In today’s highly competitive landscape, the best talent doesn’t just arrive at your website ready to apply. To truly succeed, you need to tell candidates why they should consider you for their next career move.
In the same way a customer must be nurtured along their journey to buy, modern candidates must be guided along the path to apply, led by content that places your employer brand at the centre of every conversation.
From social media posts that highlight your core values to prospects, or onboarding documents that emphasise your company’s values to your latest recruits, a constant flow of compelling content keeps applicants on the hook.
But how do you maintain the quality and brand consistency today’s job seekers expect across every touchpoint, within increasingly tighter schedules and budgets? How can you efficiently and practically scale your employer brand content with your changing talent acquisition requirements?
The answer: investing in custom design templates. Below, we explain what they are, how they can revolutionise your recruitment strategy, and the key signs of great template creation software.
What are custom design templates?
Think of custom design templates as a constant head start for any kind of on-brand asset creation. A framework based on your brand guidelines, enabling your designers, recruiters and wider employer brand team to produce high-quality content with speed, precision and assurance.
To achieve this, effective design templates include locked-down elements, such as asset dimensions, logo positions and design layouts. These cannot be moved or changed, so users stick within the fixed parameters of your guidelines.
From here, they can then switch out customisable elements, such as calls-to-action (CTAs), colour schemes, imagery, copy and more with creative freedom, knowing that they cannot steer far from your brand identity.
As you can imagine, having access to these branded templates can massively ramp up the production of recruitment ads, job listings, corporate communications and much, much more. The right templating tool is a real game-changer – giving your hiring teams the confidence and skills they need to break away from costly third-party agencies, time-consuming approval processes and design limitations.
How can custom templates help with your recruitment efforts?
When you consider that 71% of recruitment-focused teams face challenges creating the content they need, custom templates can be a powerful tool to create the variety of collateral required to properly promote your employer brand.
This is because design templates can:
Expedite the creation of personalised social content
In our increasingly digital world, it’s no surprise that 79% of applicants turn to social media platforms to conduct their job searches. But the breadth of these channels, with distinct optimal posting frequencies, can make it a challenge to generate the content required to stay top of candidates’ minds.
To tap into this marketplace of millions, customisable templates empower your teams to produce on-brand, studio-quality assets in minutes.
With elements like CTAs, colour schemes and imagery able to be instantly swapped out to suit the nuances of a particular region, platform or branch of the business, intelligent templates make it possible to produce well-optimised social media posts in a truly scalable way, without sacrificing consistency or impact.
Empower employees to become brand advocates
While a strong employer brand instils confidence in your potential candidates, it’s hard to ignore that 76% of individuals are more likely to trust content shared by a brand’s employees over assets from a brand itself.
To allow your most passionate employees to champion your culture, values and company mission through compelling, highly engaging material, custom templates give your strongest advocates an avenue to express their views and build trust, without compromising your brand’s identity.
By allowing employees to follow a helpful framework, even those with zero design skills can be empowered to develop exceptional assets for their personal profiles. This means your employer brand can reach a wider audience in a more targeted, organic way than simply through your company pages.
Create a full suite of onboarding content
If you’re at the stage where your job openings are filled and your new hires are well on their way to becoming full-fledged team members, it can be easy to direct your employer branding technology toward the next campaign.
But in recent years, so many organisations have lost potential hires at the final hurdle due to a negative or frustrating candidate experience. To ensure your employer brand is just as strong inside as out, customisable templates allow for the quick, easy and scalable creation of company manuals, brand guidelines and other essential internal communications.
With these templates, you can guarantee that your new hires have the information they need to start work swiftly and confidently. And, to give them a real sense of belonging from the outset, these can also allow you to easily personalise standard guidebooks and manuals for each recruit.
Streamline video production
Over 65% of businesses use video in their recruitment efforts. You can see why when 43% of candidates say they’re more likely to apply for a job promoted through video content.
Able to turn this traditionally long, costly and intensive process into something effortless, custom templates are a lifeline for any forward-thinking recruitment team eager to stake their claim in the video-centric future of search.
The right custom template software will include tools to make dynamic, on-brand edits in a standardised format, so you can produce this eye-grabbing content with greater ease.
5 benefits of using custom templates for recruitment
1. Speed up time-to-market
Filling an open position takes an average of 44 days. When you factor in the weeks, months or even years it can take for a new hire to settle in, skill up, and reach the desired level of competency, talent acquisition is a lengthy and disruptive process for any organisation.
