: appearing in more channels creates contact with more people.

That is what matters.

3. Product strength

From here we go through each step.

On product strength, what matters is building features of your company that job seekers find appealing.

For NowVillage we took training content to be the appealing point, and have built 500 hours of internal training content.

As said above, if this is not appealing then the return gets worse however much you spend, so polishing what makes your company appealing matters most of all

We are a digital marketing consultancy, so the people who can contribute from day one are those with experience in marketing or consultancy.

But hiring people with that experience is not easy in the current market.

So, for those with only a little experience, or none but similar work behind them, we judged the appeal to be that you can pick up marketing skills from scratch, and so“500 hours of training content”was what we led with.

Our consultancy business is labour-intensive, and the number of skilled staff feeds straight into revenue. Internal training, which we had focused on for that reason, also turned out to help with hiring, so we put the information in order and made a point of showing it outwards.

For what the training content actually covers, see the extract from our recruitment pitch deck below.

4. Expression

On expression, as said above, what matters is expressing your product strength in varied forms: text, decks, video.

We did the following.

5. Promotion

On promotion, the focus is how to get the various expressions of your product strength to users.

We did the following.

From here we cover how to make use of recruitment agencies, which most companies will already be using. Because so many use them, this should be easy to apply in your own company.

There are two main things we did.

① Shared with the agency’s account manager a text setting out our company in detail
② Put information about our company into the messages announcing the outcome at each stage of the process

5.1 Shared with the agency’s account manager a text setting out our company in detail

• ・So that the agency’s career advisers can describe our vacancy attractively

• ・So that job seekers read about us beforehand, raising engagement before the process starts

Those are the aims of this work.

Here is the actual text.

XXX Agent Co., Ltd.
Dear ○○,

Hello, this is ○○ at NowVillage.
Thank you for your work on our hiring.
When your career advisers present our vacancy,
there are two things we would like you to pass on to candidates as appropriate.

① Detailed material about us
② A questionnaire before the first interview

★ ① Detailed material about us ★
I am Imamura, representative director of NowVillage Inc.
Thank you for your interest in our recruitment process.
To understand us, we would be glad if you looked at the six links below.

① Recruitment deck and a video from the CEO
　https://now-village.jp/recruit
　➡ An overview of NowVillage, the training structure and how we work.
② Interview videos with each member of staff
　https://now-village.jp/recruit/member
　➡ Each person’s background, character and thinking, on video.
③ The founding story, staff conversations and more (Wantedly)
　https://www.wantedly.com/companies/company_3274913
　➡ Each person’s background and character, in writing.
④ The radio show our CEO Imamura appears on, #DejimaSensei
　https://reclive.jp/stream/program/digma
　➡ The digital marketing skills we work with, in radio form.
⑤ CEO Imamura’s social accounts
　Facebook：https://www.facebook.com/kuniyuki.imamura/
　Twitter：https://twitter.com/Kuniyuki119
　➡ His character and his thinking.
⑥ NowVillage press releases
　https://prtimes.jp/main/html/searchrlp/company_id/74438
　➡ The big news so far.

We want you to see us as we are, so we made the above in PowerPoint, photographs and video. What is distinctive about us, and other highlights, are set out below.

[What is distinctive about NowVillage]
◎ A start-up in its third year, growing fast in both revenue and headcount
◎ Core business: consultancy, management and in-housing support in digital marketing
◎ Beyond the core business, plenty of build work too, including websites
◎ More than 150 companies supported to date and more than 300 projects
◎ Now in its second phase as a company, looking for ambitious digital marketers
◎ Open relationships and a culture where there is always laughter
◎ We play when it is time to play and concentrate when it is time to concentrate (the 2022 company trip was to Guam)
◎ Several staff have families; you can balance work with life outside it

[NowVillage’s track record]
・Appointed visiting professor at iU, the Professional University of Information and Management for Innovation
・Appointed part-time lecturer in digital marketing at the graduate school of Tokyo Medical and Dental University
・Appointed business leader lecturer on the Human Biology degree at the University of Tsukuba
・Took part in DEJIMACHI.ZAO, a regional revitalisation project in Zao, Miyagi Prefecture, commissioned by the prefecture

If, having looked, you think “I’d like to hear more” or “I’d like to apply”, please contact your agent.
Thank you again for considering us.

NowVillage, Inc.
Representative Director
Kuniyuki Imamura

★ End ★

We would be grateful if you passed the above to candidates by LINE or email.
Even if your career advisers do not know our vacancy in depth,
we expect that simply passing the above to candidates will raise the application rate.

★ ② A questionnaire before the first interview ★
Please ask candidates to complete the form below before the first interview.
It takes about three to five minutes.
https://bit.ly/3P3WD9k

We would be grateful if you shared those two things with candidates.
Thank you for your continued help.

Our CEO used to run a recruitment agency himself, so we know agency operations inside out.

Broadly, information travels inside an agency like this.

(1) The account manager (RA) takes a brief

(2) A job description is written from that brief

(3) The job description is passed to career advisers (CAs) at the morning meeting or over chat

(4) CAs present the vacancy to job seekers using the chat and the job description

It differs from agency to agency, of course, but

as it moves (1) ⇒ (2) ⇒ (3) ⇒ (4), each relay adds another act of interpretation, and both the quality and the quantity of the information tend to fall.

So what the career adviser actually tells the job seeker may be thin, when far better information could have been passed on.

To stop that, hand over rich information in writing yourself, and help it travel smoothly inside the agency.

