First understand, then recruit
Most recruitment doesn't fail in the campaign, but in the preparation. We first analyze your vacancy, target audience and labor market. Only then do we choose tools.
What is a recruitment strategy?
A recruitment strategy is the plan behind your hiring: which target audience you're looking for, where they are, what moves them and with which message, channels and funnel you bring them in. At SocialFind, strategy is always the first step of the RPO approach, never a standalone service.
See the complete approachBuilding a recruitment strategy in 7 steps
STEP BY STEPThis is how we build a recruitment strategy, and how you can approach it yourself. Always with your knowledge of the organisation as the starting point.
Break down the vacancy and the need
What does someone really need to be able to do, what is negotiable and how many people do you need by when? Often the profile does not match the market.
Map the target group
Where do these people work now, how do they move online, are they actively looking or do you have to reach them passively, and what are they sensitive to?
Gauge the labour market and competition
Scarcity, what competitors offer and whether your offer is in line with the market. Honestly, even if the offer needs sharpening.
Sharpen the employer value proposition
Why would this target group choose you? Not a slogan, but concrete reasons you can prove with your own people.
Choose channels and message
Per target group the mix of social, job boards, sourcing and content, with a message that fits the channel and the stage the candidate is in.
Set up funnel and process
How does someone apply, who follows up and how quickly? Short funnels, clear agreements with hiring managers and a fixed lead time.
Measure and adjust
Agree in advance which figures count and how often you look at them. A strategy you do not adjust is outdated within a few months.
A strategy we carry out ourselves
We do not start with a channel but with the audience and the problem. The difference from an advisory report: we then carry out the strategy ourselves, with content, campaigns, sourcing and follow-up, and adjust as soon as the numbers call for it.
Recruitment strategy and labor market analysis are a fixed part of our RPO approach. We deploy them at the start of every partnership and for every new vacancy, because without analysis every campaign is a gamble.
Why analyze first?
You won't find a production worker in Tilburg in the same place you'd find a commercial director. And certainly not with the same message. Start with a channel and you pay for reach that doesn't convert. Start with the target audience and you know where your budget pays off.
What do we map out?
- Your vacancy: requirements, level, salary and the role within your organization. Is the profile even right?
- Your target audience: where do these people work now, what moves them and are they actively looking or do you need to reach them latently?
- The labor market: how scarce is the profile, what are competitors offering and how do you compare?
- Your employer proposition: why would someone want to work for you, per target audience and not as a generic slogan?
The result isn't a thick report for the drawer, but a concrete recruitment mix that we then execute ourselves through the full funnel.
Per vacancy, that execution starts with the profile: what the person really does in the first months, what you reject on, and what they are allowed to learn once they are in. How to write that down without producing a requirements list nobody meets is set out in How do you write a role profile that works?.
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Experience from more than 350 campaigns
NO GUT FEELING, JUST RESEARCH
We recruit for a wide range of roles, from shop floor to boardroom. We bring that experience into every analysis: we know what moves comparable audiences and where campaigns get stuck. Your organizational knowledge plus our market knowledge, that's the combination.
See how this plays out per role typeRecruitment plan example
This is what a compact recruitment plan looks like when you go through the seven steps. Note: this is a fictional example to make the step-by-step plan concrete. No real client, no real results, just the choices.
Situation (fictional): a metal company in central Brabant is looking for three machinists. The vacancy has been on its own site and on a job board for months, with a handful of unsuitable responses.
- Vacancy: reduced with the hiring manager to what is really needed: experience with CNC turning is a must, the diploma is not. Shift work named as a given, not hidden.
- Target group: experienced machinists currently work at comparable companies in the region, are not actively looking and are mainly on Facebook and Instagram, not on job boards.
- Labour market: scarce profile, competitors offer comparable pay. So the difference has to come from the work, the machines and the atmosphere, not from money.
- Proposition: modern machines, a fixed shift, travel time under half an hour and a boss who is on the floor himself. Filmed with their own colleagues.
- Channels and message: Meta campaign with short videos, regional targeting around the site, retargeting for those who watched. In addition, personal outreach to a shortlist from the region.
- Funnel and process: apply without a CV in two minutes, follow-up within one working day via WhatsApp, introduction on the shop floor within a week.
- Measuring: weekly steering on applications per ad and on the flow to interview, not on reach. Evaluate after four weeks and adjust the mix.
Such a plan fits on one page and gives everyone, from management to hiring manager, the same picture of what is going to happen and why.
Recruitment strategy per type of role
There is no single recruitment strategy that works for all your vacancies. Practical and operational roles require reach, short funnels and speed. Specialist and office roles require substance, credibility and often personal outreach. Management and board level requires discretion and market mapping. A good strategy makes those differences explicit instead of hiding them behind a standard process.
How SocialFind builds your recruitment strategy
We do not make a strategy to throw it over the fence. The analysis is the first step of our RPO way of working: the same people who create the strategy then run the campaigns, the sourcing and the funnel, and adjust the plan based on real data. Want to know first whether your challenge is a strategy problem or an execution problem? Then start with the recruitment diagnosis.
The strategy says what you are looking for and where; what the execution per vacancy looks like after that, step by step, is in What does a good hiring process look like, from vacancy to signature?
Which mix do your vacancies need?
Tell us who you need. We determine how to find, convince and hire them.
Frequently asked questions about recruitment strategy
No. The strategy and labor market analysis are a fixed part of the RPO collaboration. We do the analysis at the start and repeat it for every new vacancy or target group, because the approach differs per role.
Then we'll tell you honestly. Sometimes the solution is a sharper proposition or a different target group, sometimes the offer genuinely needs to go up. Running a campaign on an offer the market won't accept is a waste of your budget.
Our strength lies precisely in the combination: we execute the strategy ourselves and sharpen it based on real campaign data. A plan without execution goes stale quickly. Want to know what fits your situation? Start with the recruitment diagnosis.
The recruitment process runs from need to hire: defining the vacancy, analysing the target group and labour market, formulating the proposition and message, reaching candidates through campaigns or sourcing, following up and screening applications, holding interviews, making an offer and onboarding. The recruitment strategy determines how you fill in each of those steps. Without a strategy the process is a series of loose actions that are reinvented for every vacancy.
In practice, nothing: hiring strategy and recruitment strategy describe the same thing. Some organisations use hiring strategy for reaching candidates and recruitment strategy for the entire process including selection and onboarding, but that distinction is not fixed. More important than the name is that it contains choices: target group, labour market, proposition, channels, funnel and measurement.
At least for every new target group or job family, and beyond that as soon as the figures give reason to. The labour market, your competitors and the channels change faster than an annual plan keeps up with. That is why we work with a high-level strategy that lasts longer, and a recruitment plan per vacancy that we adjust weekly based on applications, flow and hires.
Roughly four: corporate recruiters employed by an employer, agency recruiters at a recruitment agency who are paid per placement, interim recruiters who work temporarily at an organisation, and RPO partners who take over recruitment structurally and execute it under the name of the employer. Which form fits depends on the number of vacancies, the scarcity and whether you want to build the knowledge in-house.