TO HIREFROM CULTURE

HOW MARKET I NG CAN A I D THE RECRU I TMENTH I R I NG L I F ECYCLE

The recruitment landscape is changing. As newtechnologies emerge and develop, the industry todayexists in an entirely different world than it did twentyyears ago. The relationship many recruiters andcandidates have with technology has meant that thebalance of power has shifted. Today job seekers have anincreasing number of options, thus relying less onheadhunters and clients. Recruiters are under morepressure as they deal with attracting, engaging, retainingand qualifying candidates - especially if they are slow toadopt emerging technologies. And while stats showwe’re spending increasing proportions of our budget ontalent marketing software, technology and marketing,few people seem to truly ‘get’ it. In fact, as recruitment,technology and marketing become more symbiotic,getting the candidate experience right is more importantthan ever before.

Introduction

This paper is designed to demystify what candidates nowexpect from the recruitment process. It aims to help guiderecruiters through the confusion of embracing influencesand techniques from technology and marketing to form acoherent and functionally useful way of thinking aboutbuilding candidate relationships.

CANDIDATESE X P E C T A T I O N O F

The internet has had a transformative effect oncandidates, the recruitment industry - andtherefore marketing. The pace of business isfaster, the internet boom providing hordes ofcompetition in the same space, and, as a result,recruiters need to network and retain lastingrelationships with clients and candidates quicker- and less intrusively - than ever before.Candidates spend more time online acrossnumerous devices. At their fingertips, they haveaccess to more information than they could everconsume. What’s more, there is a widespreadexpectation that candidates will be able to applyfor jobs, as and when they want, withoutdisturbance.

If the recruitment hiring process isn’t alignedwith the candidate’s expectations, talent willdrop off during the hiring cycle. Because online,the balance of power between candidates andrecruiters is weighted in favour of the candidate.

Despite this, candidates have becomepessimistic, feeling that as the relationshipbetween society and advertising is renegotiated,content specific ads and hard sales are pushedon them. Consequently, they won’t toleratebeing on the receiving end of anything deemedinauthentic.

This poses a conundrum for recruiters: ifcandidates expect recruiters to build-long termauthentic relationships, while having the agilityand flexibility to fit their technology-drivenculture, how can they bridge the gap fromculture to hire?The logical solution is that recruiters can nolonger afford to get in the wayof candidate culture. Instead they need to be acentral, contributing part of it. Recruiters need tostop interrupting their candidates and work withthem. This belief is central to marketing.

"IF THE RECRUITMENT HIRINGPROCESS ISN’T ALIGNED WITHTHE CANDIDATE’S EXPECTATIONS,TALENT WILL DROP OFF DURINGTHE HIRING CYCLE."

WHY DO WENEEDMARKETING?

If effective, this content will not only increaseclick through and conversion, but will create apositive brand perception with the candidate.At this stage everything across the brand’sowned platforms needs to be consistent. Ifthey drop off the website to validate yourcompany values elsewhere, this brandingneeds to function as a complete suite acrossall stages of the candidate journey no matterwhere they reach it.

While 94% of candidates say the website isthe first thing they look at when researching acompany for the first time, it should also benoted that candidates will arrive at yourwebsite through ‘side-doors’ such as search,social platforms or campaign content likeadvertising and paid media. This means anypublishing platform should become amanifestation of the brand, its personality andits values. This enables the brand to curatecontent for that candidate audience,comment on and even cultivate a companyculture that meets its audiences interests. Themore time candidates spend with a brand, themore likely they are to use it as a desireddestination or point from which to share‘trusted’ content. This can help bridge thegap between a candidate culture and a hire.So recruiters need to see that a constant andpermanent online relationship withconsumers through the company brand isessential.

When it’s done well, marketing should offera seamless candidate experience thatsupports the recruitment hiring process andhelps to deliver leads.In marketing terms, having a consistentonline brand presence and engagedaudience will result in better conversionrates. Recruitment companies thatsuccessfully martial these elements willenjoy better search ranking positions andbrand awareness. This in turn, helpsrecruiters establish their own online identitywithin an existing digital infrastructure.

