The One Direction You Need to Take in Recruitment Marketing

We’ve seen a lot of Mad Men references tossed around when it comes to the parallels between recruiting and marketing, but I took it in a new direction –One Direction. That’s right, I made the stretch all the way from boy band to recruitment marketing, and here’s what I was talking about…

I recently spoke on a webinar for Entelo, “Blurred Lines: The 3 Step Marketing Formula for Recruiting Success.” No, referencing One Direction was not a marketing ploy for some SEO juice, although it can’t hurt. I needed them as an example of what it means to really target and engage your candidates. The screaming, swooning hoards that wouldn’t bat a fake lash at trading in their college tuition for a concert ticket reach this level of rapture because they believe they are being sung to. When 1D sings out…whatever songs they sing, these girls believe they are speaking only to them. They are one in the audience that one of those skinny jean-wearing fellas would “drive all night” for… how does this apply to you? To get it, look at what millennials are searching for (hint: meaning)

Research the Target

Boy bands with this type of hype aren’t born; they’re created. Consider your target and the methods you have traditionally used to reach them. The marketing term we’re going for here is “buyer personas”, and all too often recruiters will mistake job reqs for being the recruiting parallel for buyer personas. Tghat’s wrong because it focuses on the job, not the person. Let’s check out the tools and tricks that can help you target:

Website metrics like time-on-site, job campaigns and source-of-traffic are easy enough for recruiters to get their hands on, and the familiarity of metrics will feel like home during your marketing cross over. Find out how your career portal is doing by diving into your site metrics. There’s always room for improvement when we’re talking about a lot of company’s number one source of external hire –the career page.

Micropulse surveys are the hidden gem of creating target profiles, or “buyer personas”. Many recruiters are already creating ideal candidate profiles based off of information gained from their current key talent. Micropulse takes this best practice one step further. These short, simply surveys from providers like SurveyMonkey are inviting and super efficient at gathering the data that recruiters need to create the most accurate profiles.

Meaningful Messaging

Again, recruiters have to stop confusing job requirements for anything other than what they are –job requirements. Recruitment messaging is sort of like your reputation, you may not consciously work on your rep and my not even know you have one, but you have sure enough been building one all along. What do your communications, images, social shares and job ads say about the company, or even that position? More importantly, what do they say about the person who will ideally inhabit that position?

Start by defining what you want your recruitment messaging to look and sound like. Don’t be vague! It’s hard enough for a team to craft an image without the inspiration being “positive”. Refine your message and map out a specific goal for every point of communication. Did you include a CTA (call to action)? If not, consider how clear you’re truly being.

Automation/Nurturing

So let’s talk about these nets that recruiters are working with these days –they are getting hella (marketing for “quite”) big! Something’s gotta give, and automation is the key. Marketers have been nurturing sales with marketing automation platforms for probably longer than it should have taken recruiting to catch on…no offense! The tech is now available for recruiters, it’s cheaper than ever and it makes those ridiculous nets manageable. The tools I mentioned during the webinar are SharpSpring, Hubspot and HarchBuck, which will enable users to sort applicants, create the simplest or most robust campaigns and get targeted with social messaging. Automate now, thank me and One Direction later.

Check the replay!

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Maren Hogan

Maren Hogan is CEO of Red Branch and general Bad@$$

Maren Hogan is a seasoned marketer and community builder in the HR and Recruiting industry. Maren started Red Branch Media and, before she hired all the smiling faces you see below, she ran it on her own. In marketing for over 15 years, she has deep experience in strategic campaigns and a long-term, results-based operational approach.