5 Things You Can Learn From Inbound Marketing in Your Recruiting & Hiring

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

As a marketing strategist who earned her stripes working in HR and recruiting, much of what I do centers around engagement, community and relationships. When I made this transition, it was a major shift in my career but it wasn’t a 180-degree turn around because what I quickly found out is that marketing has striking similarities to recruitment and hiring. And what I’ve seen through the years is that the recruitment function is becoming more and more like marketing every day.

Marketing is all about promoting, reinforcing our brand, fostering connections and creating channels through which customers can engage. Recruiting leans on those activities heavily to find, engage and hire the best candidates by focusing on building an employment brand, developing an employee value proposition that is in line with an employee's needs and wants, shaping the public’s view of the company through a number of ways using multi-channel messaging and creating unique campaigns that reach a very targeted and niche candidate community.

You may not know it, but you’re probably already using inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is one of the most significant ways we achieve customer or candidate reach and response goals, in both marketing and recruiting. Inbound marketing focuses on creating channels for customer traffic to occur and engaging community members by using specific messaging and materials. Essentially, inbound marketing happens when we promote and engage with the hopes of customers, or in our case, candidates, circling back around and engaging us or making a buying decision. In recruiting, these efforts could mean providing a downloadable resource or job seeker template, or providing a salary negotiation guide video series for technical candidates.

Whatever the platform, messaging or method you use to engage as well as attract candidates, inbound marketing in recruiting focuses on these five things:

Your website or career site as a foundation

Your website or career site is the force holding all your efforts together. It should be where candidates know to go first anytime they have a question, are interested in your company or are ready to make the buying decision of applying for a job. It should be easy to navigate, optimized for high listings in search results, feature content people want, and most of all should help candidates engage and take that next step in the decision making process.

Creating candidate landing pages that convert

Creating landing pages that relate to what candidates are searching for, from “cover letter templates” to “tech jobs in California,” is simple and it works. The key to move them along in the buying decision once they’re there is the language you use.

Speak to your candidates as well as employees

In marketing, research is the first step and guides most of the decisions marketers make. Take a lesson from the profession and talk to candidates and employees about what’s working, what’s not, where and how they’re looking for jobs, what the company has to offer, where you’re lacking and more. Not only does it help you make the best inbound marketing recruitment decisions but it also provides a good baseline if you choose to measure your efforts. (Which you definitely should.)

Go visual

We are visual people living in a visual world, so as important as the words you use are, an image or video can sometimes say more than an entire page of copy could. Use visual channels and use pictures and video in your communications and channels that you wouldn’t necessarily consider visual as well.

Make your website sticky

Your inbound marketing will likely send candidates to your website or careers page, but what’s going to make them want to stay there?  Make your website sticky, that is, make them want to stay, with free resources, great content, ways to engage and more. Give them a reason to hang out a while and you’ll make an impression on them.  

TalentCircles is the most comprehensive candidate engagement platform on the market. Take a product tour or request a live demo today. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology anthropologist specializing in HR and recruiting. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs and author of The HR Technology Field Guide. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell. 

3 New Types of Candidate Content to Elevate Your Employment Branding Efforts

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

The race for the right candidates is moving faster than ever and recruiters are responding by trying out new ideas to reach the best and brightest. One of the most effective techniques that we’re seeing used today is a focus employment branding throughout content. We know that content is king, and we’ve found that it’s not only a great way to reach candidates but also provides us with countless opportunities to brand our companies as employers of choice – the type of place that anyone who comes across our content will be intrigued by.

The challenge with such a focus on content and using it to showcase an employment brand is that after months or even years of using content to attract candidates, things can get stale. While you must keep content fresh, it can be challenging since the messaging is likely strategic. The answer to creating candidate content that elevates your employment branding efforts is where you share.

Get creative with these three channels by creating new content, repurposing previous content and meeting candidates where they are.

Podcasting

Podcasting is my new love in the content world. I’m especially drawn to how it can be as structured or as laid back as your brand requires, how easy it is and the personality and employment branding you can infuse in each episode. I’ve now created around 50 Workology podcasts, and it hasn’t been an enormous commitment to record the 25-30 minute episodes.

Many employers are seeing the benefits of podcasts for employment branding, such as Marriott’s The Wandernaut Show that is geared toward reaching millenials. It’s innovative, creative and helps the company stand out to young candidates among the hundreds of other employers in the hospitality industry.

