University recruitment marketing has grown increasingly important with the growth of universities across the globe. It’s no longer enough to quickly draft a job advert and post it to free job sites. But spending hours on recruiting, managing applications, and hiring candidates from across the world can be tedious and time consuming.
What’s more, candidates are inundated with information about schools and research programs across an abundance of channels. Automating and simplifying the hiring process makes sense for all involved. An applicant tracking system (ATS) is designed to do just that.
As Technavio notes, “the use of an ATS reduces time spent on administrative tasks, provides better and faster curriculum vitae screening, improves the quality of hiring, and speeds up the recruitment cycle.” Universities can save time and money in the long run by investing in a robust ATS.
An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is designed to do exactly what the name suggests. It will track each candidate’s application progress from start to finish keeping both you and your hiring managers abreast of changes or updates during the process.
Because the new age of recruitment is driven by data, applicant tracking systems help you make better decisions throughout the hiring process. An ATS allows you to more seamlessly post your job adverts across all your communications channels, understand how well your advert is performing, and even automate some processes like the ability to prescreen applications.
An ATS can give you critical insights like how long it takes to fill a position, how many candidates applied, and even retention data. With more and better information, you can save time and money to effectively manage your human resources.
By implementing an ATS, your university can better work with strategic recruitment partners like Academic Positions. Because you’ll have invaluable data about your recruitment processes at your fingertips, we can pinpoint areas of weaknesses and improve your hiring outcomes.
For example, having an ATS allows universities to properly track the performance of their adverts. If a job advert is not performing well, you can quickly identify it and take further actions (such as paid social media campaigns) to increase the number of applications. You can continue to track the advert to gauge improvement and adjust accordingly. An ATS also makes it easier to set up an integration with a partner job board. Your adverts can be automatically published, updated, and closed without you having to do anything.
By using an ATS, it will be easier for you to see where candidates are finding your job adverts. Access to this type of information can help you save time and resources by focusing on the channels that yield the greatest returns. If you find most applicants are finding your adverts on Facebook for example, focus on sharing more content there to engage active (and passive) job seekers.
While setting up this type of automation can seem complex, it actually simplifies the entire hiring process. A consistent, simple recruitment process will actually strengthen your employer brand. Applicants will appreciate the ease with which they can navigate the system and stay informed throughout the process.
Furthermore, an ATS can help your university remain GDPR compliant. According to Full Fabric, “because all communications between prospect and institution are transparent, an ATS is an invaluable asset when it comes to being GDPR compliant.”
A positive experience will leave a lasting impression. Many ATSs make it easy for candidates to apply for multiple jobs at the same university, further contributing to a positive candidate experience.
Not all ATSs are created equal. They may have different functionalities as well as different price points. Before choosing an ATS, there are a few factors worth considering.
You want to choose a system that will easily integrate into your existing HR tools and processes. Is the ATS cloud based or on-site and does it require any additional technical capabilities to install and use?
Consider the sharing capabilities of the system as well. An ATS should simplify the hiring process for both you and job applicants. You want a system that will automatically post and update your job adverts, allow applicants to apply for multiple jobs, and have advanced matching capabilities. A good ATS will also allow applicants to easily share job adverts across social media platforms.
The other area to consider is reporting and data capabilities. How easy is it to collect and analyze data using the system? What type of reports are available and how are records stored in the system?
Some of the most popular ATSs are Interfolio, Reachmee, Prescreen, Varbi, and Talentech. These ATSs work well in university settings and will help you take the first step in enhancing your recruitment marketing.
As the number of universities has steadily increased, so has the competition at those institutions. Recruitment marketing is now essential for universities looking to hire the most qualified and diverse candidates.
Recruitment marketing is the practice of using marketing strategies to promote the value of working for a particular employer as a way to attract, engage, and recruit employees. It allows universities to showcase not only academic research and accolades, but also their community ideals and unique opportunities to draw candidates in.
One important aspect of recruitment marketing is building brand awareness. There are a variety of ways to do this, such as social media campaigns, email marketing, and a comprehensive career website. But one of the most effective ways to increase brand awareness is by focusing on consistent visual identity.
Your visual identity helps to strengthen your brand. According to ReviewTrackers, organizations with a strong brand awareness are “more likely to improve employee loyalty, contribute to solid brand reputation management, increase employee motivation levels…and attract and secure the right talent.”