For many companies, the only information about them that reaches job seekers is a job description written from the account manager’s brief. Use our text above as a model, hand over whatever extra information you can, and set it up so that it reaches the career advisers too.

5.2 Put information about your company into the messages announcing the outcome at each stage of the process

Even if you share all that in advance, the account manager may not pass it on, and the information does not get through.

Here is what to do about it.

At each stage, the paper sift, the first interview, the final interview, there is a moment when you tell the agency the outcome. We recommend putting information about your company into every one of those messages.

Here is the actual text.

Dear ●●,

Hello.
This is ○○, hiring at NowVillage Inc.

Thank you for introducing △△.
They have passed the paper sift.
We would like them to go on to the first interview,
so let us set out the details now.

■ Date and time of the first interview
Could you pick a convenient slot from the following?
The interview runs for up to 60 minutes.

13 April (Wed) 10:00-11:00
14 April (Thu) 10:00-11:00
15 April (Fri) 13:00-14:00

If none of these work, do say.
We will arrange other dates.

■ How the first interview is held
It is held as an online meeting.
Once the date is fixed we will send the link.

■ What we would like shared with the candidate before the interview
We want them to know NowVillage well, so that
the match is a good one, with no mismatch on either side.
We have put what the interview alone cannot convey into a deck and videos,
and would be grateful if you shared them.

① Recruitment deck and a video from the CEO
　https://now-village.jp/recruit
　➡ An overview of NowVillage, the training structure and how we work.
② Interview videos with each member of staff
　https://now-village.jp/recruit/member
　➡ Each person’s background, character and thinking, on video.
③ The founding story, staff conversations and more (Wantedly)
　https://www.wantedly.com/companies/company_3274913
　➡ Each person’s background and character, in writing.
④ The radio show our CEO Imamura appears on, #DejimaSensei
　https://reclive.jp/stream/program/digma
　➡ The digital marketing skills we work with, in radio form.
⑤ CEO Imamura’s social accounts
　Facebook：https://www.facebook.com/kuniyuki.imamura/
　Twitter：https://twitter.com/Kuniyuki119
　➡ His character and his thinking.
⑥ NowVillage press releases
　https://prtimes.jp/main/html/searchrlp/company_id/74438
　➡ The big news so far.

What is distinctive about us, and other highlights, are set out below.

[What is distinctive about NowVillage]
◎ A start-up in its second year, growing fast in both revenue and headcount
◎ Core business: consultancy, management and in-housing support in digital marketing
◎ Beyond the core business, plenty of build work too, including websites
◎ More than 150 companies supported to date and more than 300 projects
◎ Now in its second phase as a company, looking for ambitious digital marketers
◎ Open relationships and a culture where there is always laughter
◎ We play when it is time to play and concentrate when it is time to concentrate (the 2022 company trip was to Guam)
◎ Several staff have families; you can balance work with life outside it

[NowVillage’s track record]
・Appointed visiting professor at iU, the Professional University of Information and Management for Innovation
・Appointed part-time lecturer in digital marketing at the graduate school of Tokyo Medical and Dental University
・Appointed business leader lecturer on the Human Biology degree at the University of Tsukuba
・Took part in DEJIMACHI.ZAO, a regional revitalisation project in Zao, Miyagi Prefecture, commissioned by the prefecture

◆ Questionnaire before the first interview ◆
If they have not completed it yet, please ask them to do so before the first interview.
It takes about three to five minutes.
https://bit.ly/3P3WD9k
～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～～
If anything is unclear, do get in touch.
Thank you for your continued help.

Sending this text again at each stage gets as much information through to the job seeker as possible.

With the wording changed, the same method works for direct applications that do not go through an agency. Telling job seekers again and again to take a look gets the information across, and raises engagement at interview and when they accept an offer.

6. Analysis

Last comes analysis.

As touched on under sharing with recruitment agencies above, we ask job seekers to complete a questionnaire before the process starts.

Here is the questionnaire we use.

https://bit.ly/3P3WD9k

From it we learn

・Which information about us job seekers have looked at beforehand

・What in our recruitment content interests them

is something you can learn.

Here are a few sample answers to the question, “Tell us which platform and which content you found most interesting among those you looked at”.

The Wantedly interview with a female member of staff helped me picture myself actually working there.

The blog post on the website, “A thorough guide to the theory behind successful B2B marketing”, helped me understand how marketing works.

In the FIND Inc. case study, the use of web marketing and of the company’s own media was useful from the point of view of consulting and of cutting costs.

In the Wantedly piece “What is training like at NowVillage? Can you become a marketer with no experience? [CEO and staff in conversation]”, psychological safety and the health of the organisation were raised, which gave me the sense that quality of work alone is not the priority: the quality of the working environment matters too, and people there respect one another.

We use answers like these to analyse what is landing.

One example of an improvement that came out of the analysis:

The survey showed that interviews and conversations with female members of staff drew the most interest, so we have added more content featuring them.

7. In closing

We hope that was useful.

Here is a summary of this article.

• Strengthen in this order: the product ⇒ how you express it ⇒ how you promote it ⇒ analysis
• Put varied expressions in front of people across varied channels
• With recruitment agencies, communicate so that your information also reaches the career advisers and job seekers beyond your account contact
• At NowVillage the result was 2.14 times as many applications, the share matching the target persona rising from 28% ⇒ 46%, and four hires

We support recruitment marketing as well.

If you are interested, do get in touch from the link below.

We hope this article is useful for your recruitment.

Thank you for reading to the end.

NowVillage’s recruitment page isclick here

Related article:
[With examples] Start recruitment marketing today: what it actually involves