Marketing Automation Tools for Attracting Candidates in Staffing

The staffing industry is a field that continues to see steady demand as a strong answer to companies’ labour shortages.
Demand in specialist areas such as IT and care is expanding in particular, and the staffing services market is showing steady growth.

At the same time, the more requests come in from companies, the more staffing firms are asked for a steady supply of candidates, faster matching and continuous relationship building.
As a staffing firm, you have to approach candidates at the right moment and avoid missing the chance to match them with a company.

What is drawing attention as a way to solve these problems and to attract candidates and raise utilisation is the MA tool (marketing automation tool)

This article covers why MA tools matter in the staffing business, how they are used, and which ones we recommend.

▽Recommended for
・Marketing staff at staffing firms who want to attract more candidates
・Sales staff who want to make the path to interviews and placements more efficient
・Coordinators who want to approach past registrations again

1. Why MA tools matter in the staffing industry

1.1 A changing staffing market and harder candidate acquisition

Demand for staffing services has risen across the board in recent years, and the trend is especially pronounced in specialist roles.
Behind this lies a chronic shortage of staff at client companies, which has left them increasingly reliant on staffing services. The staffing market reached roughly 8.7 trillion yen in the 2023 financial year and continues to grow steadily (Source: Yano Research Institute）。

Yet while demand grows, securing candidates and responding quickly remain difficult.
However many registrations you gather, if you cannot keep up with them you end up with mismatches and lost opportunities.

Standing apart from competitors is also getting harder, so building a system that keeps you in continuous, efficient contact with candidates matters more and more to staffing firms.

1.2 What is MA (marketing automation)?

MA (marketing automation) is a way of automating and optimising the process from acquiring prospects through nurturing them to the point of a meeting.
It is used across every industry and business model, B2B and B2C alike.
In practice it means automating several marketing activities at once — email campaigns and newsletters, web form management, scoring based on behaviour, delivering content by segment — so that you can deepen relationships with prospects without the manual effort.

In the staffing industry you can use it to approach candidates according to their interests, follow up after registration, and re-approach people who registered in the past but have gone quiet.
Because it makes information management and relationship building efficient where manual work hits its limits, you can increase contact with candidates while reducing the workload on coordinators and sales staff.

※ The article below explains MA in more detail, from the basics through to specific features and the advantages and disadvantages of adopting it. Do read it alongside this one.
Related article: What is marketing automation (MA)? Its main features, and the advantages and disadvantages of adopting it

1.3 Use an MA tool to win candidates and work more efficiently

For a staffing company to win the competition for candidates, gathering numbers is not enough.
What is now essential is delivering the right information at the right moment to each individual candidate, and building the relationship over time.

To achieve that, an MA tool is extremely effective.
By automating the communication and follow-up that used to depend on people, you raise the efficiency of the whole organisation — coordinators and sales alike — and gather candidates more effectively.

2. The effect of adopting an MA tool in the staffing industry

Adopting an MA tool changes marketing and candidate handling in the staffing industry considerably.
Here are the main effects you can expect in practice.

◆Higher productivity
Sending emails, organising information and chasing reminders — all tasks that used to need a person — are automated, which lightens the load on coordinators, sales and customer support.
Each person can handle more candidates, so the whole team becomes more productive.

◆A shorter lead time from application to placement
You can provide information and follow up with candidates in real time, which shortens the period from registration through interview to placement.
You stay in contact without missing the moment, making it easier to match candidates ahead of competitors.

◆Better registration and interview booking rates
Improving registration forms and automatically following up users who have not booked an interview both become straightforward.
Because you can approach people properly, fewer of them drop off part way.
You can also guide candidates according to how interested they are, which should improve the interview booking rate.

◆Reactivating more dormant leads
By automatically sending personalised information and campaigns to people who registered in the past and have gone quiet, you strengthen the push to get them working again.
Registration data you went to the trouble of gathering is money down the drain if you never use it; an MA tool raises the value you get out of it.

◆Data-driven decisions
Because you can see the results of each activity and how candidates respond, you can act on evidence rather than the experience or instinct of whoever is in charge.