While it may seem like your brand’s presentation and visibility are less important aspects of successful recruitment, they actually help to build the foundation for attracting talent. A branded presentation on Academic Positions can help you get started.
In order to help you enhance your brand visibility, our recruitment experts will help you create an employer profile on Academic Positions that matches your distinct brand identity. This branded presentation is a comprehensive landing page with everything a potential candidate would want to know about your university from open positions to attractive benefits to location specific perks.
Academic Positions’ nearly 4 million annual visitors are highly invested in learning more about universities worldwide. A branded presentation is the perfect opportunity to showcase your university’s strengths and benefits and increase your brand awareness among active and passive job seekers.
Universities are large, complex organizations. It stands to reason, their websites are large and complex. While your university may have a career page, it’s likely mostly only dedicated to open positions. Interested candidates have to then poke around your site to find other information that might interest them in your school like current research priorities, potential colleagues, or support services.
Our branded presentations curate the most relevant information to potential candidates. They will help both active and passive job seekers not only browse your open positions, but also understand your community and culture with powerful employee profiles, useful statistics, and a well crafted message that allows you to appeal directly to academics.
A strong visual identity is an essential, but often misunderstood, part of branding. Having a cohesive look and on-brand design language across all your communications channels, reflects and enhances your brand story.
While there is no one metric to prove consistent visual identity translates into greater brand awareness, there is plenty of evidence to point to its effectiveness. For example, the time visitors spend on our branded presentations is longer than a non-branded employer profile. The longer candidates stay on your page, the more they read and the more interested they become. Additionally, engagement is higher on branded presentations compared to non-branded profiles, since more candidates click through to view a second page.
Josh Ritchie, co-founder of advertising firm ColumnFive notes, “Strong brand communication is about providing value to the people you’re trying to build a relationship with. Whether it’s through education, entertainment, or inspiration, the content you create should be meaningful and serve a purpose in some way.” Our brand presentations are designed to help build and strengthen this relationship by giving you opportunity to create content specifically catered to recruitment.
Take a look at how NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and KTH Royal Institute of Technology have utilized their unique branded presentations to highlight their institutions. Then get in touch to get started creating your own.
Many universities understand that social media is no longer a “nice to have” marketing channel. It’s become a cornerstone for recruiting students. But if your administration is not also using social media to recruit faculty and staff, you could be missing out.
While we sometimes think of social media as a tool to reach younger audiences, there are several channels widely and regularly used by older individuals who are actively seeking academic positions. Utilizing these channels is one of the best ways to attract more qualified job applicants.
Universities need to be mindful that not all social media channels are created equally. Your social media recruitment strategy should not rely on a simple formula of “post everything, everywhere.” This will result in wasted resources and mounting frustration for you and job seekers. After all, active and passive job seekers have different goals and needs, so universities need to be sure they are highlighting the most relevant information on the most relevant channels.
Understanding the demographics of each platform can be the key to reaching a larger, more diverse, and more qualified applicant pool.
What started out as a site for college kids to socialize virtually, has become a legitimate space not just for socializing but also networking and building communities. People now use Facebook for everything from finding local recommendations to shopping to professional networking – all across the globe. While some universities have taken this to mean it is no place to find and recruit potential job candidates, it’s quite the opposite.
Facebook continues to be the largest among all social media channels with 2.9 billion monthly active users (and 1.9 billion daily users). The age bracket with the most Facebook users (at roughly 31%) is 25-34, however, users between the ages of 35-54 account for nearly 29% of all users (nearly as many as the largest age group). So while it may seem that Facebook skews to a younger audience, the reality is millions of older professionals are also active users.
It makes sense that the countries with the largest populations have the greatest number of Facebook users. India is followed by the US with 329 and 179 million daily users respectively, but if you look at Europe as a whole, there are nearly 310 million daily users. Universities looking to attract a diverse talent pool need to be advertising on Facebook. To neglect using Facebook as part of your larger marketing strategy means neglecting millions of potential job candidates.
Demographics for Instagram (whose parent company, like Facebook, is Meta) echo Facebook’s. Their overall numbers are slightly lower with nearly 1 billion active monthly users and 500 million daily active users. Roughly 32% of users are between the ages of 25-34. But faculty-aged users (35-54) make up a little over 24% of users, leaving huge potential to find and recruit job applicants.
