The "funnel", which in French translates to funnel, is a visual way of picturing the lead path in Marketing.

The same concept can be applied to recruiting, where we can follow the journey of a potential candidate until he or she becomes an applicant for a job opening. 

Here is a comprehensive infographic to understand the steps in the recruitment funnel:

How to understand the progression of a candidate journey

The funnel or funnel representation is widely used by marketing professionals to understand the transformation of a lead into a candidate.

In recruiting, it allows you to highlight the different stages your potential candidate goes through between the time they discover your employer-brand and the time they decide to apply to you.

"To recruit a new employee, you have to start with an average of 86 candidates, screen 15 profiles and meet 4.7 of them in job interviews"

 Lever, 2017

Understanding this mechanism allows you to better direct your HR actions based on a candidate's mindset toward your company.

What are the steps in the recruitment funnel?

The definition of Candidate Personas

A candidate persona is a profile of the skills, experiences and cultural fit desired by the candidates you want to target and attract. 

It should include an analysis of the target candidates' career issues, motivations and goals, as well as the social channels and platforms on which they are likely to be found. 

These questions around the Candidate Persona are at the heart of the Inbound Recruiting strategy.

The creation of the Candidate Persona must be based on tangible data to be as close to reality as possible.

For each position, a fictional representation of the ideal candidate is then established.

Don't just post your ads on job boards.

Now, recruiters must have an advanced understanding of key candidate typologies in order to tailor their messages.

The goal of this 360-degree analysis is to attract the best candidates, including passive candidates.

This article will walk you through the steps to define a Candidate Persona.

The production of content

The editorial content creationl not only serves to attract potential candidates to your site, it also helps to stay in their minds.

This strategy, which puts content at the center of attracting and converting candidates, uses a variety of levers:

• Social media
• Natural SEO
• Blogging

If you ever don't have time to create your own content, you can satisfy your audience with content curation.

The goal of this strategy is to find really good content in your industry and share it with your readers.

The Talent Pool build

Attracting candidates is good, converting them is better!

A Talent Pool or talent pool  is a database of the best profiles of candidates  interested in working for your company and who meet a specific problem of recruitment.

This is a group of qualified candidates who have expressed interest in you as an employer.

Using methods from Digital Marketing such as CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization), you can obtain valuable contact data to initiate a relationship with your future employees.

This database contains all information about each candidate including:

• His qualifications
• The potential roles he or she could fill
• His integration into the company culture

It's not necessarily about acquiring their resume but more importantly about establishing a bond of trust.

Candidate Engagement through Lead Nurturing

How do you get your contacts to actually submit their applications? Thanks to Lead Nurturing!

This includes continuing to provide qualitative content on your career site in an increasingly targeted manner.

You need to share quality content with your prospects to guide them through the recruitment tunnel:

• Attract 
• Engage
• Convert
• Fidelize

According to a study by Brandemix, 68% of candidates are more confident after being fed content from an Employer Brand.

The transformation into a candidate

With proper coordination of the previous actions, you know which of your contacts are "hot" to apply to you.

Now it's the turn of direct approach professionals to step in and propose a job offer with the right people.

With quality content posted on social networks, recruiters will be able to cleverly use the interest generated to initiate the exchange

To attract high-caliber candidates while maintaining a strong Employer Brand, you must: 

• Treat your candidates with the same respect as your customers
• Create an augmented technology experience
• Build an authentic Employer Brand 

A positive experience strengthens and solidifies your organization's Employer Brand with candidates.

The analysis of the results

The best Recruitment Marketing metrics (natural traffic, cost per lead, cost per follower, etc.) take into account total campaign cost, agency fees, team salaries and overhead.

Then put those costs in relation to the outcomes that matter: the application filings and the candidate acquisition.

Be careful, however, not to want too much too soon! This type of strategy is built over the medium to long term.

Before focusing on KPIs, it is essential, as a first step, to focus on trends:

• The page on the site that generates the highest conversion rate 
• The page that led people to download your white paper or call you 
• The article that generates the most sign-ups for your newsletters 
• The articles that are most liked and read by your prospects

To track each step of the recruitment funnel, you can use Marketing software like HubSpot.

Once you understand user behavior at each stage of the Inbound Recruiting funnel, you'll then need to step up communication on the content that generates the most interactions.

The representation of the funnel and its components should help you better structure your candidate acquisition strategy, especially in its digital component.

Creating a Talent Pool ahead of your ATS is the most effective way to optimize your recruiting over time.

Tips for using the funnel

• No part of the funnel is more important than another: it's just as important to take the time to seek out and interview the most qualified candidates as it is to conduct interviews and negotiations with potential candidates. 
• Recruiting is a collaborative effort: letting other team members take the lead on certain aspects can make your recruiting efforts more effective. 
• Keep communication channels open: even after a candidate is hired, recruiters need to stay in touch. Unselected candidates can become ambassadors for your Employer Brand. 

The funenel recruitment is a very useful representation of the candidate journey particularly via digital channels.

It's a powerful toolkit that combines:

• Designing the candidate path
• Defining the resources to be mobilized to ensure recruitment
• Contributing to the development of the organization

Contact The Super Agency to develop an effective approach together and get sustainable results.