Recruitment Marketing Strategy: A Step-by-Step Plan
Nine steps from hiring goals to a working 90-day recruitment marketing plan.
A recruitment marketing strategy is a written plan for how you will attract the candidates you need over the next year: which audiences you target, what you say to them, which channels you use, how you move them from first contact to application, what it costs, and how you measure it. The steps below take you from a blank page to a working 90-day plan.
If you are new to the subject, read what is recruitment marketing first. This guide assumes you know the basic parts and want to put them in order.
Step 1: Start with hiring goals
A strategy starts from the hiring plan, not from channels. Before you choose a single ad platform, collect:
- The roles you expect to hire in the next 12 months, by role family, location and quarter.
- Which of those roles were hard to fill last year, and why (too few applicants, wrong applicants, offers declined, early leavers).
- The constraints you cannot change: pay bands, locations, work patterns, start dates.
Then pick your priorities. Most teams cannot do everything at once, so choose two or three role families where better attraction would make the biggest difference. Your wider talent acquisition strategy should tell you which roles matter most to the business; if it does not, agree that with leadership before going further.
Write each goal so it can be checked. For example: "Fill 40 customer service roles in the Denver site between March and June, with at least half of hires from sources other than paid job boards."
Step 2: Define your audiences
For each priority role family, build a short candidate persona. It is not a creative writing exercise. It is a one-page summary of who you are trying to reach and what will make them move, based on evidence.
Sources of evidence, in order of usefulness:
- Interviews with recent hires and strong performers in the role.
- Exit interviews and early-leaver data.
- Recruiters' and hiring managers' notes on why candidates declined.
- Your applicant tracking system: where hires came from, where drop-off happens.
- Public information: professional communities, forums and review sites where these people talk about work.
A persona should answer these questions:
| Question | Example answer (warehouse operative) |
|---|---|
| What is their current situation? | Working shifts at another warehouse or in retail, often within commuting distance |
| Are they actively looking? | Some are; many would move for better pay or shifts but are not searching |
| What matters most when choosing a job? | Hourly pay, shift pattern, overtime, commute, how they are treated by supervisors |
| What puts them off? | Unclear pay, long application forms, slow responses |
| Where do they spend time online? | Mobile job apps, social media, local community groups |
| Who do they trust? | Friends and family who already work there |
Two or three personas are usually enough. If you have ten, nobody will use them.
Step 3: Write your message (EVP)
Your employee value proposition (EVP) is the set of reasons someone would choose to work for you. A strategy needs two layers:
- The organization-wide EVP: three to five pillars that are true across the business, for example pay and benefits, the work, the people, growth, flexibility.
- The audience-specific message: which pillars matter most to each persona, and the specific proof you can give them.
Proof is what makes a message credible. "Flexible working" is a claim. "Choose your shift pattern every four weeks" is proof. "Career growth" is a claim. "Most of our shift leaders started as operatives" is proof, but only if it is true and you can show it.
Test each message line by asking three questions: Is it true for this role? Is it specific enough that a competitor could not use it unchanged? Would the persona care? If any answer is no, rewrite it.
Pay belongs in the message. In some jurisdictions you are required to share it before the interview or in the job ad; the details are covered in our guide on how to write a job ad.
Step 4: Choose your channels
Group channels into owned, earned and paid, then choose a mix for each persona.
| Type | Examples | Strength | Limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owned | Careers site, job pages, talent community email, your social accounts, internal job board | You control content and data; costs mostly time | Only reaches people who already know you |
| Earned | Employee referrals, employees sharing jobs, reviews, local press, word of mouth | Trusted by candidates; often strong quality | Hard to scale or schedule |
| Paid | Job boards, sponsored listings, programmatic job ads, paid social, search ads, events | Fast, scalable, can reach passive candidates | Stops when the budget stops; quality varies widely |
Some practical rules:
- Fix owned channels first. Every paid click lands on your job page. If that page is slow, vague or hard to apply from, paid media wastes money.
- Make job pages findable. Adding JobPosting structured data makes pages eligible for Google's job search experience, according to Google Search Central. The same documentation says a salary in the markup must also appear on the page.
- Match channel to search behavior. Active job seekers use job boards and search. People who are not looking need to be reached where they already are, which usually means social media or referrals. Our guide to facebook recruitment ads covers paid social in detail.
- Treat referrals as a channel. Make it easy for employees to share jobs, tell them what happened to the people they referred, and track referral hires separately.
Step 5: Plan your content
Content is what candidates read, watch and share before they apply. For each persona, plan content that answers the questions they ask before they move job. Common formats:
- Job ads and job pages: the core content. Every other piece points here.
- "A day in the role" pieces: a short video or written account from someone who does the job.