Instagram is the ideal channel for creating greater brand recognition. With the ability to post stories, short video reels, and carefully curated photos, Instagram allows universities to shape the message of who they are and their goals.
Twitter is another older social media channel that is still widely used today and should be an important part of your overall recruitment strategy. At the end of 2021, Twitter’s worldwide daily active users were about 217 million with nearly 1 in 40 scholars in the US and UK using the platform. Twitter has even more worldwide reach with over 20 countries using the platform. (India, Japan, and Brazil have the most users after the US.)
Twitter is an excellent resource for academics as it allows you to reach a much broader audience. Because the second largest age group demographic (roughly 21%) on this platform is 35-49, you’ll find users who are actively engaged in academic communities.
Unique features like retweeting allows your message to grow exponentially whether it’s highlighting your university’s research or advertising a position. The 280 character limit is perfect for grabbing attention with direct, meaningful, and relevant information.
Established in 2003, LinkedIn was conceived as a site for professionals to find and post job opportunities and network with other professionals. Therefore LinkedIn is the most obvious, but arguably most underutilized, social media channel for academics.
Despite the persistent myth, LinkedIn is not just for business people. Academics are on the platform and those who use it effectively have successfully found jobs. It’s difficult to measure exactly how many academics are currently using LinkedIn but in 2014, that number was about 1.9 million. With the explosion of social media usage in academia and beyond, that number has only grown.
There are over 810 million members taking advantage of LinkedIn’s unique features like active job boards, the ability to recommend colleagues, and to list your publications. LinkedIn profiles serve almost like a CV with space to provide a quick summary of career goals making it unlike other platforms and especially useful to academics.
Nearly 18% of LinkedIn users are between the ages 35-54 but because the platform is geared toward matching jobs and talent, these users are on the platform specifically for professional purposes – whether to find a new job, network with colleagues, or keep abreast of industry news. Therefore, LinkedIn is the perfect place for your university to become more engaged.
Having a social media presence is no longer an ancillary recruitment strategy for universities. With a targeted, mindful approach towards the platforms with which you engage, you can reach more and better potential candidates and strengthen your community of academics.
When universities first began using Facebook as part of their overall marketing and recruitment strategies, they embraced the common practice of applying filters, often on the basis of age, gender, geography and other demographics, to better target ads to find the most relevant candidates.
Unfortunately, an unintended consequence of this type of highly strategic ad placement is that some potential candidates never saw your advert. By restricting job postings to only certain locations, for example, you might have missed out on well qualified candidates outside your targeted geography. This type of bias has plagued university recruitment.
Fortunately, Facebook has recently made an adjustment to its ad targeting policies to help address these pervasive concerns about biases and discrimination in recruitment. Facebook’s new rules and regulations will help your university find and attract the most qualified candidates.
Now more than ever before, including social media platforms to your broader marketing and recruitment strategy is essential. These new rules will help your university eliminate biases and attract the most qualified candidates.
As early as 2016, Facebook faced pressure to rethink their ad targeting practices. The American Civil Liberties Union, Outten & Golden LLP, the Communications Workers of America, job seekers and consumers, and fair housing and civil rights organizations across industries have pushed back on ad targeting by highlighting the harm to already marginalized groups.
These groups of civil rights activists found that because Facebook could ensure certain ads were only delivered to users based on gender, a specific age range, or location (among other demographics and interests), their “job advertising practices violate federal civil rights laws prohibiting sex and age discrimination in employment.”
As a result, they filed a lawsuit causing Facebook to change its advertising policies. These policies were first introduced in the United States in 2019 and initially applied only to US- or Canadian-based companies or companies advertising in those two countries. However, Facebook has recently started to enforce these policies in Europe as well.
To better serve its global community of users, Facebook now has several ad categories with specific guidelines about what information can and cannot be used to select audiences. These ad categories are meant to better serve those involved in the credit, employment, and housing sectors as well as those involved in social issues and politics, by eliminating bias from advertising. More specifically, the new Facebook regulations focus on discrimination based on age, location, and other demographics like gender and personal interests.
As a university employer, when choosing your ad audience, you can no longer set an age range you want to target so as not to discriminate against potential candidates based on age. Furthermore, Facebook no longer allows any detailed targeting like other demographics, interests and behaviours. These measures help to ensure discriminatory practices are avoided.