Periscope

Periscope is fairly new on the scene but live video broadcasting is the future of not only recruiting but our day-to-day lives as well. Early adopters have already seen a great deal of success with the app, such as HootSuite’s Operation #FollowTheSun campaign. The company has been able to engage candidates across the world in a new and exciting way that increased engagement and promoted their employment brand with simple real time streaming video.  

Virtual networking and events

The majority of our candidate pool lives and breathes online, so it’s not much of a leap to hold a virtual job fair or networking event. These are growing in popularity and are a great way to build relationships, answer questions and get to know your job seekers. They’re efficient, provide a much wider reach than your average job search event and are certainly cost effective. The easiest way to do this is my using a talent network technology that enables this type of event, such as TalentCircles.

Employment branding is all about sharing resources, information and insights into what makes your company a great place to work. In this competitive candidate market, it’s imperative to use content and your creative assets in new and exciting ways to engage the best candidates for your company.

TalentCircles is the most comprehensive candidate engagement platform on the market. Take a product tour or request a live demo today. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology anthropologist specializing in HR and recruiting. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs and author of The HR Technology Field Guide. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.

Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen: How to Unify Your Employment Branding Efforts #SHRM15

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

These days, employment branding is on the hearts and minds of many talent acquisition leaders. Even though it seems to be everywhere, it is still a relatively new phenomenon and subset of the recruitment industry. The concept is developing rapidly and catching on, but it’s still in its infancy. One of the ways that the concept is growing is through conversations happening all over the place. Employment branding thought leaders are sharing their own best practices and evangelizing in the field through communities like the newly formed Employment Branding Chat on Twitter, or #Ebchat. I love all the conversations, resources and questions shared on these social peer communities. It helps professionals learn from each other and helps in identifying trends as this subset of recruiting and HR continues to develop.

One of the issues that I’ve been able to identify as a problem for many companies and HR or recruiting teams is what to do when you have too much employment branding. This is both a challenge and an exciting problem to have. This means that your people are actively promoting the employment brand and truly get it, though the team’s efforts need to be consolidated and focused.

Consistent, fluid and focused messaging

It’s amazing to have buy in on the idea of employment branding from many team members, but like traditional marketing, it’s important for your message and conversations to be fluid, in line with the current campaign and clear. When you are a large organization it’s hard to get a handle on the massive amount of recruiting and talent acquisition materials and information that recruiters and hiring managers want to be shared, but there absolutely has to a consistent, fluid and focused message, and all your people must embrace it.

In order for this to happen, your organization should exercise employment branding unification, which is essentially the simplification and organization of your employment branding efforts. When you unify, all communications, media pieces and collateral materials are in line with the brand.

With these four steps you can unify your efforts to ensure employment brand success, which means that recruiters have what they need and candidates aren’t overwhelmed:

Conduct an employment branding inventory

Research, absorb and account for all media, materials and branded elements used in the recruiting and hiring process. Talk to your recruiters to ensure that no one has gone rogue and is using materials or messaging they created independently.

Organize and sort your materials

Develop categories so that materials are easier to sort through. You can sort by topic, candidate type, when in the process the material is used or really any other way that makes sense for your team.

Prioritize and purge

Find out what messages resonate with your employees and candidates and hone in on those. Those that don’t should be set aside or recycled for another later campaign. Quality should be the focus, not quantity.

Create employment branding buckets

Authorized materials for different campaigns can be stored in each bucket. Your “bucket” could be as simple as a Google Drive, Dropbox or could be housed within your TalentCircles Talent Network. Give your candidates options of information and resources to absorb and engage with while also providing recruiters and hiring managers with materials and guidelines based on the specific campaign.

TalentCircles is the most comprehensive candidate engagement platform on the market. Take a product tour or request a live demo today. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology anthropologist specializing in HR and recruiting. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs and author of The HR Technology Field Guide. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.

Why Employment Branding and the Candidate Experience Matter

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

Right now the job market is growing every day, our economy is booming and recruiters are stretched thinner than they ever have been. It’s an exciting time for businesses to be expanding and recruiters to be challenged professionally, but we’re past the point where good old sweat and hard work will get the job done. With the job market as healthy as we’ve seen it since 1999, it takes a village to engage, hire and retain talent in your organization.

