While a marketing recruitment agency may present immense value to certain businesses, there are several alternatives worth considering.

If you don’t want to outsource your recruiting and want to maintain a firm grasp over the process, there are many steps you can take to kickstart the recruitment process.

As we’ve said before, recruitment isn’t easy but it also isn’t rocket science.

When you’re in no real rush to hire and don’t have the time to work collaboratively with a marketing recruitment agency, it’s often easier to take matters into your own hands.

This way, you can dictate the pace of your recruitment process and move at a speed that suits your business.

Let’s explore some of the best marketing recruitment agency alternatives.

Marketing Recruitment Agencies (Best Alternatives)

1 – Referrals

Get referrals from your existing employees

If you already have a team of well-connected marketing professionals or employees, you can leverage their networks to source new talent. It’s possible that an employee knows somebody who is perfect for the role you’re trying to fill. You could even ask employees to share a post advertising the vacant position with their LinkedIn connections to reach as many eyeballs as possible.

Utilise referral software solutions

There are some useful employee referral solutions on the market that make it easier to attract qualified candidates and recruit hard-to-fill roles. Firstbird is a good example of a platform that seamlessly integrates with your existing workflows. While working effectively as a standalone platform, Firstburd integrates with over 40 applicant tracking systems.

ERIN is another employee referral platform. This solution comes with a mobile application (for iOS and Android) and is designed to accelerate the referral process. ERIN enables employees to make referrals in less than 30 seconds. The ease of use is likely to encourage employees to make more referrals and enable your business to tap into their professional networks.

2 – Job Boards

Even though the overall effectiveness of job boards has dwindled in recent years, they still present some level of value and are a good marketing recruitment agency alternative to consider. In most cases, it’s more effective to use job boards as a way to supplement your recruitment strategy rather than relying on them as your primary method of sourcing candidates. Let’s break down a few popular job boards for your consideration.

LinkedIn

You can use LinkedIn’s active community of professionals to post vacant positions and attract candidates. As the “world’s most qualified talent pool”, LinkedIn equips you with the recruiting tools you need to identify, attract, and hire the most relevant candidates. You can even connect and engage with prospective candidates using personalized InMail (LinkedIn messaging).

LinkedIn offers a basic posting option that’s free of charge. This means you can kickstart your recruiting efforts without spending a dime. Using LinkedIn to get the ball rolling is ideal for those who are in no immediate rush to hire but want to start building a talent pipeline.

Indeed

Indeed has become a staple in the recruitment industry. With plenty of organic reach, you can quickly amass a pool of candidates by posting your vacant positions to Indeed. The only downside is that you may need to wade through a lot of unqualified candidates to find the needles in the haystack. Depending on the position, you can often post jobs for free.

AngelList Talent

AngelList is popular among startups on both sides of the Atlantic. If you want to engage some of the most innovative minds in your industry, AngelList is worth considering. The platform is often brimming with vacant marketing roles. While there is certainly competition, top marketing talent recognise AngelList as a valuable resource for exploring new job opportunities.

Using AngelList, you can source from more than 8 million profiles and seamlessly integrate data with your applicant tracking system of choice. The pricing plans begin at $249/month.

3 – Social Media

Another marketing recruitment agency alternative is social media. And when it comes to engaging prospective candidates, Twitter is often remarkably useful. Even with just a small following, tweets can quickly gain traction and reach a large audience. If you were to tweet about a vacant position within your business, you could tag relevant industry influencers and encourage them to share the tweet with their followers.

Posting in industry-related Facebook groups is another excellent way to reach out to prospective candidates. For example, there are dozens of popular digital marketing groups on Facebook with hundreds of thousands of members. By posting in these groups, you can make sure your vacancy is seen by a large number of relevant professionals.

4 – Sponsored Jobs on LinkedIn

To bolster your visibility on LinkedIn, the platform offers Sponsored Jobs. This is a paid feature that allows you to sponsor your job postings and have them appear at the top of any relevant LinkedIn search results. Sponsored Jobs are an effective way to ensure your vacancies are seen by a large number of relevant professionals.

5 – Communities

Alongside Facebook groups, there are many popular online communities that marketing professionals flock to. From Indie Hackers to Product Hunt, you can strike up conversations with prospective candidates directly on these platforms. While there is no fee attached to joining most of these communities, you would need to put in some legwork to reach the right people.

Closing Thoughts

There are plenty of ways to find the talent you need without relying on recruitment agencies.

By utilising job boards, social media and online communities, you can build up a solid list of qualified candidates without spending a fortune.

However, there will inevitably be some trial and error as you experiment with different recruitment methods. 

But once you find a strategy that works for your business, the process will become much easier.

If you are still on the fence about whether or not to use a marketing recruitment agency, we recommend having a conversation with our team or check out our article on what it’s like to work with a marketing recruitment agency.

As a leading B2B Tech & SaaS marketing recruitment agency, we have a track record of delivering results.
If you would like to learn more about our services, you can book a call with us today.