Many people think that the terms recruitment and talent acquisition are synonymous, but companies who keep an eye on the big picture know there’s an important difference between the two.

Recruitment refers to the overall process of attracting, shortlisting, selecting, and appointing suitable candidates for jobs (either permanent or temporary) within an organization.

On the other hand Talent acquisition is an ongoing strategy to find specialists, leaders, or future executives for your company. Talent acquisition tends to focus on long-term human resources planning and finding appropriate candidates for positions that require a very specific skillset.

Recruitment marketing refers to the strategies and tactics an organization uses to find, attract, engage, and nurture talent before they apply for a job, also called the pre-applicant phase of talent acquisition.

Recruiters know they need a recruitment marketing strategy: they have to market their company to candidates long before they’re ready to fill up an application. But even with all the good intentions in the world, it’s not easy to know where to start planning your first campaign.

Once recruitment marketing programs are set up, and you’ve started to build a pipeline of candidates that are a good fit for your company, you should expect to see accelerated processes across the board. For example, your team will never have to start new searches from scratch – there will always be a pool of engaged candidates that they can contact regarding new opportunities.

Setting up a talent network to convert some of these candidates into leads can be a huge win for your organization. It shouldn’t be overestimated how difficult it is to get people to come to your website. There’s no guarantee that they’ll be back, so you need to do everything you can to convert them while they’re there.

Employer branding is all about building lasting relationships with your target audience and inspiring them to come back to your website. That’s why employer branding goes hand in hand with the inbound methodology.

Unlike outbound marketing that targets almost anyone around the web, inbound marketing focuses on attracting, engaging, and delighting people that are interested in working for you.