Large corporates are often the ones who work in a structured way on their external and internal employer brand and employee experience. Recruitment Marketeers and PROOF now want to make this accessible to SME organizations, starting with qualitative lead generation. Building a strong and especially sustainable employer brand should be high on the agenda of all organizations. 

Your human capital – the right people who want to work for you – is the distinguishing feature of every organization. However, attracting, binding, engaging and retaining talent is a challenge. A solid employer brand, based on an authentic promise that you fulfill both internally and externally, forms the basis for an optimal employee experience. This helps organizations create sustainable value for both the organization itself and for all stakeholders involved. 

Developing a strong employer brand should not be reserved for large organizations only. SME organizations also have the right to a good employer brand, strong positioning and effective recruitment marketing campaigns. This allows them to work on sustainable value creation for their own organization and ultimately for the BV Netherlands. “That is my motivation,” says Sascha Becker of the Amsterdam boutique consultancy PROOF, which has been supporting leading organizations at home and abroad for almost 25 years with sustainable talent acquisition, retention, strategy implementation and employee & leadership alignment. 

“SMEs can also create value with an authentic employer brand,” Becker continues. “When vacancies are filled with the right people, this ultimately has a positive impact on labor productivity in the Netherlands. For me, it is about the BV Nederland that literally works for everyone, and that starts with recruiting the right people who want and can do the right things at the right time.” 

Remko Booghmans is happy to join in. As the founder of Haarlem-based Recruitment Marketeers, he has known for years how and where to reach target groups. He also advocates the 'democratization' of recruitment marketing. "Companies that understand that an organization cannot be successful without the right people are an excellent fit for us. And they don't always have to be the largest companies. It's not just about visibility, but about the right visibility, at the right time, with the right people. The end goal is always to generate quality leads for our clients, regardless of the size of their organization." 

Successfully recruiting teachers together 
Booghmans and Becker met through a project at the Amsterdam education foundation Esprit. Esprit Schools consists of 15 schools for primary and secondary education. The primary schools offer international, bilingual, Montessori and personalized education. The secondary schools provide practical education, vmbo, havo, vwo, gymnasium, international education, bilingual mavo, havo and vwo, and newcomer education. 

In addition to employee & leadership alignment, Esprit Scholen also needed advice on recruiting teachers in the region and called in PROOF for this. To solve the recruitment issue, PROOF first started with an internal analysis of the recruitment problem, after which the need for an external recruitment marketing campaign soon arose. The question then was: how do you reach the right target group? To solve this issue, PROOF called in the help of Recruitment Marketeers. This resulted in an effective collaboration. 

'It was actually very successful right away,' Becker reflects. 'Recruiting the right teachers is a major challenge. But this campaign had the right impact right away. We based our approach on insights about the target group and their media consumption behavior. With that, we developed a relevant promise, which we then translated into conversion-oriented resources. Display ads, social ads, customized vacancy texts, advice for the content for the werkbij website, etc. These resources were visible at the right times on the right media channels. Thanks to the combination of strategic insight, media data and effective creation, we generated qualitative leads. Ultimately, this led to eight qualitative applicants who were hired within a few months. And this success then led to further collaboration on other assignments for the SME market.' 

Booghmans adds: 'Everything gradually went so well that we started to wonder: what if we join forces in a more structural way? PROOF provides the promise and the creative campaign idea, we provide media advice, purchasing, media production, technology and data.' 

1, 2, 3 – Go! 
Together they see a big challenge, or, if you like: a gap in the market, when it comes to SMEs. Where large corporates strategically and thoughtfully build their employer brand and associated employee journey, often with quite large budgets, this often seems even less possible for SMEs. This can and must change, if you as organizations such as PROOF and Recruitment Marketeers are value-driven and want to commit to a BV Nederland that works for everyone and delivers value. That is why PROOF and Recruitment Marketeers jointly developed the 1, 2, 3-Go!-approach, with which SME organisations can have an effective recruitment marketing campaign live within six weeks. Including relevant campaign promise and conversion-oriented media plan, with matching expressions. 

“We want to make recruitment marketing, focused on qualitative lead generation, accessible to everyone,” says Becker. “SMEs often have less expertise in this area. And where the average SME may not have been ready for this one or two years ago, that is different now,” he notes. “Times have changed. Placing a simple vacancy yields less and less. Employers have to do more to attract the right employees. The awareness of the importance of this has increased significantly in recent times,” says Becker. 

Strategic-pragmatic approach for the SME market 
The strategic-pragmatic approach of PROOF and Recruitment Marketeers focuses on qualitative lead generation for the SME market. Benchmark data helps clients to choose the right media channels and thus bring the campaign promise and associated vacancies to the attention of the right candidates at the right time. The basis for this is the authentic and insight-based promise that PROOF draws up. Recruitment Marketeers are increasingly asked these kinds of questions, according to Remko Booghmans. “It is no longer just about rolling out campaigns for as much reach as possible, but especially about the step before that: what should you say in such a campaign and how do you develop a promise and associated creative campaign idea that help generate the right leads?” 

PROOF and Recruitment Marketeers work together in a cooperative partnership, and make as much use as possible of each other's knowledge and expertise in recruitment marketing within the SME market. "Our organizations are value-driven and we work from the intrinsic motivation to contribute to solving labor market problems in the Netherlands," says Booghmans. "We also share the same vision on client approach: customer intimacy is central to us. That means real and sincere contact with clients; no chatbots or automation, but a dedicated specialist who genuinely listens and combines this with target group insights to provide appropriate recruitment marketing solutions.” 

Love/hate relationship 
In recent years, Becker sometimes had a 'love-hate relationship' with the recruitment profession and SMEs, he admits. "As a strategic agency, we mainly rejected requests," he says. "Recruiters shouted: 'We need candidates now, not a strategically substantiated promise or campaign!' While we thought: without a strategic approach, you cannot build sustainable, qualitative conversion. Ultimately, we realized that you can also think in solutions to be accessible to the SME market. If you quickly gain insight into the target group and have a party that can set up and run excellent campaigns, you can also quickly serve the business and create content that strengthens the employer brand. For those insights, we ended up at Recruitment Marketeers." 

Sebastian Wilkens, consultant at Recruitment Marketeers, agrees: “A strategically substantiated promise and an easily executable creative campaign idea are essential for successful recruitment marketing campaigns. PROOF translates the client's input into a clear promise and a suitable and, above all, quickly executable campaign idea, which forms the basis for an effective campaign.” He emphasizes that clients increasingly require well-thought-out recruitment marketing campaigns that focus on qualitative lead generation. 

Thinking further 
“It’s about thinking further,” Wilkens continues. “How do you really help a client? This requires a combination of a unique, relevant promise and an accompanying (easily executable) campaign concept, a conversion-oriented media and resources strategy, excellent execution and measurement tools that help you to continuously optimize the campaign. All components are important. If one is missing, the result will lag behind.” He adds that working with an experienced consultancy such as PROOF stems from the realization that you can no longer make it by developing some nice testimonial videos. 

Just like PROOF, Recruitment Marketeers also believes in the importance of an integrated approach, in which internal and external go hand in hand. “You have to fulfill the promise you make externally, internally first,” says Booghmans. “If we recruit people for a client and then they quickly leave because the promise is not fulfilled, that is not sustainable. That is why we do not want to be a traditional media company, but contribute to sustainable solutions. Not only helping clients with their short-term recruitment solutions, but with structural work on sustainable employment, so that recruitment again arises from the need for growth instead of high turnover. That is what SMEs really need now.” 

Want to know more?

 View the website PROOF & Recruitment Marketeers (slimmer-werven.nl).