Recruitment for academic positions is not easy. While there are thousands of universities and thousands of potential candidates, matching them to one another can feel a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. It takes time and patience.
Without targeted ads to the most relevant demographic groups, you may fear you’ll be wasting your resources. However, Facebook’s algorithms will adjust as your ad gains traction. It’s really the content of the ad that determines its the audience. If you’ve written a good ad that appeals to your desired candidate, they will click on it when they see it. Facebook learns from who interacts with your ad and show it to people who are similar those who clicked. As long as you’ve crafted a well-written advert, you will find it not only reaches your intended audience but it does so without any discrimination.
It can also be advantageous to partner up with a recruitment marketing company to help make sure your ad reaches the candidates you want. This partner can create Facebook audiences based on their platform users so Facebook has to do less guessing to find the right audience for your recruitment.
Advertising on social media is critical for any university. Not only will a thoughtful and comprehensive approach to recruiting on these platforms give you access to the most qualified and impressive candidates, it will actually help you eliminate any bias —explicit or implicit— from the process.
Because you can no longer target potential candidates based on certain demographic information, you need to let your job advert speak for itself. This means a great title, explaining the position accurately, and using gender-neutral language. Then let the algorithms do what they’re designed to do…find you your next colleague.
Writing a good job advert is the basis for successful recruitment. Your job advert is like a door to new possibilities. You want to convince qualified candidates to open it up and come through. Although you can share the advert widely, if it’s not appealing and poorly written, potential candidates will pass by without another thought.
You may have the most amazing job opening, with world class researchers and award-winning facilities, but if you can’t entice candidates to apply, it won’t matter. Writing an appealing job advert is the first step to finding the most qualified candidates.
Here are a few tips to help you write a compelling and appealing job advert that will get you top applicants.
The title of your open position is arguably the most important part of your job advert. Just as you might keep walking past a shop with nothing interesting or relevant in the window, a misleading or overly-vague title won’t get potential candidates to click through to learn more.
Your job title should clearly state the position (“PhD in engineering” is better than “PhD student”) but not try to do too much more. Anything too creative can be confusing. Keep it SEO friendly by limiting yourself to 70 characters and avoid cramming in unnecessary keywords.
Once you get people to click through to read the job description, make sure you’ve taken the time to write a descriptive yet concise advert. If you find you’re getting applicants with mismatched skills or experience, carefully review how the job description is written. You may need to revise by changing or adding more specifics about the expectations of the position or your preferred skills and experiences.
There is a delicate balance between brevity and description. You want to include just the right amount of information about the job. Sometimes this line might not be clear until you start to receive a few CVs. Aim to be descriptive but realistic about what the job entails and your ideal candidate.
Ensuring you are reaching the most qualified group of candidates means trying to eliminate any kind of bias or gendered language. Gender language isn’t just about using inclusive pronouns. Universities should be cognizant of the adjectives they use in job adverts as studies have shown certain adjectives (like decisive and determined) to be more masculine than others, and therefore less inclusive.
To further appeal to a diverse pool of candidates, consider including a few unique benefits your university provides. Whether it’s scientific freedom, funding, professional development opportunities, or work/life benefits, think about the big draws for marginalized groups.
Explicitly stating your university’s commitment to diversity is another powerful way to appeal to a broad range of candidates. Although it may seem obvious, reassuring job seekers with a clear and definitive statement will show candidates you’re serious.
Many younger academics especially, are looking for universities that value diversity and a sense of social responsibility. They want to work for an institution that understands people of all backgrounds and identities make for a richer, more robust community.
It can be tempting to simply replace one PhD position with another but taking the time to write a fresh job advert can make a big difference in attracting the best fit. Searching job boards can be monotonous. A carefully written advert allows you to really think about how to target the exact skills and experiences you’re looking for.
Ditch the standard templates in favor of an original advert to find your ideal match.
Think of your job advert as the first impression for academics. The more appealing your advert is, the more qualified candidates you’ll have from which to choose.
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Many universities are taking a critical look at the ethnic and gender makeup of their faculties and staff. Women, in particular, are often underrepresented in scientific research groups and as tenured faculty. As a result, many institutions are rethinking their staffing and hiring processes in order to increase the number of women in their applicant pool.
To achieve greater diversity at your university, you need to start with attracting a diverse applicant pool. Here’s now to attract more female applicants.
