Tips to Unleash Your Creativity and Attract Candidates

Catching candidates’ attention, reaching out to them, and getting them to actually respond to you is a tricky process. Therefore, it’s time for recruiters to start viewing themselves as an individual business that is in need of some branding. Each recruiter should be creating his or her very own brand image that is related and recognizable to potential job candidates. Content marketing is a growing concept in successful brand management and can benefit recruiters who market their content right to catch any candidate’s attention.

The divide between recruiting and marketing is starting to diminish as recruiters are adopting marketing strategies to increase their leads. Content marketing generates about three times as many leads as traditional marketing according to Yahoo. Check out these simple steps you can take to build your recruiting brand through content marketing to gain more leads.

Curate content.

Social media sites and blogs reach 80 percent of all U.S. Internet users according to InboundWriter. What should you as a recruiter do with all of that opportunity to reach candidates? Share, share, share! Don’t just share mindless job opening posts with your followers. Engage followers with newsworthy content related to your mission. Share articles that relate to the career industry, profession, and culture you’re recruiting for. Give your followers a reason to view your page. Posting credible, interesting content that isn’t all about the job you’re trying to fill is a great way to reach all (even passive) candidates. This is also going to benefit you when you reach out to candidates. Think about it. If a recruiter reached out to you and only talked about the certain position he or she was recruiting for, you’d be a bit bored. However, if you had seen this person posting daily relevant and exciting content you’d probably be more interested in what the recruiter has to say. Take a look at how this recruiter engages his followers on Twitter. @RecruiterMurrel successfully mixes up his tweets with recruiting content from various sources, fun photos of his daily life as a recruiter and various social recruiting tactics! Check out his twitter here for some inspiration!

Unleash your creativity.

Social Media Today shares that “visual content is processed by the brain 60,000 times faster than text.” Therefore, use visuals in your social strategy. Instead of posting a plain job description on your Facebook try adding the text to an interesting picture. Haiku Deck and Canva are free programs you can use to create images with text. Experiment with your creativity and see if you can develop a new way of sharing career opportunities. This is especially popular for Facebook, but it can even be used on Twitter! Take a look at this tweet from Recruiterbox. This is a perfect example of using an image to share an interesting stat that relates back to your recruitment message. This brings me to the next tactic, because it is a great way to bring attention to your blog.

Start a blog.

If B2B companies that blog generate 67 percent more leads than those that don’t (Social Media Today), then the same can most likely be said about recruiters. Blogging is a great way to display your content, career opportunities and contact information to job candidates. Plus, blogging lets your voice be heard. Sharing your personal recruiting experiences and expertise in a blog gives candidates a better perception of who you are as a recruiter. They need trust in you in order to come work for your organization. Share content from the company you are recruiting for as well as your own original work. Don’t know what to write about? Check out the 10 commandments of Content Marketing 2014 to learn more about how to create your own content marketing strategy. There has been so much talk about recruiters using marketing tactics to attract more talent. Recently at the SHRM 2014 Conference in Orlando, David Novak highlighted the importance of HR professionals to think and act like marketers.

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Originally posted on Recruiter.com

photo credit: Shélin Graziela via photopin cc

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.