ATTRACTING AND RETAINING TALENTS
Québec International (QI) supports employers and institutions in the Greater Québec City area in attracting and retaining international talent, including both workers and students. To showcase the wide range of services we offer, such as international recruitment initiatives, training sessions, integration support, and more, we launched an awareness campaign targeting local companies.
With a $10,000 promotional budget, we rolled out sponsored social media posts, Google Ads, and placements in HR and industry-specific magazines, alongside organic content. Posts were shared through Québec International’s official channels and through our advisors’ LinkedIn profiles.
This campaign had two main goals: increase the number of companies participating in international recruitment missions, and raise awareness of the services offered by our talent attraction and retention team.
Our organic content generated over 512,000 impressions, 6,810 interactions, and more than 27,000 video views. LinkedIn proved to be the most effective platform for reaching our target audience, with posts published directly by team members delivering the strongest performance.
Posts highlighting specific initiatives or featuring human stories, such as testimonials, performed best. In contrast, generic promotional posts and reshared content from QI’s account were less effective than original posts from advisors.
On the advertising side, Google Ads delivered the best overall results. On LinkedIn, sponsored posts from our advisors reached a more targeted and engaged audience compared to corporate ads from QI.
While it’s difficult to determine if the campaign directly led to an increase in participation in international missions given changes to immigration regulations, the campaign was considered a success by all stakeholders.
Throughout the campaign, we continuously monitored performance to identify the types of content that delivered the best results, including videos featuring our advisors, business leaders we work with, and recruiters. Given the limited results on Facebook, we decided to reduce our efforts there and concentrate more on LinkedIn, where HR professionals and recruiters are much more engaged.
We also had to rely on a strong content and organic strategy, since a $10,000 budget over 12 months is quite limited.
We focused our target on recruiters and HR professionals from companies in the Greater Québec City area.
The campaign, from January to mid-October, 2024, included:
An awareness strategy:
- Creation of social media content with various types of infographics
- Videos of our advisors presenting the recruitment initiatives they were responsible for
- Written testimonials (with photo)
- Video with 3 recruiters on the benefits of participating in an international recruitment initiative
- Video showcasing the behind-the-scenes of an international recruitment initiative
- Video of the complete process of an international recruitment initiative
- Advertising in the Ordre des CRHA’s magazine (specialised in human resources)
A promotional strategy: social media posts, LinkedIn sponsored posts (Quebec International and personal accounts), and Google Ads (display).
This awareness campaign helped the talent attraction and retention advisors understand the importance of being consistent and posting regularly on LinkedIn, not just to promote their activities. The community manager provided training and encouraged them to stay active on the platform throughout the year.
The content developed for this campaign is still relevant today. It effectively highlights the benefits of working with our team and can continue to be used to ensure visibility across different platforms, including our website and newsletter.