Remove gender bias from your job advert
While your university’s reputation and cultural history certainly play a role in attracting certain candidates, your job advert also influences the types of candidates who apply. In order to appeal more to women and people of marginalized gender, take the following four steps:
1. Use gender neutral language
There is quite a bit of research from the last decade or so about gender-charged adjectives and their role in deterring women from applying for certain positions. These adjectives (like decisive and determined) tend to discourage people of marginalized gender from applying. To keep your job descriptions gender neutral, be mindful of the adjectives you use and stick to factual words that describe the position and the skills necessary to do the job. There are several websites and apps that will run scans on the text of your advert and flag potential problems. Use them!
2. Limit requirements
In a Harvard Business Review article, Tara Sophia Mohr took a deeper dive into the often quoted statistic that women only apply to jobs when they meet 100% of the qualifications while men apply when they meet only 60%. She found that,“What held [women] back from applying was not a mistaken perception about themselves, but a mistaken perception about the hiring process.” Most women believe that the requirements listed, were in fact required.
Instead of a lengthy bullet pointed list of requirements, take a critical look at the skills and qualities absolutely necessary versus those that are preferred, but not critical to performing the job. Chances are, it will also help you clarify exactly the type of person you need to fill the role.
3. State family friendly benefits
By explicitly stating your institution’s family-friendly policies in your job advert, more women (and people with families) should be encouraged to apply. These policies can include parental leave, campus child care, family friendly events, and flexible hours. As the Center for Women’s Education at the University of Michigan writes, “research suggests that institutions that do not accommodate family caregiving suffer in the competitive academic workplace.” Ensure your university is attracting more female candidates by mentioning these policies in the job advert.
4. Express commitment to diversity
Like the inclusion of your university’s family-friendly policies, expressing your community’s commitment to diversity is an easy and quick way to make an important statement. This does not have to be lengthy but it will make all potential applicants feel included and encouraged to apply. The more specific you can be, the better. For example, by explicitly stating how you will improve—like increasing female faculty by a certain percentage—will not just state your commitment but show it.
Promote your vacancies on social media
Once you’ve removed the gender bias from the text of your job advert itself, another key way to reach a more diverse group of applicants is by using social media. Social platforms with job boards like LinkedIn aren’t traditionally as popular with academics, but a strong and active presence on Facebook, Instagram, and especially Twitter, is incredibly important in recruiting researchers. Using these channels allows you to reach not only active but also passive job seekers.
Since they’re not actively pursuing new positions, passive job seekers don’t check job boards. If you only post your vacancy there, you won’t reach this important candidate group. While it may feel futile to focus on passive job seekers, in a Talent Solutions report, LinkedIn found that approximately 70% of the global workforce are passive job seekers. And, according to Betterteam, “80% of employers say social recruiting helps them find passive candidates.” Social media is an incredibly powerful way to reach out to the potential job seekers you’re missing by only using job boards.
Additionally, an active personal or lab social media presence is a great way to showcase your commitment to improving diversity in academia. You can post pictures of female researchers in labs, profiles of parents sharing how they create a work/life balance, and post news and updates about the work your female colleagues or students are doing. In this way, you can help position yourself as an attractive potential employer to female job seekers.
Paid campaigns are important too
If you are looking to attract more female candidates, paid social media campaigns are invaluable.
The biggest advantage of paid social media campaigns is that you can target a specific audience. For universities looking to recruit more female employees within a certain field of study, this is huge. Sponsored social media campaigns allow you to carefully select the audience you reach with your ads. Nearly all recruitment experts like Zippia agree, “social recruitment comes with incredible ability to laser-target certain groups of people for the available vacancies.”
Invest in employer branding and content marketing for long term success
Although there are some strategies you can implement in the short term (like writing gender neutral job adverts and posting to social media), positioning your institution as an attractive employer for women requires you to think beyond the next vacancy. The most effective way to consistently attract more female candidates is to develop a long term strategy that incorporates employer branding and content marketing.
While some of your employer brand is determined by others (like your employees, students, and the work you put out), some of your employer brand can be shaped by the information and marketing you create. If your long term goal is to attract more women, think about how you can better align your employer brand with that goal. Dr Graham Little, Partner & Head, Global Research Leadership at executive search firm Perrett Laver says, “Think about your website, your promotional materials and wider collateral–are you showing yourself as the organisation you are aspiring to be?”
