While many companies start recruiting by crafting job postings and attending recruitment fairs, the battle for in-demand talent requires a more robust strategy.

When courting in-demand workers, companies often focus on just pay and benefits. That’s it. But the modern high-skilled employee also wants to understand what makes your company different from competitors. Before applying, the best talent wants to learn about your culture, work-life balance, and how their work fits into their larger community.

By branding the workplace—your company’s capabilities, culture, community impact, training and mentoring programs, and career advancement opportunities—you proactively create a pool of motivated candidates looking for a way to join your firm.

If your company has a hard time finding enough ready candidates close to home, expanding the marketing campaign to include feeder markets can help. Feeder markets can mean many things. The most ideal are concentrations of defense-tech firms in other cities. Targeting workers by job title and industry can help, as well as specific skills you need. You can even micro-target larger company campuses or office parks.

Another approach is to target job titles and companies in a similar industry. These companies might employ workers with similar skill sets but work outside of the defense tech scope. Workers might be attracted to your unique culture or the nature of the company’s mission. Regardless, marketing to these workers requires unique campaigns, messaging, and visual images that feel on-point and relevant to the target.