If you’ve seen that it’s more challenging than ever and that your time to fill has increased over the last several months, you’re not alone! I’m here to tell you that economic indicators are pointing that the job market will continue to challenge us. High quality candidates will remain in demand, boomers will continue to retire, millennials will continue to turnover between a year and 18 months. In short, recruiting will not only remain challenging but with the talent pool shrinking, you will also have a harder time recruiting, onboarding and retaining talent at your company.

The solution to successfully recruit in 2015 and beyond is to make employment branding and candidate experience part of all that you do. These two strategies are intertwined and should be weaved through every effort. This is the best way to make an impact on your hiring efforts. Here are five tactics that your probably already putting to work that can be enhanced by employment branding and focusing on candidate experience:

Candidate engagement

I would argue that candidate engagement could be the most important tactic you can use, and when you add in employment branding and a focus on candidate experience, these three things play off of each other so well. Candidates are more likely to engage if you’ve been exercising your employment branding, and if you approach candidate engagement with the mindset of creating a positive candidate experience, you’re more likely to be consistent and leave a better impression. Build your engagement around these two strategies to see the most return on your investment.

Improved candidate quality

This is probably what first comes to mind when you consider why to focus on employment branding. Improved candidate quality is a result of both your efforts and a reason why you should focus on these two things. Employment branding helps candidates better understand your company, leading to a better fit.

Developing talent pipelines

Developing talent pipelines is essential for staffing your company in the future. As a recruiter you must think long term and be prepared to establish relationships with prospective candidates and passive job seekers that will last for years. This only happens when you respect them, create a positive experience, solidify your brand in their mind and focus your efforts.

Expand the brand

When you’re engaging candidates, seeing improved candidate quality and developing talent pipelines, expanding the brand is bound to happen. When you also add employment branding and candidate experience to the mix, you’ll see a major boost in expanding to reach different types of candidates in all different places.

SEO

Search engine optimization happens through strategic efforts, and this is certainly true when it comes to recruiting. This will come from the work you’ve done establishing relationships online, via social networks and in person, both internally and externally. It’s then that your company will get noticed online and in real life.

TalentCircles is the most comprehensive candidate engagement platform on the market. Take a product tour or request a live demo today. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology anthropologist specializing in HR and recruiting. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs and author of The HR Technology Field Guide. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.

How to Create Clickable Content in Employment Branding

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

Employment branding is one of the most talked about strategies in recruiting right now and there is a focus on creating content that is clickable and contagious. While this is a great focus to have, we’ve got to remember that employment branding is about far more than just a high click rate. Employment branding is an overall strategy, not a tactic. One of the tactics that support your strategy may be creating content that you hope will spread like wild fire, but employment branding is all encompassing and goes beyond the content.

No matter what type of tactics you use, clicks are not the end goal. The end goal is getting highly qualified people who fit settled at your company. There are three ways employment branding helps us achieve this:

It assists in acquiring high-quality applications. – By being transparent, consistent and highlighting the benefits of working with the company as well as the ins and outs of the job, you’ll see higher-quality applicants. This means someone who has the skill level you’re looking for and fits with the company culture. Remember that it’s not all about skill, or even culture fit. A CEB study found that candidates who fit the company culture are 12% more likely to be a quality hire, but those who fit with the people they work with are 30% more likely to be a quality hire.

    It helps to convert candidates into applicants that join our talent network. – Your company’s talent network is a place that can help convert candidates, get them connected and move them from a mindset of uncertainty to knowing they’re headed in the right direction. Employment branding helps get them there.

     It enhances the brand, which you’ll benefit from for years to come. – One of the most valuable aspects of employment branding is the ability to help shape your reputation and in turn the public’s perception of you as an employer.

Where clickable content comes in

If these three aspects of employment branding propel us forward to reach the end goal of a successful, satisfied workforce, then where does clickable content come in? Clickable content is used throughout an employment branding campaign to reach targeted and specific candidates that we might otherwise not reach or convert from our existing efforts. The goal here isn’t for everything we produce to go viral. We don’t need or even want that every time. Instead of simply thinking clickable content, think clickable content with a purpose.