Content marketing is a powerful tool for communicating your employer brand since it allows you to show, rather than tell, how you support gender diversity. Through targeted content marketing in the form of blogs, articles, or social media posts, you can explain why diversity and inclusion are important for your department and university. Content marketing is especially useful as it ultimately creates more brand awareness and name recognition for your university, which in turn helps to attract, engage, and retain talented researchers and academics. With regular, relevant content geared towards female academics, you will reach both active and passive job seekers.
Although passive job seekers may not immediately apply for your vacancy, over time they will become more familiar with your institution and work and more likely to apply in the future. Adding more women to this candidate pipeline is more likely to lead to increases in female applicants in the future.
Further reading on diversifying your applicant pool
Many universities are taking a critical look at the ethnic and gender makeup of their faculties and staff. Women, in particular, are often underrepresented in scientific research groups and as tenured faculty. As a result, many institutions are rethinking their staffing and hiring processes in order to increase the number of women in their applicant pool.
According to recent data from the American Association of University Professors, “even though women now account for 47 percent of full-time faculty members, they are overrepresented in non-tenure-track positions.” They also found that the representation of women decreased as academic rank increased with only 32.5% of full professors being women.
This data was collected in 2018 though, before Covid transformed our daily lives. The pandemic revealed real and significant inequities between male and female responsibilities as caregivers and academics, with women juggling far more than men. A March 2021 article from executive search firm Perrett Laver notes that, “27% of male scholars said [Covid] lockdown was providing them with more time to research and write. That number is around a third lower for women.”
As the world starts to recover from the global pandemic and academic hiring picks up, universities are eager to attract more female candidates to their applicant pools. Here are a few ways to get started.
Keep your job description gender neutral
It may seem obvious but if you’re looking to attract more female candidates, use gender neutral language in your job advert.
Steering clear of gender pronouns is a good place to start but don’t forget to take a closer look at the number and kinds of adjectives you use. Words like competitive and dominant are more masculine while words like collaborative and supportive are more feminine. These words often create unconscious bias and ultimately impact which candidates apply. Although it would be great to eliminate bias from these adjectives, it’s easier to simply eliminate them from your job advert. Iris Bohnet, Director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School writes, “it’s easier to de-bias organizations’ practices and procedures than to de-bias mindsets.”
To reduce gendered language keep your job advert dry, factual, and to the point. List titles and responsibilities of the job without qualifying adjectives. The Harvard Business Review also found the longer the list of required skills, the less likely you are to attract female job seekers. Women are more likely to believe these skills are in fact required and not merely desirable.
Include information on family-friendly policies at your university
As women often still have more caregiving responsibilities at home, including your university’s family friendly policies will not only show a commitment to gender equality, it will provide applicants tangible solutions to their potential concerns about balancing family and work. For example, noting that you have day care facilities, parental leave, or flexible hours will help assure female applicants (and other parents or caregivers) they are welcomed and desired in your community.
Promote your vacancies on social media
Social media is increasingly popular as a tool to find jobs and network professionally. Sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram are increasingly popular among academics and can be used to reach both active and passive job seekers. With 4.48 billion people actively using social media, posting your job vacancies on these popular sites is critical. Social media is a great way to cast a wider net and reach more applicants–especially women.
Additionally, an active personal or lab social media presence is a great way to showcase your commitment to improving diversity in academia. You can post pictures of female researchers in labs, profiles of parents sharing how they create a work/life balance, and post news and updates about the work your female colleagues or students are doing. In this way, you can help position yourself as an attractive potential employer to female job seekers.
Create a long term strategy featuring recruitment marketing
The most effective way to consistently increase the amount of female applicants is to develop a long term strategy to attract female talent. This ongoing approach should incorporate employer branding and content marketing into your recruitment marketing.
Your employer brand is partly determined by university employees, students, and potential candidates and includes how people discuss your organization across their networks. Content marketing is a powerful tool for communicating your employer brand since it allows you to show, rather than tell, how you support gender diversity. Through targeted content marketing in the form of blogs, articles, or social media posts, you can explain why diversity and inclusion are important for your department and university.
With a thoughtful approach to recruitment marketing, you can ensure your talent pool will grow wider and more diverse.
