Recruiter, it’s time to think like a marketer!
A recruiter nowadays needs to be a great marketer, while a marketer doesn’t necessarily have to be a great recruiter. Do you agree? In recent years recruiters have realised that their role to search, select and hire new talent has changed to some extent. Marketing is not an activity which is limited only to the Marketing Department, lines between recruitment and marketing are increasingly blurring. A recruiter needs to look at his recruitment challenges from a marketer’s perspective: thinking and acting like a marketer. Creating and maintaining an excellent Employment Brand is one of many companies’ goals. This task should be conducted by the recruitment team but also supported by the marketing team.
In order to generate initial awareness and move candidates through a continuous recruitment funnel a recruiter needs to make use of the right tools and resources. There are many stages in the recruitment process which all include some marketing elements. It starts not at the interview stage but much earlier.
A recruiter’s task should also be to conduct some market intelligence in order to be more familiar with the local or national labour market. This would include: finding out who the competitors’ key employees are, where they are getting new candidates from and where they are losing people to.
When it comes to writing a job description and a person specification it needs to be written and created in such a way that it attracts easily great talent. Often companies also include descriptions of their corporate culture and the additional benefits they can offer prospective candidates in order to increase their employment brand. Using search engine optimised (SEO) keywords in their job descriptions is another important thing that would help to be found quickly and easily online. Having therefore great copywriting and creative thinking skills can be very useful and help to achieve this goal. But it doesn’t stop there.
One also needs to know what the most effective channels are in order to spread the word about job vacancies. Once applications are rolling in and it comes to the interview stage it’s again “time to promote”. The recruiter needs to market the job and the company to potential jobseekers in an attractive way so that the ideal candidate does not hesitate to accept the job when it is being offered. For Agency Recruiters this challenge is even more difficult because they don’t need to convince just candidates but also companies in order to make the perfect match and earn good money.
Employment Branding is not just a buzzword but an important factor which will gain more and more importance in the future. A company that wants to attract great talent needs to invest some thoughts on how to be perceived in an effective and impressive way as “A great place to work”. Every candidate is interested in knowing what makes the company “stand out”, or in other words “Why should I choose company X rather than company Y” if I’m faced with two offers. The Hiring Manager who is able to convey the message of being a desirable company by using words, pictures, videos, convincing employees testimonials and his personal enthusiasm will win. Let’s face it: Influential skills are required by both parties: the recruiter who is trying to fill a position and the job candidate who is interested in getting a new job.
Competition is getting tougher as time goes by and attracting the best talent is never going to be an easy task. Finding new and creative ways to attract talent is the key to success. This should possibly all happen in a quick, easy and cost-effective way. Having a strong employer brand makes it easier for candidates to approach companies and recruiters need to know how to make the best use of their recruiting as well as promotional skills and resources.