- Team pages: who the team is, what it works on, who leads it.
- Practical guides: how the application process works, what the interview involves, what to bring on the first day.
- Answers to objections: commute, shift patterns, training for people new to the industry.
Keep a simple content calendar tied to your hiring plan. If you need 40 hires in spring, the content to support that should be live in late winter, not after the roles open.
Use real employees and get their consent in writing. Avoid stock photos of people who do not work for you; candidates recognize them.
Step 6: Map the funnel
A funnel shows how candidates move from first contact to hire, and where you lose them. A simple version for recruitment:
| Stage | What the candidate does | What you provide | What you measure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Awareness | Sees your name or an ad | Paid social, referrals, content, job board listings | Reach, impressions, views |
| Consideration | Visits careers site or job page | Clear job pages, team content, pay information | Job page visits, time on page, talent community sign-ups |
| Application | Starts and completes an application | Short, mobile-friendly form | Apply starts, completions, completion rate |
| Selection | Screens, interviews | Fast responses, clear next steps | Qualified applicants, interview rate, drop-out |
| Hire | Accepts an offer | Offer that matches what the ad promised | Offers, acceptances, hires by source |
Look for the stage with the biggest drop. If many people view a job but few start an application, the problem is the job page or the ad. If many start but few finish, the problem is the form. If plenty apply but few qualify, the targeting or the message is attracting the wrong people. Each points to a different fix.
Add a nurture path for people who reach consideration but do not apply: a talent community sign-up, job alerts, and a short email sequence about the role family.
Step 7: Set the budget
There is no standard figure for what recruitment marketing should cost, because it depends on role, location and competition. Build your budget bottom-up instead:
- Start from the hires you need per role family per quarter.
- Use your own historical data to estimate how many applications you need per hire, and how many job page visits per application.
- Estimate the cost per visit or per application for each paid channel, from past campaigns or a small test.
- Multiply back up to a spend estimate, then add a test budget for new channels.
- Add fixed costs: tools (careers site, applicant tracking system, CRM), content production, agency fees, referral bonuses.
If you have no historical data, run a short paid test on one role family to get real numbers before committing a full-year budget. Keep part of the budget flexible so you can move money toward the channels that produce hires.
Step 8: Measure what matters
Agree the measures before you launch, so you are not choosing them after the fact. A practical set:
- Volume: applications and qualified applicants per role, per channel.
- Efficiency: cost per application, cost per qualified applicant, cost per hire, by channel.
- Speed: time from job opening to first qualified applicant, and time to fill.
- Quality: hiring manager satisfaction, and how many hires stay past their probation or first six months, by source.
- Funnel: conversion rate at each stage from the table above.
The data you need lives in different places: ad platforms, web analytics and your applicant tracking system. Tag every link with UTM parameters, make sure the source survives into the candidate record, and build one monthly report that joins them up. A spreadsheet is fine to start.
Judge channels on qualified applicants and hires, not on clicks. A channel with expensive clicks can still be the cheapest source of hires.
Step 9: A 90-day plan
The table below turns the steps into a first quarter.
| Weeks | Focus | Tasks | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1–2 | Goals and baseline | Collect the hiring plan; pick two or three priority role families; pull 6–12 months of source, application and hire data | Written goals and a baseline report |
| 3–4 | Audiences | Interview recent hires and hiring managers; review exit and decline reasons; draft personas | Two or three one-page personas |
| 5–6 | Message | Draft EVP pillars and proof points; test lines with employees; agree pay information to publish | Message sheet per persona |
| 5–7 | Owned channels | Rewrite job ads for priority roles; fix job pages and mobile application flow; add structured data; set up a talent community sign-up | Updated job pages and ads live |
| 7–8 | Tracking | Set UTM conventions; confirm source capture in the applicant tracking system; build the monthly report | Working source-of-hire report |
| 8–12 | Paid and earned tests | Launch one paid channel test per persona with a fixed budget; relaunch the referral program with clear communication | First channel results |
| 9–12 | Content | Produce one "day in the role" piece and one process guide per priority role family | Content live and linked from job pages |
| 13 | Review | Compare results to baseline by channel and funnel stage; move budget; set goals for the next quarter | Quarterly review and updated plan |
Keep it running
A strategy goes stale fast if nobody looks at it. Three habits keep it useful:
- Monthly: review applications, qualified applicants and hires by channel; pause what does not produce hires.
- Quarterly: update personas with new interview and decline data; refresh content; reset channel tests.
- Yearly: rebuild the plan from the new hiring forecast and check that the EVP still matches what employees say.
Write the strategy down in a few pages, share it with recruiters and hiring managers, and name one owner for the numbers. A short plan that people use beats a long one that sits in a folder.