Quicker and more scalable asset creation with design templates enables your team to produce videos, job adverts, office posters, employee testimonials and other collateral as quickly as possible – especially important if you’re running a high-volume recruitment campaign.
2. Achieve complete consistency
In a world with more opportunities for candidates than ever, first impressions matter. Inconsistent visuals, incoherent Employer Value Propositions (EVPs), fluctuating tones of voice – they simply don’t cut it with today’s savvy job seekers.
Inspire the right kind of relationship with your ideal candidates from the very beginning. Intelligent templating allows you to align every piece of collateral with your unique brand guidelines. This helps you secure complete coherence in any design, across any platform, at any time.
But how do you ensure that the employee experience meets expectations? While there’s much to consider, custom templating tools are unquestionably important, unlocking the creation of studio-quality onboarding documents that prioritise what matters to your candidates – be it DEIB and employer branding, work-life balance or monetary perks.
Plus, with the effort behind the creation of employer brand collateral reduced and shared among your entire workforce, your employer brand specialists and senior leadership team can concentrate on establishing initiatives that propel your company culture forward.
What to look for in the right template creation software
Now you know what customisable templates are, how they can be applied to your talent acquisition efforts, and the plethora of advantages they offer, there’s just one final topic we want to discuss – the key signs to look out for in template creation software.
Although any templating tool can improve the quality, consistency, cost and time of your asset creation, not all software is created equal. If you’re keen to truly revolutionise your recruitment efforts, here are our 7 must-have features to prioritise in your search:
1. Limitless on-brand asset creation
The last thing your team members need is software that stifles your output and limits creativity. When looking for templating tools that can help you find, engage and attract the best talent, it’s essential you find a solution that allows you to create on-brand assets without restriction. No limits, no monthly credits – just the means to produce any volume of assets whenever required.
2. Multichannel compatibility
To reach your target audience wherever they are, it’s also important to have template creation software that can accommodate asset creation for any medium. Be it graphics for LinkedIn, videos for career pages, banners for job fairs, or posters for internal communication – ensure the solution you invest in enables you to create templates for any purpose.
3. Straightforward functionality
Creating and executing professional, persuasive recruitment campaigns demands an intuitive templating system. One your recruiters and advocates can easily pick up and use whenever they need to produce effective, on-brand content at pace.
Accessibility and functionality should therefore be top priorities in your template search, so anyone in your team can be elevated to create without a steep learning curve.
4. Approval measures
For complete confidence that everything your recruitment teams or employee advocates produce is in service of your long-term business goals, acquiring a platform with approval measures can be incredibly advantageous.
With these extra security measures in place informing users of what’s off limits, and a seamless way to send assets through for final sign-off, your recruitment campaigns reach audiences far sooner.
5. Streamlined localisation
Responding to recruitment needs in any region is a must for any global brand – and something only possible when you opt for a platform with dedicated, time-saving localisation tools. Look for a platform that instantly enables you to switch up languages and cultural imagery, so you can meet the demands and sensibilities of your local markets.
6. Cloud-based accessibility
Whether you’re a local business of dozens, or a conglomerate of thousands, manually installing software to employee machines one by one is a long and tedious task. Avoid this logistical headache by choosing a recruitment template creation tool backed by cloud software, meaning your worldwide teams can access it with minimal fuss.
7. Wider brand management features
Finally, while consistent, high-quality content is an important pillar of your recruitment campaigns, it’s far from the only part you have to consider when it comes to building, administering and evolving your employer brand.
By broadening your search to an all-in-one brand management platform featuring customisable design templates, you can also effectively educate your users on the foundations of your employer brand, store all collateral in a dedicated DAM system, and gain a bird’s-eye view over the execution and performance of your campaigns.
Launch a new era of success and scalability for your recruitment campaigns
When it comes to recruitment, content is crucial. It’s how your employer branding stands out, captures the attention of top talent, and ultimately fills your open roles. But not any content will do. In today’s competitive landscape, potential employees have become increasingly selective about who they work for.
Customisable templates give your recruitment teams and wider employees the keys to create captivating, consistent content on an otherwise unachievable scale. Look into the options available to understand how they can drastically reduce the costs, time and resources involved in building professional recruitment collateral, and make meeting your ever-growing recruitment demands a seamless formality.
