The recruitment industry has always been uber-competitive, with recruitment agencies vying to get top talent on their books.
But with the advent of exciting new tech tools, and in a market where candidates have shifted their approach to work, innovation is vital if you want to hit your recruiting KPIs and get ahead of the competition.
In order to foster a diverse, dynamic, and high-performing talent pool it’s crucial to develop out of the box recruiting strategies.
In this guide, we’ll take you through 33 creative recruitment ideas that could revolutionise how agencies go about attracting top talent.
25+ Creative Recruiting Ideas
1. Podcast Guest Appearances
Podcasts have enjoyed a massive renaissance over the past few years, with Statista predicting that 28 million people in the UK will be tuning in by 2026.
This format has massive potential as a communications platform — and recruiters should get in on the action.
There are plenty of super-popular business podcasts out there that feature guest appearances.
You can use your air time to hype up your industry and agency, highlight attractive clients, and build your own brand as a recruiter.
Simply contact the host or production team to secure your spot on air.
2. Creative Video Campaigns
Your 15-minutes of fame have arrived…
Did you know video content generates around 1200% more shares on social media than text and images combined?
This makes it one of the top creative ways to recruit employees and expand your talent pool
The secret to success?
Make it informative, engaging, and visually-stimulating.
For a shot at viral success, sprinkle in a healthy dose of humour, or tie your video into a rocketing vital trend — but make sure your content remains in-line with the brand tone of voice.
Now share it across relevant channels. Depending on the video content and campaign budget these could range from TV ads and your website to your social media channels.
Top tip: give your content a boost by putting paid spend behind it on social platforms.
3. Engaging in Social Media Comments
Engaging with social media comments can massively boost your performance on the channel.
Here’s how:
- It humanises your agency, and the brand you are representing, to potential candidates.
- You can directly answer queries and address pain points that may have been putting top candidates off getting in touch.
- Some social media platforms such as Facebook prioritise posts on which the author is engaging with comments. Simply put, the more you interact in the comments, the more eyes you’ll get on your post.
- It gives you access to qualitative feedback that empowers you to adapt and improve the candidate journey
4. Text Recruiting
Are you looking for creative ways to attract candidates that are low-cost, easy, and will actually save you time?
Text recruiting can be automated, and it's also a useful method for quickly answering questions from interested candidates and providing them with the information they need.
And let’s face it — with a proliferation of phone scammers around, fewer people are picking up calls from unrecognised numbers these days, never mind checking their voicemail box.
Text recruiting gets around this obstacle, increasing the chance of engagement.
5. Career Page Chatbots
[Image: Salesforce]
A cutting-edge automated recruitment solution, deploying chatbots can significantly smoothen the candidate journey.
This tech can sit on career pages, expertly answering questions from potential candidates, providing useful information, and signposting them to the next steps.
You can even set the page up so the chatbot starts the conversation with the visitor to the site, helping them to find what they’re looking for more quickly.
What’s more, chatbots powered by generative AI learn more with every interaction, meaning they’ll only get smarter and more capable of answering questions the more potential candidates they talk to.
The age of robots is truly upon us!
6. Niche Job Boards Utilisation
Every seasoned recruiter will have used plenty of job boards in their time.
But have you ever tried posting on niche job boards?
Niche job boards focus on a specific industry, skillset, geographic location, or business type. And only job ads within that particular niche are displayed.
While niche job boards may technically lead you to a smaller pool of potential candidates, you’ll find that a much larger proportion of this candidate pool is qualified for your job postings. After all, users are either already qualified to work in that specific industry, or are interested in breaking into it.
Furthermore, the candidates on these websites are often pre-selected and filtered — meaning much of the hard work is done for you.
7. Hosting Unique Hiring Events
Hiring events are nothing new, but — let’s face it — these events are often filled with awkward networking and powerpoint presentations.
Ultimately, they can feel a little stale.
So why not deploy your creative recruiting strategies and host a more unique hiring event?
The most effective events for each audience will vary depending on the employer and their industry, but there are plenty of concepts that work well for the majority of cases.