Thanks to greater awareness about issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, many universities are looking to increase the number of women in their programs. Too often this means only taking steps to attract more women when there is an upcoming vacancy. This short term approach can yield some positive results, but your chances of increasing the number of female applicants greatly improves with a longer recruitment strategy.
Whether you have an institutional or department level goal of getting more female applicants, thinking about your brand and how you market your university is paramount. Although there are some strategies you can implement in the short term (like writing gender neutral job adverts and posting to social media), positioning your institution as an attractive employer for women requires you to think beyond the next vacancy.
Start with thoughtful employer branding
Institutions need to go beyond just a sentence in their job adverts stating that they’re an equal opportunity employer. They need to show applicants who they are and the work that inspires them. A thoughtful approach to employer branding can help develop your university’s reputation and messaging.
While some of your employer brand is determined by others (like your employees, students, and the work you put out), some of your employer brand can be shaped by the information and marketing you create. If your long term goal is to attract more women, think about how you can better align your employer brand with that goal. Dr Graham Little, Partner & Head, Global Research Leadership at executive search firm Perrett Laver says, “Think about your website, your promotional materials and wider collateral–are you showing yourself as the organisation you are aspiring to be?”
Invest in content marketing
One of the most effective ways to continue to develop your employer brand and create a more diverse faculty is by sharing your commitment to diversity and inclusion with potential job seekers. To do this, your institution needs to embrace content marketing.
Content marketing is the best tool for communicating your employer brand since it allows you to show, rather than tell, how you support their female employees. Through targeted content marketing, you can explain why diversity and inclusion are important for your department and your university. This could be in the form of blogs and articles posted to your website, social media posts, or other marketing materials.
Content marketing is especially useful as it ultimately creates more brand awareness and name recognition for your university, which in turn helps to attract, engage, and retain talented researchers and academics. With regular, relevant content geared towards female academics, you will reach both active and passive job seekers.
Although passive job seekers may not immediately apply for your vacancy, over time they will become more familiar with your institution and work and more likely to apply in the future. Adding more women to this candidate pipeline is more likely to lead to increases in female applicants in the future.
Let your female employees speak for themselves
One powerful way to show your passion for increasing female employees is to show applicants what it’s like to be a part of your community. Choose female ambassadors who can communicate genuinely about how your institution has helped them fulfil their potential. This might include a discussion on the support they received from colleagues, the institutional policies that helped them balance work and family life, or simply feeling valued for their contributions.
Promote this content on social media channels popular with women, like Facebook and Instagram. You should also use this type of content to target predominantly female audiences by sharing it with professional women’s organizations. Most social media channels have active female groups in nearly every field of study and discipline.
Get help from recruitment marketing specialists
Recruitment marketing takes time and focus. Ideally, you want to be continually working on these strategies and marketing activities. Unfortunately, many departments and universities simply don’t have the knowledge, time, or resources to do it themselves. We can help. We understand the nuances and quirks of academia, plus how to leverage social media and content marketing to generate awareness, consideration and interest in your institution as an employer.
Employer branding and content marketing need to be used on an ongoing basis to present your institution as an attractive potential employer for female researchers. With a little forethought and dedicated effort, you’ll find the number of female applicants steadily increasing to give a highly qualified, diverse staff.
In some ways, posting a vacancy and searching for a job has never been easier. For job seekers, the ease of internet searches makes finding open positions as easy as clicking a button. For those hiring, placing an ad on these sites can mean access to thousands of job seekers. And yet, the hiring process —matching the right person for the right job—still takes time and effort. If you are also hoping to attract a more diverse group of applicants, it can be especially difficult. Reaching female candidates for example, often takes a little more consideration.
Increasing the diversity within your institution is more important than simply making everyone feel welcomed and included. Institutions benefit from different ideas, opinions, and solutions to problems. In an article titled “Gender Diversity Leads to Better Science” published in PNAS, researchers argue that gender diversity “allows scientific organizations to derive an ‘innovation dividend’ that leads to smarter, more creative teams, hence opening the door to new discoveries.” For universities, greater gender diversity can mean broader perspectives and ideas leading to more comprehensive research studies, and more name recognition.
Social media can help you cast a wider net
Once you’ve removed the gender bias from the text of your job advert itself, another key way to reach a more diverse group of applicants is by using social media. Social platforms with job boards like LinkedIn aren’t traditionally as popular with academics, but a strong and active presence on Facebook, Instagram, and especially Twitter, is incredibly important in recruiting researchers. Using these channels allows you to reach not only active but also passive job seekers.
