If you’re looking to take your company’s recruitment strategies to the next level and demonstrate measurable improvements in your HR performance metrics, you’re likely taking a close look at your talent acquisition strategies. But have you considered the benefits of recruitment marketing for attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent?

Think of recruitment marketing as a short-term sprint when addressing the needs of a specific job opening, and talent acquisition as a long-term marathon run towards your overall HR goals. In other words, talent acquisition is the umbrella and recruitment marketing rests under this umbrella.

Let’s take a closer look at each, so you can be sure that you’re making all the right moves to effectively leverage your department’s resources.

Recruitment Marketing: The Basics

Recruitment marketing comprises the overall strategy for finding, attracting, engaging, and nurturing talented prospects, before, during, and after they apply for a job. Recruitment marketing efforts are generally based on the type of position and the nature of the work, which goes a long way to determine how and where you spread the word about the job opening. For example, you wouldn’t advertise an open coder position to a LinkedIn group for English professors or at an industry trade show for food scientists, right? Your efforts would be singularly focused on coder-relevant strategies.

This is where methods including automation, predictive analytics, and artificial intelligence come in. While talent acquisition (see below) considers the more hands-on, human side of the job, recruitment marketing is where targeted algorithms can use and analyze Big Data to post job openings in the best places, for the right people, using the right language. The guesswork can be taken out of the equation, so your time can be freed up to build and maintain a solid pipeline of talent.

Everything from the copy you use to describe the position, where news of the opening appears, the salary and the benefits being offered comprise your recruitment marketing efforts. An in-depth knowledge of the market and industry for a given position is essential for being competitive and attracting top-tier talent.

Talent Acquisition: The Basics

Talent acquisition comprises your company’s long-term efforts to attract individuals and potential candidates across positions and hiring levels. When you’re looking at ways to develop and maintain a talent-rich pipeline of active and passive candidates and build your company’s brand reputation in your industry, your talent acquisition strategies are at the forefront. An effective talent acquisition strategy will not only get active candidates (those individuals who are currently on an active job hunt) to apply to currently open positions, they will garner attention from passive candidates (potential talent who may not be currently looking for a new job but who you’d like to keep in your HR pipeline) as well-and keep both types of candidates interested in following what your company is up to.

A razor-sharp and strategically deployed talent acquisition plan can do much of your organization’s foundational HR legwork-instead of having to pursue candidates for open positions you’ll have talented potential hires pursuing you.

A well-executed talent acquisition strategy will go a long way to bolster your team’s recruitment marketing efforts when new positions arise, and consistently excellent recruitment marketing efforts will help strengthen your team’s talent acquisition plans over time. Therefore, make sure you allocate resources to both recruitment marketing and talent acquisition when making strategic decisions for your team-it will be a worthwhile investment of your time and resources.