How Content Can Elevate Your Recruitment Strategy - Part One

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

In case you haven’t noticed lately, content is king. In marketing, in entertainment, and in recruiting, content is what people are looking for. Even if you’ve never considered what marketers are using, all you need to do to see evidence of this is consider the many online channels you use on a day-to-day basis. From Twitter to Facebook to blogs you follow to videos you watch to pictures that make you stop and look, content is everywhere!

If you’re not using content to reach candidates, you’re missing out on a massive opportunity that goes beyond paid advertising. Content can elevate your strategy in a way that dollars just can’t.

What content does for recruiting

Content marketing in recruiting is powerful. It’s a form of digital storytelling that helps people identify with what you’re saying, find themselves somewhere in the story and picture themselves at your company. It’s funny that even in our information age, companies are still holding back on sharing with candidates during the hiring process. Companies who are doing it right are experiencing the benefit of information sharing and storytelling through content marketing. In part two of this series, I’ll talk more about a couple of companies whose lead you should follow when it comes to content, but for now I’ll just say that they are leveraging content to build relationships, tell engaging and memorable stories and educate candidates. In turn, they’re seeing better hires and fewer unqualified applicants for open positions.

Is all content created equal?

Many people hear content and think only of blogs, but as I mentioned above, there are numerous and diverse content creation and promotion opportunities. I do actually believe that a blog on your careers page is the best place to start because it’s simple, provides you with content to push out through social channels and allows you to talk about anything you want, at whatever length you want.

However, it’s not just blogs that can tell stories. Video offers both traditional and new storytelling opportunities. You can use a scripted video, provide a live stream, or anything in between. Beyond blogs and videos, there are numerous other channels. Infographics, microblogs like Twitter, photo-sharing apps like Instagram and the newer channels that are new on the market or have yet to even be released provide (or will soon provide) an almost endless number of ways to produce content.

Making it happen

Content doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does require strategy. To develop your strategy, start with some research to discover what types of content drive the highest quality candidates and where candidates are interacting so you can improve your reach. It’s so important to understand the job candidate audience you want to reach before you build any content for recruiting and hiring.

A good strategy will outline the type of content you’ll produce, the frequency and the ways you’ll distribute and promote content. Good content just doesn’t happen. It takes research, time and a great deal of trial and error. You’ll probably make a lot of mistakes, but you’ll also find that it gives you greater reach and more in-depth communication than you can get anywhere else.

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.

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.

3 Ways Recruiters Can Use Twitter Hash Tags in Their Hiring Strategies

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

There’s something so simple about Twitter and its 140-character messages. That simplicity lets users get to the point in sharing resources, information or connecting. If you caught part one and two of this series, you saw that one of the things I love most about the social network is that even with an enormous amount of Tweets in your feed each day, you can still hone in on what’s important because of the brevity of the messages. I also talked a lot about how employers can use Twitter chat to grow their candidate following and connect with candidates.

In those posts, one of the tools I discussed for starting or growing a Twitter chat was hashtags. However, their use goes far beyond Twitter chats. In fact, recruiters and talent acquisition leaders can use Twitter hashtags as a way to focus employment branding, employment engagement and recruiting efforts.

There are a number of companies already doing so, and there’s a lot to be learned from those who are doing it right. Here are three ways, and three companies, that are leading the way in their use of Twitter hashtags:

Employment branding

Using hashtags as a way to drive awareness of your employment brand is just smart. It reinforces the message you’re using throughout a campaign or even as the backbone of your employment brand and promotes employment brand recognition.

A perfect example of this is Amtrak’s use of #teamamtrak as a way to encourage customer, employee and job seeker engagement. Doing so allows all parties to interact, giving candidates a 360-degree view of the company. Unifying the hashtag allows the employment branding team to better quantify their efforts and counts impressions and number of tweets as part of their regular reporting on engagement and relationships established through Twitter.

Employee engagement

Companies like Adobe use a Twitter hashtag as a way to encourage employees to be involved and engaged with one another, sharing what it’s like to work for Adobe. Their #adobelife campaign started as a simple, no-cost, grassroots effort and grew organically throughout the company as a way to share employee experiences of life with Adobe. By engaging employees this way, the company is making use of their best employment brand ambassadors and offering transparency to candidates.

Recruiting efforts

From featured job listings to Instagram pictures or even an employee Q&A, HP uses their #hpcareers hashtag to drive candidate interest and awareness, and they’re doing it really well. They also use the hashtag to organize and broadcast campus events, job fairs and other recruiting events they are attending, allowing them to not only reach casual job seekers but also be tracked and found by those who are specifically interested in a position at HP.

These three companies are making use of a simple concept to grow their employment brand and attract candidates, and your organization can do the same. Be consistent with your use of a hashtag, get your employees on board and let candidates know they can find you through it as well. It’s a simple, free way to find your next employee.

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.

Suspects versus Prospects

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

Recruiting strategically is different than relying solely on candidates to find you. This is also the fundamental difference between suspects and prospects. These terms are generally marketing terminology not traditionally found in the recruiting world, yet they have a fundamental place in your targeted recruitment strategy. In order to fully understand how these work in recruiting strategies we must first take a look at their definition.

The use of the word 'suspect' in recruiting is one of the least used and least understood. This term has been used frequently in the sales and business development roles, but rarely do you hear it in the recruiting space. A suspect is just a name, title, phone number and/or email address without any proof that the potential candidate is a high performer or a match for a specific position within your company. A recruiter must put emphasis on the high performance of suspects because their main focus is recruiting TOP talent and not just filling positions. A suspect is someone who the recruiter believes to be worth calling without having any proof on if they’re qualified.

Suspects are important parts of the recruiting process, but when it comes to making a recruiting call they tend to be hit or miss. Having a name and number tells the recruiter nothing about the qualifications or success of the individual. Calling suspects is considered cold calling because you have absolutely no idea about who they are or their qualifications. Suspects are a great source of referrals, networking and something producing a few prospects, but the overall ROI is low and recruiters cannot survive on these alone.

Merriam-Webster defines a prospect as “an apparent probability of advancement.” A recruiter can only adequately make some type of determination over the qualifications of a candidate by accessing facts, evidence, or information related to a prospect. Internet searches, Linkedin, social searches, real world verifiable results, and referrals are just a few ways recruiters can source information on a prospect. For a candidate to be upgraded from a suspect to a prospect there must be some type of reliable information present for a recruiter to make an educated guess.

When it comes to recruiting, a prospect is someone with the probability to become a candidate based on the facts a recruiter has found. Being a prospect obviously doesn’t mean that they have any interest in a specific role or company, but that they are actively engaged through conversation and are continuously building a relationship with their recruiter. Suspects and prospects are terms that aren’t used as frequently in the recruiting world, but both have their place. The process of recruitment is all about searching, qualifying, and finding top talent that fits into your organization. Moving a suspect to a prospect and then a prospect to candidate is all in the art of recruiting. It’s often the most difficult, but yields exceptional results. Each step is critical and if followed, you’ll reap the benefits in the end.

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. 


Photo Credit.