Recruiting & Hiring Tactics vs. Talent

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

Recruiting strategies have grown increasingly complex over the years. As an industry, we’ve done a wonderful thing by taking what we know about traditional recruiting and combining it with the ideas and tactics from other industries. We’ve taken bits and pieces from industries like sales and public relations, but perhaps one of the most leaned on industries we have available to learn from is marketing. In a lot of ways, what we do is closely aligned with what marketers do on a daily basis. We’re marketing our company as an employer of choice, they’re marketing their company as a leader in whatever it is that they do. We market job openings, they market products. It makes sense that we would be taking similar actions to reach our audiences.

Though there are probably more similarities than we can discuss in one sitting, I believe that there are two major ways we resemble each other: outbound and inbound strategies.

Inbound vs. outbound

Outbound and inbound marketing both have the same end goal - to win the sale, or in our case, hire the candidate - but the ways in which the two are handled are very different. Inbound marketing refers to an unsolicited response we receive from a marketing effort, such as an advertisement or job posting. We made the initial effort of advertising the product or job, but the customer or candidate proactively contacted us. Outbound marketing refers to our efforts to find candidates or customers and solicit a response, such as through a tradeshow, career fair, online sourcing or personal leads. The difference between these two tactics is that the customer or candidate is at a different place in the buying decision, therefore our approach must be different.

For those who proactively respond to a job posting, connect with us online at the prompting of an ad or seek out a conversation, the initial buying decision of applying has ether been made or is being contemplated. It shouldn’t be discounted that the actions they took very likely have to do with your efforts to reach them through one or more touch points, but in the end they took the initiative. Those you make contact with through outbound recruiting strategies are typically not as far along in the buying decision and in fact may never have even contemplated it before. They’ll probably require more education, effort and time. The strategies required to convert these two groups of prospects must be different because they are in different places.

A perfect mix

It’s unfortunate that many companies, HR departments and recruiters tend to be really good at one or the other, but many times not both. A robust and successful recruiting strategy requires both. This is especially true as companies scale and grow over time. Pushing your jobs listings only outward is not the best way to fostering long-term relationships with candidates, which is important for building a candidate pipeline and planning for the future. On the other hand, relying only on personal connections and employee referrals closes you of from thousands of potential candidates. The most successful companies will diversify, using many different channels and tactics to reach candidates. 

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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.

Your CEO Is More Likely to See Social Media as a Tool in Hiring Than Marketing

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

Your company’s CEO may not spend her day Tweeting or check Instagram during her daily commute, but chances are, she sees it as a highly valuable tool in hiring at your company. In fact, it’s likely that she even places it above marketing materials and your company’s website. That’s what a recent study by Universum revealed after they talked with CEOs, HR and recruitment managers and marketing managers and directors. When asked how important social media was in employment branding, thirty-eight percent of recruiters and HR professionals said that social media was extremely important, followed by 35 percent of CEOs and surprisingly, only 31 percent of marketing managers.

What the numbers mean

As a social recruiting advocate, I find the numbers both encouraging and somewhat lacking. The fact that more than one-third of CEOs see social media as the most important channel for employment branding is huge! I can remember the days of fighting an uphill battle many years ago as I tried to incorporate social into my hiring strategy. Today, many recognize its value. While we obviously have a long way to go, I revel in the fact that we’ve come a long way.

On the other hand, it’s discouraging to see that less than half of recruitment and HR managers don’t see it as the most important channel. Social is where the most innovative, and arguably successful, recruiting has occurred in the last several years and it’s here to stay. Recruiters must realize that this is where candidates are engaging, so we’ve got to meet them there. However disappointing this number might be, it is understandable. Recruiters are not spending their time focusing on employment branding but instead on simply finding qualified candidates. Building your employment brand on social is a worthwhile investment, but an investment many don’t feel they have the time, resources or skill for.

In the case of less than a third of marketing managers and directors seeing social media as the most important channel for employment branding, I think there’s a disconnect occurring. In the same way that many recruiters aren’t equipped to develop a robust employment brand, many marketers don’t know why a robust employment brand is important. They can market products and services, but they’ve never been recruiters. So while they may see social as a vital part of their overall marketing strategy, they may not understand how an employment branding campaign can fit in that strategy.

Moving forward

There are a few ongoing struggles that occur between recruiting teams, executives and marketing professionals that contribute to the confusion of what works, what’s worth the time and what’s a passing fad. However, I think the strongest position for all to take is to become collaborative, each party learning from the others. We as recruiters need to understand marketing strategy and social tactics better, CEOs need to understand the value of today’s tools and marketers need a glimpse into the recruiting world. I believe that with a better understanding of all these concepts, recruiters will have the room to work creatively and be supported by their organization, both in spirit a

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.

How to Recruit in the Era of Personalization

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

We live in a time where one-size-fits-all marketing is no longer the standard. All around us, companies are aggregating data with nearly every purchase we make, website we visit and even the apps we use, and then using that data to customize ads, emails and more. We’re in a time when every person receives their own unique ad campaign targeted specifically at what marketers believe will sway us. If this sounds like personalization you wouldn’t be a fan of, keep in mind that it also goes far beyond marketing, and we welcome it with open arms. My home thermostat knows when I walk through the door and customizes the temperature to what I like. When I turn on my TV, Netflix suggests movies I might like based on my past preferences and when I visit LinkedIn, it seems to know that I’m somehow connected to that person I met at a conference last month. Recruiting is personal just like our expectation of the internet of things.