Active job seekers are those who are currently looking for jobs. They frequently visit job boards and monitor university career pages. Passive job seekers, on the other hand, are not necessarily looking to change jobs but, should they come across an appealing open position, they might be encouraged to learn more about the institution and what it offers.
Since they’re not actively pursuing new positions, passive job seekers don’t check job boards. If you only post your vacancy there, you won’t reach this important candidate group. While it may feel futile to focus on passive job seekers, in a Talent Solutions report, LinkedIn found that approximately 70% of the global workforce are passive job seekers. And, according to Betterteam, “80% of employers say social recruiting helps them find passive candidates.” Social media is an incredibly powerful way to reach out to the potential job seekers you’re missing by only using job boards.
You can also use your personal and lab social media accounts to be an ally and show your commitment to improving gender diversity in academia. Sharing pictures of the female researchers working in your lab, posting profiles of the influential women in your department, and highlighting papers written by your female faculty are all powerful ways to show you are passionate about gender diversity. This kind of “slice of life” information may be particularly important to women, who want to ensure that your university is a supportive environment in which they can thrive.
Increasing the diversity of your candidate pool is an important step to diversifying your faculty. With intentional usage of social media channels, you can increase your chances of appealing to a wider group of diverse applicants.
Competition for postdoc positions is fierce. For universities and processors looking to hire for these trainee positions, that’s good news. It means you have a wide selection of candidates from which to choose—assuming they are aware of you and your university, can easily find information about your projects, and are motivated enough to look for your open positions.
Unfortunately, finding qualified candidates for your relevant open positions can be a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. Knowing there are talented candidates out there but only receiving mediocre or irrelevant CVs, can be maddening.
However, spending money to advertise your postdoc, when you know talented candidates are desperately searching for the right position can feel equally maddening. Postdocs are short term, trainee positions, why waste the resources?
We understand that spending money to advertise these positions might not feel worth it. However, we also know there are several compelling reasons you should pay to advertise your postdoctoral positions.
Postdocs contribute tremendously to universities. According to the National Academies, “Successful postdocs help plan and carry out the institution’s research programs, build alliances and intellectual bridges to other institutions, raise the reputation of laboratories and departments, mentor graduate students, and increase the inflow of grant support.”
While a postdoc is a short term position, a postdoc’s contributions can be significant and long term. Think about the best postdoc you’ve had and their impact on your group. How does a small advertising cost compare to the sizable benefit of a highly talented postdoc?
You don’t have to worry that the advert fee will come at the expense of research funds. Many major funding agencies recognize there are costs associated with recruiting top talent for a funded project. As a result, these costs—such as airfare for on campus interviews and advert publishing fees—are usually considered eligible grant expenses.
You might think that rather than paying a nominal fee to advertise your postdoc, you’ll just post the vacancy for free on your own website instead. But there’s no guarantee that job seekers will actually see your posting this way. Why? First, this assumes candidates are already familiar with you and your work. Second, it assumes they are also regularly checking your site for job opportunities. With thousands of universities vying for the best talent, potential candidates have a lot of websites they can check.
Unfortunately search engines are of little help here. Job postings are only up for a few months at most, which isn’t long enough to rank highly in search engine results. It takes time for search engine “crawlers” to visit your site, index the information posted and then rank your site in their results. The deadline to submit an application will have long expired before your position ever appears in Google search results.
To save time, it is more effective for job seekers to visit job boards. By paying to use a job board, you’ll have access to interested candidates from all over the world. Don’t miss out on reaching tons of eyes because you can’t (yet) see the value of paying a small advertising fee.
The competition for postdocs is fierce. Instead of hoping job seekers will stumble upon your university, then visit your website, look for open positions, and apply, go to where the applicants are—job boards.
Once job seekers know you’re hiring, then all your other recruitment marketing streams will begin to pay dividends. They’ll see all the benefits of life at your university on social media, they’ll find information on your current research and group members on your updated website, and they’ll be motivated to follow through with a seamless application process.
While paying to advertise may feel like throwing money out the window, it’s not. It can actually mean the difference between finding excellent candidates who will make positive, long-term contributions to your university and spending countless hours filtering through irrelevant and mediocre applications only to have to cast your net once more.