There are two standard techniques in talent acquisition to attract candidates, including inbound vs outbound recruiting. Have you been aware of the differences between these techniques and how to select the best approach to your business?
Let’s go with us in this article to dive into the complete explanation for their definitions, highlighting the essential differences between inbound vs outbound recruiting examples and learning the best practices to determine the right technique for your organization.
Therefore, are you an HR professional or a hiring manager hunting for the following talented employees? This article is helpful for you, so read on to identify the recruiting strategy that aligns with your specific needs.
Source: hireEZ
What is Inbound Recruiting
Inbound recruiting focuses on building a competitive employer brand and attractive job postings in order to appeal to suitable candidates coming to apply for the positions. This recruiting technique is often referred to as inbound marketing that leverages various channels, including company websites, social media platforms, and job boards, to draw attention and engage job seekers.
The critical feature of inbound recruiting is a magnetic pull to attract candidates to your organization instead of actively reaching out to them.
What are the advantages of inbound recruiting?
- Employer branding
The positive and appealing images of your organization are consistently showcased, which will attract potential talents that are aligned with your company’s values and culture. As a result, these employees are more likely to stay with your company for a longer time, reducing hiring costs. It will, moreover, amplify your visibility in the job market with a larger pool of quality candidates.
- Quality candidates
When engaging with your brand over time, potential candidates become more used to your organization’s culture and orientations. This in-advance alignment will enhance the success and effectiveness of the onboarding and long-term retention.
- Cost reduction
As inbound recruiting utilizes digital platforms and company resources to showcase job posts, it saves money on expensive recruitment agencies and headhunters. Instead, it will foster organic reach by creating a strong employer brand.
Source: Work It Daily
What is Outbound Recruiting
Outbound recruiting is considered a more proactive hiring acquisition approach, as acquisition professionals actively determine and attract potential talents to fill specific positions.
While inbound recruiting waits for job seekers to reach out and apply for a role, the outbound recruiting technique is embraced by technical recruiters to proactively find candidates. They leverage different methods to source and engage the best talents, like direct sourcing, sending personalized recruitment emails, attending job fairs, or leveraging networking platforms like LinkedIn.
Therefore, outbound recruiting is extremely useful for hard-to-fill roles because recruiters can actively target potential candidates with specific qualifications and experiences. On the other hand, you can see that this technique likely takes more time and resources than inbound recruiting, finding and reaching out to the candidates often one at a time.
More advantages of outbound recruiting:
- Passive Talent
These individuals are not actively finding a new job, but they may be open to more exciting professional opportunities. They do not browse job ads or job boards, so inbound recruiting will not work for them. The targeted outreach approaches of outbound recruiting will help recruiters connect these passive candidates and entice them with attractive roles.
- Targeted Approach
When you can proactively target and reach out to candidates with suitable skills and experiences for your job positions, you have more chances to work with qualified talents.
- Competitive Advantage
While you can take opportunities to get ahead of your competition with both inbound and outbound recruiting, the outbound technique brings you more competitive advantage. It is because companies can actively reach out to top candidates before their competitors. Moreover, by applying the outbound recruiting techniques, you can keep talents informed, showcase your company’s value, and bring them personalized opportunities.
Inbound vs Outbound Recruiting
When it comes to inbound recruiting, it is a more passive recruiting technique relying on job seekers to find an organization or open roles. This method takes priority in employer branding and recruitment marketing campaigns to appeal to talents to apply for open positions.
Some typical inbound recruiting examples include social media posts, career sites, and job postings in places like LinkedIn and Indeed. Then, the job seekers take the time to browse to look for their preferred job posts and apply for them.
Meanwhile, with outbound recruiting that is a more proactive recruiting method, recruiters do not wait for candidates to find and apply for jobs, but they go out and reach out to talents. They do that by opening web sourcing for talents or directly emailing talents. More often, the target audience of outbound recruiting is passive talent. And they need to convince these talents of a new opportunity and organization and why it is a better choice for them.
Choosing the Right Approach: Inbound Recruiting or Outbound Recruiting?
Which approach is better, inbound vs outbound recruiting? Which one should you apply to your organization? The answer is not only one option, but it mainly depends on the specific needs and resources of your company. Take the following factors to find your own answer:
Your company needs
Before going further to choose which technique, it is essential to evaluate the recruiting requirements of your company. Answer some questions, like: Does this role require highly specialized skills? Is it a hard-to-fill role? If the answer is yes, you should consider outbound recruiting. Otherwise, if the position has a lot of applicants, the more efficient approach is outbound recruiting.
Time and budget
Outbound recruiting might require you to invest more time and resources, but it is more likely to obtain higher-quality candidates. So, consider if the available resources can afford outbound recruiting. Otherwise, if your resources are restricted, the solution for you is inbound recruiting.
State of the job market
While inbound recruiting during unemployment can bring a slew of applications, it must take outbound strategies in a tight labor market to reach out to talents, which proves more effective. That’s why you should get to know the current state of the job market to apply the most appropriate method.
Organization branding
With a company with a strong employer brand to appeal to candidates, inbound recruiting can take advantage of that to attract talent. On the other hand, if your organization’s brand is not well-known and appealing enough, you need to proactively reach out to candidates instead of waiting for just a few job seekers to find you.
In the job market as a whole, from time to time, there are more jobs than candidates available. At that time, talent acquisition humans do not have enough applicants to hire for their open roles. At the same time, many companies have recently faltered with their results from inbound recruiting techniques. Therefore, the trend towards outbound recruiting methods has become more prominent.
Just remember that your organization does not have to stick to one sole recruiting approach, but it can be flexible depending on our own resources and the market state at certain points.
In Conclusion
Each company has its own recruiting processes and priorities as well as differences, so there is no one-size-fits-all approach between inbound vs outbound recruiting. That’s why it is essential to have a checklist of the factors that directly affect your final decision. Hopefully, with the considerations mentioned in this post, you can identify where your company needs to lean more into either inbound or outbound recruiting. Finally, as the job market is today more candidate-driven, the proactive approach of outbound recruiting is a more reliable method for companies to succeed in obtaining secure talent.
