Labour market communications agency

What is labour market communications?

Labour market communications is every form of communication an organisation uses to position itself as an employer in the labour market. Not just job ads and vacancy copy, but also your careers site, your story about why people stay with you, and the way you treat candidates you turn down.

It reaches further than the people applying right now. Strong labour market communications addresses four groups at once: candidates who are actively searching, latent candidates who are open to a move but not looking, your current employees, and former employees who might return or refer you.

For a staffing or recruitment firm there is a fifth group most agencies forget: your clients. They read the exact same material. A staffing agency that positions itself strongly as an employer wins tenders on the back of it.

• Active candidates: people searching right now who apply on their own.
• Latent candidates: people who are not searching but are open to a move. By far the largest group.
• Current employees: retention is cheaper than recruitment.
• Alumni: former employees who come back or refer you.
• Clients: at a staffing firm, your client reads the same material as your candidate.

Labour market communications, employer branding, recruitment marketing and job marketing

These four terms get mixed up constantly. The distinction becomes clear as soon as you look at scope and time horizon.

• Labour market communications is the overarching discipline: all communication aimed at the labour market.
• Employer branding is the brand part of it: what you stand for as an employer, over the long term.
• Recruitment marketing is the measurable application: campaigns, funnels, sourcing and follow-up, with numbers per euro spent.
• Job marketing, or vacancy marketing, is the narrowest: getting one vacancy in front of the right people.

Order of play: brand first or campaign first?

In practice: employer branding makes your campaigns cheaper, recruitment marketing produces applications this month. You need both, but investing in that order costs you six months. If your vacancies are open now, start with the campaign and build the brand along the way.

Which channels are involved?

There is no fixed channel package. Which channels work depends entirely on who you are looking for: you do not find a 45-year-old mechanic where you find a junior recruiter.

• Paid social campaigns on Meta and LinkedIn, targeted by role, region and behaviour.
• Job boards and multiposting: with us every vacancy goes automatically to 15+ job boards, measured per channel.
• Google and Google for Jobs, for people who are actively searching.
• AI Sourcing: continuously scanning LinkedIn for matching talent and reaching out automatically — the only channel that truly reaches latent candidates.
• Your own careers site and landing pages, built to generate applications rather than to inform.
• Automated follow-up, because most candidates drop out between showing interest and sitting down for an interview.

What does it deliver, and what does ignoring it cost?

The Dutch Recruitment Kengetallen Onderzoek — run by Intelligence Group together with Compagnon, Werf& and the Academie voor Arbeidsmarktcommunicatie — measured an average cost per hire of €3,818 in 2020 and €4,088 in 2019.

More interesting for agencies is the fulfilment rate from that same study: agency recruiters actually filled 59% of their vacancies, against 87% for corporate recruiters. So more than four in ten assignments went nowhere. Agency recruiters took an average of 46 days.

That is where labour market communications pays for itself: not in prettier creative, but in assignments you do fill.

• Job Marketing Campaigns deliver up to 85% more engagement than a standard vacancy post and up to 4.5x more reach than traditional recruiting.
• For 78% of our clients, suitable talent is ready within 48 hours through AI Sourcing.
• Bureau In Techniek: 107 mechanics in 90 days, at €30.51 per candidate.
• Giant Leap Recruitment: 200+ account managers in 90 days, at €8.96 per candidate.

Five mistakes we see most often

• Starting with the brand while the vacancies are already open. Build the brand while the campaigns run, not before.
• Steering on reach instead of applications. Reach can be bought, applications cannot.
• One message for both candidates and clients. Those are two different people with two different worries.
• No follow-up. Most candidates disappear between interest and interview, not before that.
• Not measuring per channel. Without measurement you keep paying for years for subscriptions that deliver nothing.

Outsource labour market communications or do it in-house?

Doing it in-house means hiring a recruitment marketer. That is a full role, not a task you add on the side.

Public salary data for the role varies. Glassdoor Netherlands reports a base salary of €3,000 to €4,000 per month based on 30 submissions; Indeed Netherlands reports €3,780 per month for the broader marketer role based on 2,600 submissions. Add employer costs, tooling and ad budget on top, plus the months before someone is up to speed.

Outsourcing turns that fixed cost into a variable one. We work 100% no-cure-no-pay with a 7-day delivery guarantee: if we do not deliver, you do not pay. That is a different risk profile than an employment contract.

Sources

• Recruitment Kengetallen Onderzoek 2021 — Werf&
• Werving van een werknemer kost gemiddeld €4.494 — Werf&
• Salaris recruitment marketeer — Glassdoor Nederland
• Salaris marketeer — Indeed Nederland