Sponsored by Perengo
The Holy Grail of recruiting is to reach the right candidate with the right ad at the right time — all the time
In the field of HR advertising, programmatic recruitment offers employers the ability to reach qualified applicants at scale. While there’s a lot to explore in this area, in this article I will focus on:
- How programmatic advertising generates optimized results through automation
- How programmatic recruitment helps source applicants across the web
- The different channels and ad formats used to reach active and passive job seekers
Automation is at the heart of programmatic advertising
Programmatic advertising helps automate the decision-making process of media buys by targeting specific audiences and demographics. Essentially, this means that:
- Algorithms perform all the bidding, automatically, using data aggregated from different sources (analytics, CRM, offline, third parties, etc.)
- Algorithms leverage data analytics to drive ad-buying decisions, which are strategically aligned with the advertiser’s goals
- In the recruitment space, programmatic allows employers to target and reach the right candidates across different channels
- The whole process takes place via real-time auctions with supply sources, where ad impressions are auctioned instantaneously (measured in milliseconds)
Just as automation is at the heart of programmatic, data is at the heart of automation. With the right data, advertisers can:
- Identify, build, increase, activate, and reach high-value audiences
- Optimize ad performance to meet objectives
- Deliver a customized, relevant creative experience to the audience, dynamically
- Automate ad buying across a broad array of inventory sources and channels
Of course, the benefits of data depending on their quality. A well implemented programmatic platform requires useful data in the first place to not only produce actionable insights but also effective results. This is where a proper recruitment analytics framework (like the one in the previous email) is required.
Programmatic recruitment
Employers strive to find suitable talent for their available positions, and then moving them quickly through the application funnel, from sourcing to hiring. The goal is to get them working (and delivering value) as fast as possible.
Programmatic recruitment enables employers to automate job ad placement in real time, so they can target and reach the most relevant active job seekers, and thereby improve overall applicant quality and optimize the company’s application funnel.
A day in the life of a job seeker
These days, the sourcing of candidates happens across numerous digital channels, or touchpoints, where job seekers spend their time and attention. The infographic below depicts the day of a job seeker, illustrating the different touchpoints where this interaction occurs:
The day of a modern job seeker (e.g., a retail worker with a 9-5 schedule) might feature about 15 different context-driven touchpoints across digital channels. For example, commuting is conducive to checking mobile apps, whereas meals and leisure times are ideal for browsing the web, watching a video, or consuming content in general.
For active job seekers, browsing for jobs is expected to happen several times during the day, and this activity, together with the several other interactions in the different channels and devices, represents timely opportunities for programmatic ads to reach the candidate with the goal of activating this job seeker into a potential applicant.
Matching the message to the medium and the device
A particular challenge that confronts the recruiter is to ensure that the ad creative (message and format) shown to a potential applicant matches that person’s current context (what content he/she is reading, and on which device) on any given advertising channel. With programmatic advertising, this process is entirely automated, giving the recruiter access to a massive inventory of ad networks, publishers, and ad exchanges. It also manages ads in all available formats, including media-rich ads that are interactive and personalized.
Programmatic recruitment reaches qualified applicants at scale
Programmatic advertising is an efficient and effective way to target and activate high-value audiences. When combined with programmatic recruitment, significant benefits can be gained, including:
- Higher volume: the inherent automation features of this approach enable employers to reach a larger, highly targeted audience of active and passive job seekers across a comprehensive set of devices and channels
- Better price: a programmatic approach lets companies derive more from their recruitment budgets by optimizing ad spend to achieve a better ROI
- Improved quality: programmatic recruitment platforms provide data analytics capabilities that improve the decision-making processes of employers by optimizing traffic mix and improving overall applicant quality
About the author: Mike Kofi Okyere is founder and CEO of Perengo, a programmatic recruitment platform for performance-conscious recruiters working for high-growth businesses and Fortune 1000 companies. Mike is applying his years of experience in the world of e-commerce and adtech to improving the world of recruitment through algorithms and machine learning. Previously, he served as the head of performance advertising for AdMob (SEA/AU NZ), before its acquisition by Google in 2010. At Google, he drove the strategy and execution for mobile display advertising as head of mobile advertising for Australia/New Zealand, and then head of mobile display advertising for Google Asia. Follow Mike on his HR Technologist blog on Medium.