This is where we are. As consumers and individuals, we have come to not only enjoy personalization but also have grown to expect it. So with everything else around us providing customized experiences, why is it that so many recruiters and HR pros still haven’t gotten the memo? We’re past one-size-fits-all marketing and we’re past one-size-fits-all recruiting and retention.

First things first: listen

We may not feel like retailers are listening to us or that Netflix cares that we like the new show they added, but they do. The information they gather from our likes, dislikes and habits is exactly what allows them to provide a unique experience. Similarly, our industry must start listening critically to those it wishes to recruit and retain in order to create an experience that those individuals connect with. What might you find when you set out to listen? You may discover where and how your targets prefer to communicate, how aggressive of an approach is right and even unique characteristics that connect you to them.

Connections are everything

Marketers may use targeted ads to remind us what we were looking at on their website yesterday, but recruiters and HR professionals have an even more powerful tool. Relationships are not only essential to successful recruiting but also provide a distinct advantage over those who cast a wide net and never connect. Relationships and connections allow us to provide the ultimate customized experience for candidates and employees as we learn about each person as an individual. Through these relationships, we’re able to gain knowledge about what’s motivating a move, where a candidate would fit best, similarities between candidates and more. Most importantly, a relationship allows the candidate or employee to get to know the company better and provides a tangible tie that a one-size-fits-all approach never could.

Go back to the basics

At the end of the day, you may not be able to personally connect with every candidate you wish to hire and every employee you want to retain, but you can use basic knowledge and customization to create an experience that sets your company apart. Start with simple and basic tools, like making sure to use a candidate’s name in correspondence, responding to their inquiries and following through on promised communication. These things seem basic, but it will create a more positive experience than most companies are offering.

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

How to Win at Candidate Engagement in Corporate Recruiting and Hiring

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

We all know that employment branding and candidate engagement are important in recruiting the best candidates, supporting the larger business brand and market initiatives as well as providing job seekers information and timely updates on where they stand in the hiring and recruitment process.

As social media continues to push companies to provide real time engagement and information to their customers, so is candidate engagement for prospective job seekers who increasingly are customers of your company’s product or service first.

Candidate engagement is more than just an automated email to a job seeker when they apply or if you don’t go forward with them in the hiring process. It’s a deliberate act where companies and recruiting teams work to reach the job seeker prior to them applying or expressing interest in the job opening as well as throughout the entire hiring, recruitment and candidate courting process.

Candidate engagement does more than provide job seekers and prospective employees with a warm and fuzzy feeling. A candidate engagement process creates a formal strategy that helps to define and outline the different engagement and relationship points with your prospective employee. While I’m a fan of informal conversations, having an information communication and engagement strategy in place creates not only a consistent flow but allows recruiters and hiring managers to create a standard engagement strategy that supports the over candidate experience which in turns sets the state for your company’s formal employee engagement strategy.

Companies with formalized and deliberate employee engagement strategies can link the success of these programs directly to employee productivity, lower turnover and success as an employee. In fact, Aberdeen’s September 2013 Employee Engagement study shows that 75%of best in class organizations are able to align changes in organizational profitability to employee engagement efforts compared to 31% of all other companies.

• Create a Formal Candidate Engagement Process. Map out your candidate engagement process. Document that engagement points and the responsibility of who will make contact or engagement with the prospective employee. Create a consistent flow of engagement allowing for candidates like customers to experience consistent and amazing service regardless of where they are in the candidate selection process.
• Leverage Technology. Aside from automated email messages and turndown letters, consider create ways to reach your job seekers using technology but with a custom touch. This could be in the form of creating custom recruiter template messages, text alerts directly to job seekers or live online chats or informational webinars between recruiters and candidates to field questions and give them insights into the culture of your company.
• Spice Up Your Delivery. Not every individual responds or prefers communication and engagement the same way. Different mediums and methods resonate with audiences depending on experience, age, geography and other factors. Use a variety of methods to delivery your communications like video, content marketing through blogs, social media or mobile messaging. Ask your recent hires their preferred ways to receive communications and prepare to change and customize your delivery methods frequently.
• Provide Resources and References for Job Search Success. A job seeker’s biggest frustration about the hiring process aside from receiving consistent communication from employers about the status of their application is feedback and how they, the job seeker can improve in marketing themselves as a potential employee. Companies are reluctant to give individual feedback so they opt for no feedback, resources or information leaving candidates feeling alone, upset and in the dark. A simple job search toolkit provided to every job seeker who isn’t offered a position is a great way to help job seeker’s understand the hiring process, ease frustration and leave feeling warm and fuzzy feelings about your company.

Candidate engagement doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective when building relationships with job seekers who are considering working at your company. A simple yet deliberate and planned approach is often best providing information about the hiring process, updates on the current status of application and available resources about your company and the overall hiring process sets the stage for the marketing, customer and employee engagement efforts at your company.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs. 

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