I would always ask what is the business objective? When a brief usually asks for applications, it's rarely the business objective.

Often people want to fill roles in new markets or in new industries. They want to improve quality or they want to hire quickly. If we're splitting a campaign between awareness and applications. We're not treating it as part of the same journey. When we're focused on conversion only or applications, we're just looking at that active jobseeker, which is a smaller talent pool. Yes, that delivers on volume, but not necessarily quality. And that isn't what hiring managers want or generally what the business objective is.

Awareness in a campaign introduces your brand to a wider audience for candidates that potentially aren’t actively looking or that are working for your competitors. It also gets your brand in front of people that know little about you, or that you have opportunities for them. The balance is not either or. It's designing a campaign around the candidate journey that meets candidates where they are. So at the top of that funnel, you'll see awareness, the storytelling, communicating what makes you different.

Mid journey, our consideration stage, which for me is the most important and often the most overlooked is where candidates explore the fit. Do they see themselves working for you? See, we see channels like your career site, your social media channels playing a really important role here, where you're communicating the culture and the benefits. At the bottom of the journey, the bottom of the funnel, we see that intent. That ready to apply audience often on search and on job boards. Now, if we're only focused on that audience and we're only focused on application, we're missing that much wider influence and that much wider talent pool. Campaigns work best when those stages are connected, when awareness feeds consideration and consideration feeds applications because that ultimately gives you a better quality of candidate.

It gives you better hiring outcomes and it keeps hiring managers happy.