Leveraging Marketing Strategies in Biomedical Recruiting: Attracting Candidates with Impact

The Power of Marketing in Biomedical Recruiting

The Oxford English Dictionary defines marketing as ‘the action or business of bringing or sending a product or commodity to market’. We most often associate marketing with products but when it’s applied to biomedical recruitment it becomes a powerful tool to source the candidates with impact. Here we look at its importance in biomedical recruiting, and the various marketing strategies that biomedical recruiters can use to attract top talent.

Understanding Biomedical Candidate Personas

The first step in the process is to identify the organisation’s target candidate group. This can be achieved by creating a Candidate Persona which will outline the various characteristics that the client is looking for such as their background, their skills and experience, their career goals and their personal qualities. This information will enable candidate groups who have the qualities outlined in the Candidate Persona to be identified and targeted. The next stage is to analyse their preferences and motivations – these can be things such as their career goals, the management style they prefer, and what would entice them to leave their current employment to join a new organisation. By creating personalised marketing strategies an experienced and proactive recruiter can target groups of individuals who are suitable for specific jobs. 

Crafting an Engaging Employer Brand

Employer branding is becoming an increasingly popular way to attract talent and, done correctly, it can inform talent about the ways in which a potential employer conducts itself, treats its employees, and what it will offer new members of staff. It defines the unique selling points of a company, is an expression of a company’s values, and is applied equally to how it does business and how it encourages people to join it and stay with it. 

An employer brand is often the first thing a potential candidate will notice about a particular organisation so it’s important that it communicates effectively the company’s mission and values, as well as showcasing its company culture. Increasingly today talent is looking for sustainable and ethically responsible employers, as demonstrated in their corporate social responsibility statements.

Building an Attractive Career Website

The first point of contact most talent has with an organisation is its website, either to research available opportunities or to check out its employer brand. Designing a user-friendly and informative website is, therefore, vital. 

As well as the usual information that viewers of the site need such as ‘What We Do’ and ‘About Us’ the website should highlight career opportunities and the benefits that working for the organisation will offer a prospective employee. Its aim should be to entice them into considering a career with the company and laying out the advantages that it would bring to an employee. 

One particularly interesting way of encouraging talent to apply for a position within a company is to incorporate testimonials from current employees. This will enable talent to judge whether opportunities for training, development or promotion will be available to them.

Utilising Social Media for Biomedical Recruitment

Smart recruiters have more than job ads in the local paper in their recruitment weaponry. They know that by selecting the right social media platforms they can attract high quality candidates. Effective social media recruitment strategies employ a range of creative elements including engaging content and visuals to attract the attention of potential candidates on a wide variety of social media platforms including X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok. The art of targeting candidates is knowing which of these platforms will attract the right ones, and by leveraging social media advertising they can create a wide reach. 

Engaging Content Marketing for Candidate Attraction

An important part of a recruiter’s remit is to create blog posts, videos and infographics supporting the reasons why a candidate should apply for a particular role, showcasing career growth opportunities and demonstrating the impact of the company’s work. Content marketing for recruitment is a specialist skill but by employing a talented team a recruiter will be able to utilise engaging content to attract suitable candidates.

Content marketing also has another benefit in that its results can be analysed to assess its effectiveness. Recruitment marketing analytics provide comprehensive data demonstrating engagement, likes, clicks on links etc, which can be evaluated and the content repeated or redeployed. 

Leveraging Employee Referral Programs 

Employee referral programs are becoming an increasingly popular recruitment method with large and small organisations alike. They work on the premise that current employees of a company may have suitably qualified and experienced friends or relations who are suitable for a role within the organisation. By encouraging current employees to refer candidates for jobs and implementing rewards and recognition systems, such as incentives (cash, holidays or gifts), organisations can increase engagement among current and future staff, increase the likelihood of a good culture fit among new employees, and up retention. 

Boosting employee engagement through referrals also has positive repercussions for morale when employees who refer successful candidates are rewarded or praised for their contribution to the success of the organisation.

Participating in Industry Events and Job Fairs

Another productive method of sourcing candidates is for employers to attend industry events and job fairs. After identifying relevant events in the biomedical field a raft of benefits can be gained:

• Networking – allowing potential candidates and employers to connect and assess each other’s suitability, as well as making valuable contacts for the present and the future

• Raising the profile of an employer brand – enabling employers to showcase their organisation through impactful presentations and materials which demonstrate the opportunities they offer 

• Large scale candidate presence – helping employers meet and assess a large number of candidates, increasing the potential talent pool and reducing ROI.

Analysing and Optimising Marketing Efforts

In order to gauge how effective biomedical recruitment marketing strategies have been they must be assessed. The simplest way to do this is to use metrics such as: time to fill, time to hire, candidate diversity, cost per hire, and channel effectiveness. Another vital metric to improve the process is to gather candidate feedback and insights to understand what went right and to offer strategies for continuously improving marketing approaches. 

Conclusion

The importance of effective and impactful marketing in biomedical recruiting cannot be underestimated. With competition for suitably qualified and experienced candidates at an all time high, talent can choose where they work, and how they work. It’s therefore vital that biomedical recruiting wields a range of strategies such as understanding a candidate persona, crafting an engaging employer brand, building an attractive website, creating social media and engaging content, as well as leveraging employee referral programmes and attending industry events, to engage with potential employees. It also demonstrates the importance of a continuous marketing strategy for attracting candidates with impact.

Stay ahead of the curve in the Biomedical sector. Panda is trusted by leading Biomedical companies worldwide to provide the very best contingent talent and deliver seamless candidate experiences. For more information on what we can do for your organisation get in touch today.