Creating Assets: Attracting Top Candidates

Do you know how to use engaging creative content to attract the top candidates?

Candidates want to see people like them in the roles they’re interested in, so knowing how to use engaging creative to attract top candidates is vital in your Attraction strategy. Not sure where to start? The Amberjack Attraction team are experts when it comes to creative recruitment strategies and solutions, but here’s a quick 101 on how to get the most from creative for your recruitment Attraction campaigns.

Why is creative so important?

Defining what ‘creative’ is, is the best place to start. Creative can be classified as imagery, videography, photography, animation, illustration etc… you use during a campaign. It can be used across various channels, such as social media, media boards, print activity, and much more… Essentially, it’s the visual assets you use throughout a campaign, that are important in helping you to tell your story.

Creative is vital in giving your brand a personality, making your business more ‘relatable’ and ‘attractive’ to potential candidates. Using creative as part of your strategy is one of the best ways to help your business reach your target audiences, and capture your their attention quickly. It’s also a great alternative to telling a story and sharing your message with words alone. To capture a potential candidate’s attention, you need a way to make them stop scrolling, and there’s no better way to do this than through images.

101: The basics of creative

Before you start trying to come up with innovative recruitment ideas, you’ll want to understand the basics of effective creative. Here’s everything you need to know:

• Make sure you portray your brand correctly and honestly – Whilst you want your creative to stand out, you also want to make sure it’s recognisable and conveys your Employee Value Proposition (EVP). Communicating your EVP effectively won’t only help attract top talent, but it will also help engage and retain current talent. Follow brand guidelines closely to ensure you portray your brand correctly and use existing employees to showcase your EVP.
• Use real people, drop the stock imagery – With such constant and easy access to the internet from a young age Gen Z are much more aware of marketing tactics than previous generations, which is why stock imagery doesn’t cut it anymore. Utilise the people you already have in the business and give your audience a genuine insight into life within your business.
• Keep it simple – Busy creative can be difficult to understand, which could make potential candidates lose interest given they can’t understand your message. Simple imagery makes it easier to tell a story, as well as elicit different emotions. Keep it simple, create more instant impact and make sure you’re getting all the important information across – drop the unnecessary icons, busy backgrounds, and bursts of colour. Keeping imagery simple will also make your brand a lot more accessible to the widest possible audience by considering the needs of a more neurodiverse audience.
• Work to the right specifications – Depending on where you’re using your creative, you’ll have to work to different image and file sizes. Even if you’re using regular photography, make sure you resize the images to the current specifications to ensure it’s always represented at its best quality. You don’t want your brand to be recognized for the wrong reasons like a stretched logo or a pixelated photograph!

Ways to attract candidates using creative

So, you’re looking for creative recruitment ideas to grab candidate attention. How many times have you been asked to produce something ‘outside the box’?  Start with lots of research and reviewing what materials your brand already has. It’s important to understand what your audience wants, what’s already in the market and what you have the ability to produce (time and cost). Understanding the importance of creative is just the first step.

Here are a few other ways you can up your creative game to attract top talent:

• Show diversity in your photography – Creative isn’t just an opportunity to push your own campaign objectives, it’s also about giving candidates what they want. Diversity isn’t just about ambition, but it’s also about representation. Creative is the perfect opportunity to drive your diversity objective by showing more of the people you want to attract. If you’re unable to show candidates they’re represented within your business, they’re unlikely to picture themselves in the role.
• Compliment your copy – If you’re not sure where to start with changing your creative, consider your copy. Ask yourself, ‘What will this creative sit alongside?’. Considering the message you’re trying to get across in your copy will guide you on your imagery choices.
• Use different formats – Photos, Videos, Graphics, Illustrations, Animations, GIFs. There are so many different formats that you can use across all channels. Using a variety of formats will allow you to reach different personality types. It’s also a great way to repurpose creative. Short-form video content is the most popular format of content with Gen Z, so you’ll want to make sure you’re including this in your strategy.
• Showcase your culture – Candidates want to work for businesses they feel align with their own values, so it’s important you showcase your true culture to get the best candidate match. A strong EVP is the perfect in-road to giving that insight. Work with current employees to understand how they view the business, how they relate to company values, and their experience with the company culture
• Be different – It sounds easy, but it’s not. Try to find new ways to stand out. There’s no harm in testing a new idea. If it doesn’t work, you can tweak your strategy. Pay attention to what the candidates you encounter are saying. They’ll tell you how they came across your brand or role and what stood out to them. Take on their feedback and find ways to enhance your strategy using it.

Finding new candidate attraction ideas is a difficult process. Our Attraction team are experts in all things creative – developing ideas that stand out from the crowd but represent you, that excite your audience but are honest to who you are and ideas that are strategically and tactically sound.  To discover how Amberjack can work with you to enhance your recruitment strategy using creative, get in touch.