Clickable content with a purpose isn’t about quantity, it’s about quality. Quality content will yield quality hires. Think about these three essentials for creating quality clickable content:

Information that people want and need

      Stop selling your company and start providing content that your candidates need, want and are looking for. The type of content you produce will be determined by your target candidates.

Language that grabs people

    Quality content is a must, but you’ve got to convince people to click on that link before they can experience the value of it. Use headlines that are exciting, relevant to your target candidates and are inclusive – think we instead of me.

   

      Be in the right places

    The most shareable content in the world isn’t going to be shared or clicked if it’s hidden. Use your social networks, company blog, personal connections, LinkedIn groups, employees who are your brand ambassadors, industry-specific message boards and any other channel that has been proven to work for you to promote it. It’s not going to share itself, so get out there and do it.

TalentCircles is the most comprehensive candidate engagement platform on the market. Take a product tour or request a live demo today. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology anthropologist specializing in HR and recruiting. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs and author of The HR Technology Field Guide. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.

5 Ways to Repurpose Your Employment Branding Content

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

Content is a major part of any employment branding campaign, and a lot of time and effort goes into creating content that people want, need and are looking for. Since we work hard to produce quality content, we definitely want to make the most of it and get the most bang for our buck, so to speak. Repurposing content is an excellent way to achieve this. It allows you to recycle previously used content and share it in a new way. It’s not just a great way to get the most out of your efforts but it also creates real added value. If the content was relevant and popular six months ago, chances are that people will still find it relevant today. Present it in a new way and you just might reach an audience you weren’t able to the first time around.

Take a look at these five ways you can repurpose your employment branding content:

Use Video

It’s 2015 and video absolutely should be part of your content strategy. You can repurpose almost any other medium, such as a blog or webinar, and create a short 90-second video that hits the highlights. This can stand alone, but it also provides you with video that you can embed in a blog or elsewhere later on. Feature other resources in your video by directing people to a downloadable resource, landing page or blog.

Get visual

People are much more likely to stop and look at an image than they are to spend 10 minutes reading your content. Take advantage of our visual nature by choosing your best, most popular interactive content and creating a visual image for sharing on Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest. Be sure and use a bit.ly link to drive candidates to a specific page when you share it so you can see your social return.

Create a slidedeck on Slideshare

Slideshare slidedecks combine the best of a blog and webinar. They’re easy to digest, you can read at your own pace and on your own time, but they’re also more interesting than paragraph after paragraph of content. Turn your existing content into a slidedeck and you’ll be able embed it in blogs and on your recruiters’ individual LinkedIn pages. As a bonus, you’ll also be driving different traffic from a new audience. Pro tip: use Slideshare’s pro version to monitor analytics and landing page information.

Write a blog

It’s great to have a blog post that’s groundbreaking, but not every post is or needs to be. You also need human interest stories that candidates can connect with, so take a popular series of quotes, a Q&A or an employee story, and publish it on your blog. You can also repurpose infographics, videos and webinars into blogs. With each new medium you use, you’re likely to reach a new candidate audience.

Blend your content

You know by now that you can turn a blog into an infographic and a webinar into a video, but have you thought about taking bits and pieces from various content and blending it together? Consider finding two topics you’ve created content about that are aligned and playing off of that to create something new. You can also do a compilation, such as “10 things we learned this year” or “15 best kept secrets of…” and use several different resources to pull together something fresh, new and consistent with your employment brand.

TalentCircles is the most comprehensive candidate engagement platform on the market. Take a product tour or request a live demo today. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology anthropologist specializing in HR and recruiting. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs and author of The HR Technology Field Guide. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.

The Future of Recruiting and Employment Branding is Video

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

Earlier this month we talked about how video broadcasting is key for your employment branding. We’d like to expand on the topic today and show why it’s the future.

As recruiters, we are constantly looking at ways to reach and engage potential candidates. From Twitter chats to Instagram to Pinterest, we’ll try the strange, the out of the box and the things no one else is doing. However, sometimes the best thing we can do is jump on the bandwagon. If our goal is to reach candidates where they live, work and play, then we should look to what media they’re using on a regular basis and how they’re using it. Increasingly, the answer is video.