These include:
- Workshops
- Panel discussions
- Competitions
- Sponsoring an industry event
- Workplace tours
- Virtual events
- Informal events such as trivia competitions
8. Revisiting Traditional Tactics
Recruitment may have changed monumentally over the past decade — but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Attention-grabbing classified ads in newspapers are one way to grab attention, while word-of-mouth continues to be invaluable.
But perhaps the best takeaway from the pre-digital era of hiring is, where possible, to spend time getting to know candidates for senior roles in person. Not only will this give you a better idea of their social and communication skills, but it will make them feel valued, boosting the candidate journey.
9. Influencer Partnerships
The word ‘influencer’ conjures up a perfectly curated Instagram feed, where a model shows off skincare or jeans.
But influencers actually exist in all walks of life — after all, they’re simply people who hold sway over certain audiences.
There will be influencers in the sectors you recruit into too.
Consider partnering with people who have a large following on relevant social media platforms and are a well-established authority in your space in order to get the word out about your job.
10. Memorable Job Offers
Calling up a candidate after a lengthy and arduous interview process to tell them the good news — they got the job! — is one of the most rewarding parts of working in recruitment.
So why not make this special moment even more exciting for the candidate?
For example, you could create a gif or video message with your team breaking the news, or share them into a playlist with song titles that tell them they’ve been hired. You could send a welcome package to their home, or invite them into the office to surprise them in person.
Bonus points if you create an eye-catching moment perfect for sharing on social media, raising your agency’s profile among their connections.
11. Skill-Based Competitions
Why not replace the traditional question and answer tests of the recruitment process with skill-based competitions?
Not only is this more engaging for candidates, but it gives recruiters a better idea of how they operate in a real-world work setting.
Consider employing gamification technology too.
This makes the competitions more fun to take part in, and leaves recruiters with in-depth data analysis on each individual’s performance.
12. Recruiting Fans as Employees
If someone loves your client’s brand, they could be the perfect hire to bring on board.
Half the challenge of management is getting buy-in from your team.
So if a new hire is already heavily invested in the brand — and just thrilled to be working there — they won’t need to be persuaded.
Hiring fans is a great approach for entry-level positions in particular. This way, new hires can be trained up into loyal employees who will thank the company for giving them their big break.
This tactic will likely lead to improved productivity, results, and employee retention.
Simply score your clients’ social media channels to find potential candidates who are already bought in.
13. Targeting Laid-off Talent
Searching for recently laid off talent is an easy way to attract candidates who are already familiar with your company, your industry, and have the skills and experience to hit the ground running.
If companies in your sector are making layoffs, reach out to promising potential candidates to ask how you can best support them.
Building these relationships mean when suitable jobs do come along, you should have a large pool of the best candidates ready to go.
14. Direct Messaging on Social Platforms
This one is particularly useful for recruiting younger professionals.
As part of your active social media recruiting strategy, reach out to candidates via direct message on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn or X.
This is a familiar form of communication for Millennials and Gen Z, who will be much more likely to check their social apps than their voicemail inbox.
They will also feel reassured that they are able to check out your profile — unlike during a cold call — and you can send them social links so they can easily browse content from the brand you’re representing too.
15. Unique Perks Collaboration with HR
Working alongside HR, recruiters can develop an attractive pot of work perks to sweeten the deal for successful candidates.
While financial compensation and bonuses will ultimately be decided by the hiring manager, and benefits outlined in company policies, you can get creative.
For example, these perks could include:
- Discounts on shopping and dining out
- Gym membership
- Discounts on cinema, gig, or theatre tickets
- Free healthy snacks
- Yoga or meditation classes
- Time off for volunteering
16. Day-in-the-Life Videos
Video content is a hugely effective tactic for communicating what it’s like to work in a particular role or at a specific company.
And day-in-the-life videos are a great option, with social media users familiar with this format.
When a vacancy arises, ask another professional in the same or a similar role at that company to make a day in the life video that can be shared with candidates and on social media.
17. Sharing Free Content
If you want to attract quality candidates, you need a carrot on a stick.
And this is where free informative content comes in.
