Recruiting Content: the Long Way to the Best Result

If you have not come across the words “Content Marketing”, enjoy the journey to Pluto.

If you Google the phrase, you will get 383 million results. If you are a member of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) representing 10,000 brands, you have just declared this the 2015 “Marketing Word of the Year”

Content Marketing is a big deal.  Small wonder, then, that it no longer sells just products and services, but people.   Recruiting content is the new buzz-phrase in the hiring business.

We looked at “why” in my last post.  Decision-making by job candidates has become a lot more complex, involving lifestyle choice to a far greater degree than a decade ago.  Good candidates want to know a lot more about the working environment and the values of the hiring.

In filling this gap, recruiting content covers a broad spectrum of needs.

At entry level, content that gives more detail of the job not only serves the candidate but pays back in time saved at the hiring end when a significant percentage of potentially eligible candidates drop out.

At a senior level, the driving force is reversed.  The hiring company is not that concerned about the job detail – unless it is quite unique – but is VERY concerned about making the company attractive to the right candidates.

 

You would like it here

A CFO is unlikely to be motivated by a detailed job description.  The main challenge for the hirer is to differentiate the company so as to attract the CFO to begin with.  This leads to putting carefully structured, motivating content in front of the target group.

Not every company thinks they need to do this.  Some of the biggest companies feel they are already well-known.

“Most companies are under the false assumption that just because they know what their company and logo stand for, everyone else does, too,” writes James Ellis, director of inbound marketing at TMP, a global recruitment advertising agency.

“But as a loyal shopper at Target or Walmart, I really only know the retail experience — not the employee experience. Companies seem to assume that because I spend time and money within their stores, I must have a positive association with their employer brand. But that’s a faulty assumption.”

These companies need to tell the story of what working at the company is like, what the office is like, what the job is like, and what the career path is like.

“That’s the information a job seeker in consideration of changing his or her life needs to hear.”

 

It’s not about the job

Recruiting through the use of inbound marketing strategies does not focus on a specific job opening.  The strategic focus is on building an Employer Brand that will be attractive to the type of candidate the company wants to attract when it does have an opening.

In this respect, recruiting content is operating at two levels, like thermal streams in the ocean.  Content may explain the attractions of a specific job, usually as long-copy ads in career media.  The longer term task is creating the image of the company, its values and its processes in such a manner that, when a candidate finally does come across a suitable opportunity, he or she is motivated to know more.

There is a third level.  Articles about the company itself will not necessarily be read by passives who are not contemplating a move at that time.  So the content needs to be more embracing, more on industry issues or generally positive trends.

Understood.  But where do you place this kind of content?

 

It’s an SEO World

You already know the answer.  The same process that swallows up significant amounts of your website budget applies here also – search engine marketing.

Your recruiting content is coded in the same way to end up in front of the type of people you want to appeal to by selecting appropriate social media channels.

This is a lot of work but it is rapidly becoming a necessary consideration in any recruiting strategy aimed at the higher employment levels.

Is it worth the effort?  Back to James Ellis, who runs a GMB verification service, and whose firm completed a study of 300 career sites.  This study showed the following impacts of recruiting content on candidates.

Entry-level job seekers were 30% less likely to apply after seeing content.  They self-select out and no-one wastes their time.

For the experienced veterans – 10+ years of experience – content made them 289% more likely to apply.

That could be called a win-win.