Consuming video on a daily basis became a part of our lives long ago, but a few recent developments have made it even more present and even more likely to be used in our industry. From Meerkat to Periscope, live video broadcasting is the wave of the future for individuals, retailers and believe it or not, our industry too. While the buzz of these two video broadcasting apps has surely been impressive, it’s LinkedIn’s recent acquisition of Lynda.com that has me saying now more than ever that video is not only the next big thing in recruiting and hiring but is also here to stay.

It’s a digital world we are living in, and right now video storytelling is the best way to share resources, engage with your audiences and take advantage of a new opportunity. Your candidates, who are consumers, are in the middle of a mobile revolution and they expect you to be a part of it as well.

Simply put, it’s video, video, video for everything. Take a look at these four ways you can introduce video into your recruiting and employment branding.

Video job announcements

Technology like TalentCircles allows recruiters to seamlessly upload video and share with their circles. Talent community members who view video are encouraged to learn more about the organization by joining its talent community, which can be accomplished with a simple social sign in through LinkedIn, Facebook or Google+. Video job announcements also offer added value by increasing your ROI on employment branding efforts.

Day-in-the-life videos

Give candidates a peek inside your company with videos that show a condensed version of a day in the life of an employee or team. These video serve as great candidate resources, providing insights into the company culture and allowing them to learn more about the organization and positions before they apply.

Become human again

Technology has done great things for recruiting, but it has also made recruiters seem anonymous and the talent acquisition process hidden. Get out from behind the technology by stepping in front of the camera. Video reminds candidates - and recruiters - of the people behind the HR technology.

Video “interviews”

In our day and age, time is precious and geographic boundaries mean nothing. Use live video chats to engage with candidates without them having to come to you, whether as a pre-interview screening, an informal chat or a formal interview, and allow them to use the opportunity to find out more about the organization as well. Asking questions and building relationships long before the job seeker actually applies can only mean better quality hires.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology anthropologist specializing in HR and recruiting. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs and author of The HR Technology Field Guide. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.

Video Broadcasting is Key in Your Employment Branding & Recruiting Strategy

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

I don’t know about you, but my Internet time is largely spent viewing videos rather than reading. Given the choice between watching a short video or spending even just five or 10 minutes reading an article, I will choose video every time. If this sounds like you as well, we’re not alone. In fact, it’s predicted that by 2017, 74% of all Internet consumed will be video. While most recruiting team don’t currently rely on video for employment branding and it doesn’t make up a significant portion of their strategies, that’s going to change.

There’s nothing new about video, but what is new are the platforms on which we’re viewing it and the way it’s being used. If the only way you use video is a company culture video put on YouTube and imbedded on your LinkedIn page, it’s time to rethink video entirely. We market to candidates in the same way retailers do, so we’ve got to follow their lead and adapt to the changing landscape of how our users interact online.

Where it’s happening

YouTube will live on and we can continue to pay agencies to create recruiting videos, but real-time video is the next wave and it’s happening through platforms like Meerkat and Periscope, both live video-sharing platforms that just launched a few weeks ago. Much like Instagram and other social networks, they offer a very personal and engaging way of talking to your network in real time.

When it comes to recruiting, Meerkat and Periscope are powerful mediums but they are limited on what they offer. They are one-trick ponies. I love these tools, but I prefer to put my recruiting team in the driver seat and use an HR technology platform like TalentCircles, which integrates video into their existing platform, allowing for live broadcasting, recorded video and video interviewing technologies.

The future of video broadcasting in recruiting

Recruiters can use these live video-broadcasting tools to attract potential candidates, reach the lurkers, create conversations, and get to know candidates. As with any social network, you don’t own the connections or contacts within your community and you don’t control the unique experience they receive on Periscope or Meerkat, but you can facilitate a positive interaction and gain immediate feedback on whether or not it’s being well received.

Video broadcasting also offers real time perspectives, testimonials and engagement that can’t happen with recorded or scripted videos. Participants become part of the production and are able to learn, engage and invest with you and your recruiting team on the fly. The power of live broadcasted video is the unscripted nature where broadcast attendees help steer the video and not just watch, but experience it.

It’s the visual representation of the power of social networks. While the broadcaster might be responsible for sharing, the community is ultimately in control, making video even more appealing than ever before.

Video broadcasting combines what we love about social recruitment – easy access, two-way conversations and wide reach – with the appeal that video has in our day and age. From retailers to recruiting, video broadcasting is the next big thing in marketing. Is your employment branding and recruiting team ready?

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.