While most candidates will not in their day-

to-day lives care about the recruitmentbrand, there will be occasions when theyare genuinely more interested in it thantheir own cultures. When they leave a joband finding a new one becomes a priority,for example. They will inevitably look to arange of recruitment company websitesand company pages as part of theirresearch stage. And when they are lookingat this, what they want is conversioncontent.

Conversion content is designed to helpcandidates, clients – or the casual browser –discover more about your company valuesand services, with the ultimate goal ofguiding them to do something. This mightbe to submit a CV, apply for a job, downloadyour app or request a call back from arecruitment consultant.

94%How Recruiters Can

Use Branding TO

Engage Candidates

As the company brand is building credibilityonline, so too can recruiters via a long-runningassociation with a company culture and sharedvalues and beliefs. It might sound simple, butinitiating a conversation with one of yourcandidates on one of your own company postsis a simple means of showing you’re engagingwith your talent pool, driving traffic to yourcompany and aligning yourself with brandcontent. This shows that you – personally - arepart of a wider conversation. The more activeyou are, the more your own online brand willgrow by extension.

Creating your own online personal brand is bold andthe reality is most recruiters still fail to realise theimportance of this. However, those that do will reapthe benefits. The content produced online has avaluable function for the candidates as they spendtime with the company brand, connecting withshared values, relevant industry specific updatesand points of view. Furthermore, the blending offunctions doesn’t make candidates feel like they arebeing given the hard sell. All these actions areprofitable for the recruiter and ultimately, theboundaries between marketing and recruitmentshould merge - and 94% of candidates agree withthat.

MOBILE-DRIVEN

The average person checks their phone 150 times aday, equating in about five hours of screen time. Gone are the days of companies viewing mobiletechnology as a cultural inertia, now, mobiles areviewed as the agile marketplace, enabling us to useall available technologies from one source. The risein digital has made it easier than ever for people toquickly find experts to share their skill sets.Connecting with people - full stop - has never beensimpler. What consumer’s value today is community-

based innovation which has seen the growth in ‘softassets.’ Take for example peer-to-peer innovationsGlassdoor and kununu - business models based onan online rating system.

Back in 2013 the collaborative economy was beingcited as the third major development in the digitaleconomy. It was heavily linked with social media asan eCommerce feedback platform, perfect fordiscussing brands in an open arena. In three years,huge gains in this area have been made. Behavioralmetrics are now being evaluated alongside exposure, reputation and emotional connection.

Long-term, recruitment companies will look to jointhe connected, collaborative economy. Withsmartphones overtaking sales of PCs and withmobility being a clear gateway to the web,integration and collaboration with a single swipe orpress of a smartphone is the future. That's why job-

seeking apps for mobile simplify the process forcandidates, much like semantic search technologiesdo in getting round the pitfalls of general-purposesearch engines.

Recruiting software like applicant tracking systemsto manage the hiring process, video chat, fullymobile-optimised websites with candidate specificareas and career sites built into platforms likeLinkedIn are key touchstones for recruiters toconnect with their talent pool. But so too are newinitiatives like mobile remarketing. Here visitors to awebsite, or applicants to a job that have dropped offduring the application process can be tracked. Newtechnologies are becoming readily available tounderstand and leverage technologies relevant tomobile channels. The better recruiters are atdissecting data, the better insights they can deliver.

"THE BETTER RECRUITERSARE AT DISSECTING DATA,THE BETTER INSIGHTS THEYCAN DELIVER."

Marketing for recruiters is a simple way to incorporate content that reflects the reality of today’scandidates. It’s one that respects them, finding out what interests them and then promotingbrand credibility to answer their interest without disrupting them. Recruiters who haveembraced the technological renaissance and are using data-led precision to develop insightsinto their candidates and how best to engage with them already know this. Understandingcandidate needs and expectations and then creating branded content around that is key,because the days of disruptive marketing and recruitment are over. Now more than ever,recruiters need to employ a multichannel approach to inform their work and help marketing bysharing the online culture created if they expect candidates to bridge back to hiring.

CONCLUSION