Consider the questions professionals in your sectors may have surrounding the industry itself, the jobs market or their career prospects. Now create content that answers these questions in an easy-to-understand manner — and share it across your channels.
This should build brand awareness for your recruitment agency, while also developing authority and trust.
18. Offline Advertising in Unique Locations
Need to grab the attention of top talent?
It’s time to innovate, with unique recruiting ideas.
Consider headline-grabbing offline advertising stunts in unique locations.
Options include:
- Within virtual/augmented reality experiences
- In video games
- On company cars
- Graffiti-style advertising on walls (with legal permission)
- Airline tray tables
- Inside taxis
19. Referral Program Gamification
Referral programs are nothing new in recruitment.
In fact they often churn out some of your most qualified candidates.
But by gamifying an employee referral program you can incentivise existing employees within your client’s company to take part.
Recruitment gamification tools like Boon and Radancy provide platforms designed to engage employees with referrals and reward them for taking part in the scheme.
20. Encouraging Boomerang Hires
Boomerang hiring is when an employee leaves a business for personal or professional reasons, and is later re-hired into the company.
There are a number of benefits to encouraging this type of hiring.
First off, you already know the employee — their strengths, weaknesses, skills, experience, and personality — so hiring them back is less risky than bringing in someone completely new.
Furthermore, they already know what it’s like to work at the business — and are choosing to come back! This boosts employee retention and drives loyalty.
And finally, they may have picked up clients or business in the years since they left that they can bring with them.
21. Regular Walk-in Recruiting Events
Holding regular walk-in recruiting events expands your candidate pool and brings in talent you may never have otherwise have discovered.
At these events candidates will learn about the company, interact with employees, and gain insight into company culture.
Meanwhile, recruiters can network and screen potential applicants.
For a successful event, plan a targeted marketing campaign to get the word out and ensure the right people will be in the room on the day.
22. Leveraging AI in Recruitment
AI exploded into the mainstream in 2023, and now every company is scrambling to find out how the shiny new tech can work for them.
In recruitment, AI can be utilised at multiple touchpoints of the user journey, with major benefits including saving time, cutting costs, and data-driven selection.
Common AI use cases include screening CVs and applications, analysing assessment results, and even pre-interviewing candidates.
23. Gamifying the Hiring Process
Gamify the recruitment process by adding game playing elements into the candidate journey. This could mean collecting points and badges, levelling up, and competing with others, into the process.
Recruitment leaders can also gamify the hiring process for reps, by tracking progress towards smart goals for recruiters.
Recruiting analytics software OneUp empowers you to create custom dashboards to track each recruiter’s progress, and real-time leaderboards to display on prominent screens around the office.
Create competitions amongst teams or individuals, and celebrate high performance with individual celebration anthems.
Ultimately, gamification smoothens the candidate journey, delivers in-depth performance data, and better engages both applicants and recruiters with the process.
It also makes it more fun!
24. Diversity-Focused Hiring Initiatives
The benefits of workplace diversity are numerous, from improved employee retention and smarter decision making to increased innovations and higher retention.
In order to achieve a truly diverse hiring process, it is crucial to remove all forms of potential bias.
AI and gamification can be used for a fairer recruitment process, with candidates judged solely on the contents of their CV and their performance in assessments and interviews.
Furthermore, it is important to look to hire outside of traditional channels.
Attend diversity job fairs and browse diversity job boards to find top talent, and collaborate with local universities and colleges. Employee referral is another channel that is useful for increasing diversity within the organisation.
25. Virtual Reality Office Tours
[Image: tietoevry]
With the advent of virtual reality, candidates no longer have to simply imagine what it would be like to work at a company.
Offer virtual reality tours like those crafted by tietoevry put them directly in the office, offering a more immersive and engaging experience for candidates.
This leads to a better understanding of both the role and the company culture, resulting in improved retention.
26. Hosting Virtual Networking Events
Networking events are incredibly useful for both recruiters and job seekers, but they don’t always have the turnout you might hope for.
By taking your networking event online, attendees get all the benefits of a real-life meet-up with way less effort, while recruiters build their candidate pool and promote their brand to a larger group of participants.
