Why Inbound Recruitment Could be The Key To Improving Your Talent Pipeline

India has one of the largest and youngest labour forces on the planet, with 60 crore people under the age of 35. And yet, Indian businesses face a perennial shortage of talented workers in critical areas like IT. Recruitment managers need to go beyond traditional outbound strategies in this scenario. An inbound strategy can significantly augment your HR department’s ability to attract and retain the best talent in the long run. In this post, we will explain why such strategies are essential. 

Inbound Recruiting Meaning And Purpose

Inbound recruiting is a relatively new concept in HR management. It is largely based on the inbound methodology in marketing, pioneered by HubSpot in the late 2000s. In inbound marketing, a company leverages a wide range of online content like blogs, SEO, and social media to create a certain brand value perception and attract new customers. 

Enterprise recruiters soon realised that the same concepts could be deployed in the field of HR to attract and engage potential candidates from a much wider talent pool than ever before. It represents a stark departure from the more reactive traditional recruiting strategies and adopting a more proactive approach. 

Instead of purchasing ads and building email to build leads, inbound recruiting focuses on creating online content to grab the attention of talented candidates. The recruiting strategy involves narrating a compelling story that convinces candidates to approach your company in search of gainful employment.

The Five Pillars Of Inbound Recruiting Strategy

HubSpot identifies five key pillars of inbound marketing. These are the creation of ideal buyer personas; a marketing strategy to attract buyers through content creation; improving customer experience/buyer journey; using data analytics for tracking performance; and creating systems and processes that lead to a sustainable model of inbound marketing. 

Although the broad principles are retained in inbound recruiting, there are some inevitable tweaks and adjustments to accommodate the changes between the spheres of product marketing and HR/recruiting. 

Employer Branding

Employer branding is the process of shaping and enhancing a company’s reputation among employees and prospective jobseekers. Over time, all organisations develop some sort of reputation as an employer. Your employer brand is an amalgamation of company culture, workplace safety, employee benefits, commitment to sustainability/ESG, and more.

Content Creation

While traditional recruiting relies on functional ads and emails, inbound recruiting strategies rely heavily on a broader array of content dispersed across the web, social media platforms, and even video streaming sites to create a memorable and compelling employer brand identity. Special emphasis is placed on creating content that is informative, entertaining, and engaging. 

Candidate Centric

Instead of focusing on the company’s needs and trying to find a candidate that fits a particular job description, inbound recruitment is based on a candidate-centric approach. The focus here is on understanding the needs and aspirations of the candidates and trying to forge a mutually beneficial and fulfilling relationship. The recruitment process is optimised to create positive candidate experiences. 

Leadership Buy-In

HR managers cannot execute an inbound recruitment strategy on their own. It is a long-term plan that affects virtually every aspect of regular operations (from an employee welfare and company culture perspective). Without the firm commitment and support of the C-Suite, this type of recruitment strategy has no future.

Data And Analytics 

Recruitment managers have a plethora of options available for online content publishing and employer brand marketing. Finding the optimal mix of platforms is essential to avoid cost overruns and poor ROI. Data-driven decision-making is essential, using KPIs and popular recruitment metrics like new hire attrition, cost to revenue, quality of new hires, and number applicants and impressions.  

Why Is Inbound Recruitment Important In India?

It is quite clear that traditional outbound recruitments alone are not delivering satisfactory results in India, especially in high-level job positions involving tech domain expertise. According to the 2022 Skillsoft IT Skills and Salary report, over 63 per cent of IT leaders faced challenges with talent recruitment and retention.

India’s current demand-supply gap in tech talent is the lowest among the top tech nations at 21 per cent. But according to a 2022 NASSCOM-Zinnov report this figure could increase by 3.5 percent within the next three years, resulting in a shortage of 14 – 19 lakh tech workers. Meanwhile, reports indicate that an overwhelming 98 percent of the skilled workforce in the country across industry sectors is open to new employment opportunities, and 75 percent of them are active jobseekers.

According to the latest Indeed Hiring Tracker figures, around 53 percent of employees in India wish to switch jobs in 2023. And a full 59 percent of Indian workers are unhappy at their workplaces, according to Happyness.me. In this scenario, the Indian job market is ripe for a shift in tactics from fully reactive recruitment to a hybrid approach that combines traditional ads with inbound recruiting strategies. More than half of the workforce can be persuaded to quit their old job for better work-life balance, workplace culture, employee benefits or career growth prospects. 

An inbound recruitment strategy directly addresses many of these core issues. Companies that invest for the long term in inbound recruiting and improving employer branding will have an easier time attracting higher quality talent, both into their traditional recruitment pipelines and newer ones like websites or social media platforms.