Interviewing is certainly the process by which we make the determination to hire someone. However, there is another critical component to the process that too many businesses neglect—creating interest in potential employees. Just as bad prescreening will lead to poor interview success (you’ll end up interviewing people that can’t do the job), a lack of effective marketing will lead to poor acceptance ratios during the offer stage. A critical part of every technical recruiter’s job is to market opportunities to potential applicants. But marketing can’t just be a headhunter’s responsibility. Companies (interviewers) must market to interviewees at every stage of the recruiting process.

When we refer to marketing, we’re not suggesting that businesses just share frivolous facts like how there’s a company pizza party every full moon. Rather, companies must take care to provide information to the candidate that will reduce the perception of risk. After all, candidates are interviewing companies and making assessments to reduce their risk of taking a bad job. So what makes for good interview marketing? Naturally, it’s just good information about the job, project, environment, future, and prospects.

Here are some questions that must be answered during the interview process.

What will the candidate be doing? Why is this interesting?

What growth opportunities will the candidate have?

Why should the candidate want to work for the company?

Effective marketing will answer these questions for the candidate as early in the process as possible and reinforce them at all stages. The later the stage in the hiring process when marketing actually begins the less effective it becomes. If you save your marketing punch for the closing stage of a candidate’s offer its reception will be lukewarm. Inserting a corporate spokesperson (ideally a future co-worker) into the interview process is highly effective in increasing offer acceptance ratios.

Remember, the company that provides the most information to a candidate during the interview process will almost always beat a competitive offer.