When Should You Use Storytelling in your Academic Recruitment Marketing Strategy?

When it comes to academic recruitment, storytelling is a fantastic way to engage potential candidates and start to build a relationship with them already before they apply to your institution. In order to be most effective, you have to start telling your institution’s story long before you’re looking to fill a particular vacancy. Here’s why:

Change your strategy

As we explained previously, not all potential candidates are actively looking for a new job. Up to 70% of all job seekers are passive, meaning they’re not actively seeking out new opportunities. They don’t visit job boards or check university career pages, the two most common academic recruitment channels. The more desirable a potential candidate is, the more likely they are to already be employed and not actively looking for a new job. If you want to get top candidates applying for your vacancies, you have to change your strategy and use new channels to reach out to them. 

Tell your story

Here’s where storytelling comes in. While traditional job ads won’t reach passive candidates, exciting stories will. Everyone likes to read inspiring stories about ground breaking-research, and researchers are no different. These kinds of stories capture their interest and are a great way to build awareness of your institution. What makes the story even better is if you share how your institution helped support the researcher and made it possible for them to thrive. This kind of information helps potential candidates see your institution as an attractive employer. 

Build your pipeline 

Storytelling is a powerful way to build a candidate pipeline because it creates an emotional response in your audience and motivates them to take action towards your organization. That’s why storytelling should be integrated into every stage of your long-term talent attraction strategy. You can use a story to first get on a candidate’s radar and then another one to offer more insights and deepen their consideration of you as an employer. By doing this, you’re priming candidates so that when they do come across a job ad from your institution, they have a positive picture of your institution as an employer and are excited to click the apply button. Effective storytelling can also inspire candidates to visit your careers page and actively seek out a job at your institution.

Continually sharing interesting and relevant stories is a proactive approach to employer branding that will get candidates interested in your institution long before you publish the job that’s perfect for them. 

By making storytelling a part of your long-term academic talent attraction strategy, your institution can engage top candidates you wouldn’t otherwise reach. You’ll stand out from your competitors with this proactive approach to employer branding and start building your candidate pipeline. To learn more how to incorporate storytelling and content marketing into your talent attraction strategy, download our talent attraction guide.