When you’re trying to persuade people to apply for your roles you need to think about more than just writing a good job description and having a fancy online recruiting system. As recruiters you should be thinking like marketers.
If you want the best people to apply for your roles you need to convince them that your company is the best place to work. They’re the best candidates, they’re going to have other available options.
The best way to do this, is to employ content marketing efforts into your recruitment plan.
Most recruiters don’t think about content when they think about recruiting, but there’s no way to avoid it. If you want to be an effective recruiter then you need to know that content marketing will help you do this and has been proven to be the most effective in attracting not just new talent but the best talent.
B2B COMPANIES THAT BLOG GENERATE 67% MORE LEADS PER MONTH THAN THOSE WHO DO NOT BLOG.
If you can give candidates relevant content in the same sector as your industry, it’s a great chance to bring traffic to your website and your social channels. The more people who know of you, means more people will consider applying for one of your roles.
Using Google for recruitment is difficult unless you have large marketing budgets, and so content marketing is one way to attract your target audience. You can’t just write content about anything though, you need to make sure it’s engaging and relevant to your industry.
One of the benefits with content marketing is that it encourages your audience to have a conversation with your company or brand. Conversations are brilliant because they create a sense of comfortability that the reader feels when interacting with your brand and website.
When you’re having conversations with your readers about your content it truly shows they are engaging.
As we stated, using Google for your recruitment efforts is tough unless you have a big budget, but creating content is perfect for SEO. Search engines look for, and reward websites that are offering fresh content that brings value to the readers. Having the search engines reward you is effective because it helps boost your web presence, meaning more people can find you and there are more chances of the top candidates wanting to apply for your roles.
If readers are finding your content appealing and interesting, chances are they will share it amongst their own networks. This broadens the reach of your company and opens the doors for more people to find out about you and potentially apply for your roles.
It takes time in order to successfully put together a content marketing plan that supports your recruitment, but if done effectively it’s a sure-fire way of attracting and retaining the top talent
How do you go about organizing your content efforts for recruitment?
There are a number of steps you need to take:
- Define your audience. For this step you need to have a clear idea who your audience are, what their needs are, what they want to know. If you skip this step you’ll end up putting out content that just isn’t relevant and all you work will be pointless.
- Decide core reasons why your potential candidate is looking for new role. It’s important to get into the mindset of the candidates in order to understand what makes them seek out new job opportunities. Once you know this you will be able to align your content to their own goals.
- You then need to start curating your content. Remember you don’t have to create all the content yourself, simply pushing out content you think is valuable to your social media channels will solidify you as a thought leader and channel lots of traffic to your site as people become accustomed to you providing the most insightful content in their niche.
Did you know that marketers on average seem to be spending a quarter of their budget on content marketing, the reason is because it works.
When you are doing content marketing there are a few things you need to consider
1) Don’t make it about you.
If all your content is sales-y, people will want to avoid it. People go to content because they think it will bring them some value. The purpose of creating good content isn’t to sell, it’s to position yourself as a credible source and establish your company as a thought leader who understands the problems in the industry and how they can be solved.
2) When you write content, ensure it’s on topic
Think about your content and think about the people reading it. Think about the questions they have and the answers they want and make sure your content falls in line with that.
When you are cresting content before you begin please do ensure you have some sort of strategy in place. If you don’t have this then you run the risk of creating content that no one is interested in. This will hinder your advances rather than help them.
Part of creating a strategy is ensuring that you have your company culture understood and this culture is fed throughout all your content in many ways. Your company culture is what will attract the best candidates and so it’s important that they can get an understanding of this culture at any point when reading and taking in your content.
One way to apply company culture to content is to tell a story. Make it meaningful and interesting to the reader and allow for space in the story to explain why they might want to work at your company.
As we said you don’t have to always create content, simply pushing good quality content out that you find from other sources is a good method of attracting good perspective employees. However if you are running a blog your chances of attracting the best candidates significantly increases.
Studies show that people say they wouldn’t want to work at a company who had a bad reputation and so one way to ensure your company has a good reputation is to stick to the culture you align yourself with as well as ensuring that you’re giving enough valuable content out for you to be seen as an important asset in your industry’s community.
When you’re creating blog content one thing that is important is to stay current. Keep an eye on current trends and be sure to offer your own comments when something in your industry happens.
Basic elements of good writing such as keeping it structured nicely, breaking up larger paragraphs into smaller ones; taking large bits of information and using bullet points to hash out ideas are all ways you can keep your readers engaged by your content.
What people often forget