Adopting an MA tool is therefore not simply about working more efficiently through automation — it helps you raise conversion rates and build an operation that feeds straight into revenue.

3. How staffing firms can use an MA tool

So how can a staffing company actually put an MA tool to work?
Here we look at practical uses in five categories.

• Acquiring new candidates
• Improving the registration rate
• Handling candidates more efficiently
• Increasing the number of interviews
• Reactivating past registrants

3.1 Acquiring new candidates

Winning new candidates is the most basic and most important part of growing a staffing business.
Candidates now register through all kinds of channels — web advertising, social media, search — and staffing companies need to be able to handle all of them.

With an MA tool you can see how each channel is performing and concentrate on the ones that work.
Automatic follow-up after first contact also helps you convert interest into registration instead of losing it.

▼Examples of using MA

Example	How it is used
Measure and analyse traffic from web advertising and social media	・See the effect of each channel and optimise your acquisition work. ・Count visits and conversions for each channel, including advertising and social media.
Import candidate details automatically	・Details submitted through forms on landing pages and your site go straight into the CRM. ・Preferred role, location and skills are also saved automatically as attributes against the candidate.
Automatic follow-up after registration	・Send a thank-you email automatically as soon as someone registers. ・Send job listings and introductory guides by email in stages, matched to their interests.
Job suggestions based on pages viewed	・Send personalised related jobs and interview invitations based on the roles and conditions a candidate has looked at.

3.2 Improving the registration rate

On staffing member sites and landing pages, candidates often drop off part way through filling in the form.
That makes the path to completed registration very important to design well.

With an MA tool you can make improvements aimed at the registration rate and bring in more new candidates.

▼Examples of using an MA tool

Example	How it is used
A/B test forms to optimise the number and order of fields	・See which form patterns convert best and move to the ideal number and arrangement of questions.
Identify and analyse where people abandon the form	・Pinpoint the fields and moments with the highest drop-off and keep improving the registration form.
Make the form less work to fill in	・Pre-fill details already known from earlier contact. Less friction on repeat registration means a better registration rate.

3.3 Handling candidates more efficiently

Handling candidates at a staffing company covers a wide range of stages: prospective candidates before they register, candidates moving through the selection process after registering, and registrants who dropped off and are no longer responding.
Making each of those stages more efficient with an MA tool prevents lost opportunities and streamlines the work.

▼Examples of using an MA tool

Phase	Example	How it is used
Before registration (prospective candidates) ※ Email address not yet obtained	Analyse what visitors do on the site and understand popular pages and conversion patterns	・Use heatmaps and visit frequency to analyse interest in the administrative job listings, then improve the path through the site and strengthen calls to action.
	Use pop-up forms and slide-in calls to action to capture email addresses	・Show a CTA banner to drive people to the registration form. For example Show a banner offering popular unlisted jobs by email
From registration through selection ※ Email address obtained	Automatically send job suggestion emails matched to what they registered and the roles they want	・Automatically send three job suggestions and an interview invitation to someone who registered looking for a sales role.
	Score how warm someone is from their clicks and opens, and decide who to prioritise	・Send the same email, exclude the people who never opened it, and have the sales team focus on the ones showing real interest.
	Because history is kept in one place in the CRM, handovers go smoothly when the owner changes	・Interview notes, past emails and tasks are all visible, so another colleague can pick things up immediately.
People who have gone quiet (dropped off or never placed)	Automatically send a re-approach email to contacts who have not responded for a set period	・Send a popular jobs email again to users who have been inactive for more than 60 days since registering.
	List the users who respond to re-engagement and notify sales to follow them up	・Add only the people who opened or clicked to an active list, then notify the team and prompt them to act first.
	Run campaign emails to users you have not been in touch with	・Send an invitation to a careers advice event to registrants you have not contacted for three months or more.

3.4 Increasing the number of interviews

However much you improve the registration rate, win new candidates and streamline your handling, none of it leads to interviews or job offers unless you approach candidates properly after they register.
Getting more opportunities to actually meet candidates is essential to matching accurately and closing more contracts
An MA tool can be used as follows to increase interviews.

