Let's see what the funnel would look like if adapted to recruiting.
Stage 1 - Awareness
The goal: To connect with your target pool of candidates and introduce yourself as an employer brand, then slowly unveil the variety of job opportunities you offer, your workplace culture, etc. These candidates can be folks who may or may not be actively pursuing a job change.
Stage 2 - Familiarity
The goal: To persuade them to consider a job change. In this stage, they compare you against the other options they have and start evaluating what’s the best decision to make.
Stage 3 - Consideration
The goal: To get top talent familiar with your employer brand - in this stage, they start actively collecting information about you - read reviews, ask friends who have worked with you, etc
Stage 4 - Purchase
The goal: The recruitment’s equivalent to marketing’s ‘purchase’ is ‘applying to a job’. You focus on getting people to apply for jobs at your organization and then eventually accept them when an offer is made.
Stage 5 - Loyalty
The goal: To build a two-way loyalty road with your current employees so that they love to work with you and keep choosing you as their employer over and over again.