Take these Recruiting Methods from Marketers
1) Expand your presence. Marketers in 2012 are making themselves available a little bit, everywhere. Should recruiters do the same? Marketers call this “streamlining your brand presence”, which is a fancy way of saying “reflect the same persona to all people”. This is an excellent idea for recruiters for multiple reasons, the first being that many people in the job market don’t understand the full extent of what we do: finding people for jobs (and not vice versa). It’s also a good idea to keep your brand in front of jobseekers (who tend to use Facebook) and hiring managers (who may get their news via email or LinkedIn), creating a presence that works well on all these channels and even trying out a new one or two (Pinterest anyone?) is a smart move for any recruiting pro.
2) Place increased value on analytics. Marketers are finding they have to justify the ROI for newer channels like social and mobile. Recruiters are in the exact same boat. Hence the growing number of HR technology tools that feature a dashboard like tool, giving even novice recruiting (and marketing) pros the chance to view how their “campaigns” are doing at a glance. Getting used to focusing on data now is an excellent idea with nearly every business publication and blog (including us!) touting the advantages and impending tsunami of big data and pros who are ready and willing to make sense of it. Analytics, particularly real-time, allow users to tweak their content and channels for the most advantageous response, key for public facing jobs like marketing and…you got it, recruiting.
It’s said in management and leadership circles that “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” and this applies as much for social recruiting. The real problem though is what to measure that tells you the whole story of how you end up with the people you hire. Read this post from TribePad.
3) Zoom in on Video. Video is starting to matter more in business technology period, which means that it’s going to start affecting talent acquisition practices. While today it’s not part of a mainstream recruiting process, that day is sure to come. Smart marketing and recruiting professionals will start experimenting with enterprise and consumer technologies that use video, if only to get comfortable with video and see the possible practical applications of video in their daily processes.
4) Get mobile. Mobile has been talked about for a very long time in the recruiting and marketing spaces, but have you (likely the own of a mobile phone/device/tablet yourself) seen it advertising much more than applications for….the mobile device? Yeah me either. Savvy recruiters and marketing pros though aren’t ready to give up on the mobile device, in fact, bigger and better data plans, more access throughout the world and consumer tech are all pushing us closer to a reality where mobile is not just USED widely, it’s a key strategy in your overall marketing and talent acquisition plans for 2013.
This demands targeted, mobile-ready content and a willingness to adapt internal marketing processes. With 59% of UK consumers now in possession of a smartphone and 18% owning a tablet device (Source: EPiServer), mobile marketing is a trend that businesses can’t afford to ignore.
If recruiting truly takes much of its lead from how marketers are using technology and attracting customers, then the above (among many other things) are excellent things to focus on in the coming year.
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