▼Examples of using an MA tool

Example	How it is used
Score how warm each registrant is	・Add points for actions such as clicking several job listings or opening an interview invitation, and build a priority list.
Automatically send interview invitations to high-scoring registrants	・Trigger an automatic email asking registrants above a certain score to choose a date for their interview.
Connect an interview booking form	・Make picking a date easy with a Google Calendar connection. Users just click a time that suits them and the booking is done.
Send a briefing email before the interview	・Two days before, send what to bring, an interview preparation video and common questions, so nothing is forgotten and nerves are settled.

3.5 Reactivating past registrants

People who registered in the past, were not matched at the time and have not been in touch for a while may well become candidates for placement again.
An MA tool can be used as follows to reactivate dormant leads.

▼Examples of using an MA tool

Example	How it is used
Send re-approach emails matched to what they were looking for	・Automatically email job listings that match the roles and locations they wanted in the past.
Build lists of responders automatically	・Use opens and clicks as a trigger to add the most interested registrants to an active list.
Send new listings and campaign news regularly	・Send the latest news to everyone once a week to keep in continuous contact.
Approach individuals based on how they responded	・Have the owner get back in touch first with registrants who clicked or viewed a download.

4. Recommended MA tools for staffing companies

4.1 HubSpot

HubSpot is a customer platform with a built-in CRM (and AI features) used by more than 299,000 companies in 135 countries (as of May 2026), covering the features needed to join up marketing, sales and customer service.

Because it is an integrated platform you can run it as your core business system, or combine it with the core system you already have and use HubSpot for part of the work — marketing only, for example. It is an all-round product either way.

HubSpot is built on HubSpot CRM, with

• Marketing Hub (MA features)
• Content Hub (CMS features)
• Sales Hub (SFA features)
• Service Hub (CS features)
• Operations Hub (data integration features)

— five main products, collectively known as HubSpot.

Of these, Marketing Hub holds the MA features, and staffing companies are among those already using it.

Related article:
What is HubSpot? What it does, what it costs, and how it differs from other tools
Why HubSpot is a good CRM for staffing

4.2 What Marketing Hub offers

HubSpot’s Marketing Hub is an MA (marketing automation) tool for managing marketing in one place and automating and optimising it.

It has a wide range of features for smoothing the process from building a relationship with a candidate through registration to placement, which suits industries like staffing that need continuous lead acquisition and efficient follow-up.

Main features (for the staffing industry)

Feature	What it does	How staffing firms use it
Forms and landing pages	Build forms and landing pages intuitively with no coding	・Build candidate registration forms and job listing landing pages easily ・Strengthen the application path and so on
Marketing email	Send email by segment and track opens, clicks and other responses	・Vary the information by role, such as IT or care work ・Follow up according to how people respond and so on
Workflows	Automate drip emails, task creation, list updates and more in response to what users do	・Reminders after registration is complete ・Interview scheduling ・Automatic follow-up for anyone not yet handled and so on
Scoring	Turn pages viewed and clicks into an interest score so you can see who to prioritise	・Automatically pick out hot leads, the candidates most likely to register ・Work more closely with the sales team and so on
Reports and dashboards	See the results of every activity in real time	・Analyse registration rates by landing page ・Analyse response rates for the emails you send ・Analyse conversion at each stage after registration and so on
CRM integration	Integrates seamlessly with HubSpot CRM	・Keep every candidate’s behaviour and contact history in one place ・Share information across marketing, sales and customer service and so on

Related article:
What is HubSpot’s MA tool, Marketing Hub? A full guide to features, pricing, advantages and disadvantages

5. Optimise your candidate acquisition marketing with HubSpot

We hope that was useful.
In the staffing industry, the key to growth is designing and running every part of the process — winning new candidates, handling them efficiently and building lasting relationships — carefully and quickly.

Using HubSpot against those challenges lets you automate and optimise each phase of candidate handling, and raise the consistency and the results of your marketing dramatically.

Approaching candidates on the basis of their behavioural data should also improve the accuracy of your matching and raise your placement rate.

If you are considering building a marketing operation around an MA tool, do get in touch with NowVillage.
Our marketing specialists know the staffing industry well and will support you end to end, from strategy through to operational design.