Are You Using Content to Recruit Talent? Here’s Why You Should
Recently, Hall wrote an interesting post for the Harvard Business Review Blog Network. The piece, “Your Content Strategy Is Also a Recruiting Strategy,” explores how companies can leverage content to attract talent. Hall was kind enough to expand on some of his ideas from the blog post in a conversation with us. Below is a transcript of our interview, with minimal editing for clarity.
Recruiter.com:We’re talking today about this idea of using content strategy as a recruiting strategy. Would you mind saying a little more about that idea?
John Hall:When we [Influence & Co.] first got in and started doing thought leadership, we didn’t look at it as a huge recruiting opportunity. It was used for sales, for personal branding — all these other things. What ended up happening is we started getting quite a bit of feedback saying, “This is really good for recruiting. It helps us attract people.”
People want to work for the best. They want to work for the people that they think they can relate to. For ourselves, we started seeing that we were getting some of our key employees from the content that we were getting out there. That’s when we started to think, “Wow, this is actually a huge benefit in the recruiting side of things.” People want to work for the best, and also they want to relate to a brand, relate to a company. Thought leadership is one of the best ways to do [help people relate to your brand].
RC:Why should organizations be looking to do this sort of recruiting? What advantages does it offer over more traditional means of recruiting talent?
JH:There are a couple. One for example is that, if you’re getting content out there, you’re educating [talent], so it actually cuts down on training costs. When they come in, they’re already somewhat prepared. They’re more prepared than the average applicant, because they’ve learned so much about your industry and where you’re headed as a company from your content. It’s a huge benefit when somebody will come in and they’ll already have some of the training process done.
Granted, it’s not going to be perfect: you still need to train your employees. At the same time, though, it does educate them in a way that they can hit the ground running.
At the same time, you can reach a lot of people in a more authentic way. If somebody sees a job posting, they’re immediately like, “Okay, I’m going to apply.” You never know if it’s the right people [applying]. They might just be looking for a job. But if you go about it this way, you get somebody who is actually naturally interested in what you do. If they sit there and read content from you and stay up on the trends, they have this natural curiosity towards what you do.
Ultimately, you’re also reaching a good amount of people. Your reach extends because this is basically a marketing strategy: you’re reaching the people you want to reach.
RC:What should organizations keep in mind before they start using content as a recruiting strategy?
JH:I would say that they need to commit to it. Don’t just dabble in it or do a half-assed job. The idea behind this is about putting consistent, high-quality content out there that educates people. When you’re doing it, don’t just say, “Okay, we’re going to do an article” or “Okay, we’ll focus on it for the next two months.” When it comes to the idea behind thought leadership and positioning yourself as that leader, you need to commit to it so that you’re getting consistent content, not just a sporadic approach. You won’t get those people consistently learning and coming to you consistently as a resource.
The other thing is, it has a lot of other benefits across your company. It’s not just about recruiting. Recruiting is a huge part, but it’s also a marketing vehicle. It can help your social team by giving them ammo to share out that content. It will provide your sales team with content that they can share and use to help convert new sales by educating [customers].
So, do it right and commit to it, and on the other hand, know that it has other benefits, so that other departments can benefit from some of these efforts.
RC:Are there any common missteps that you see organizations make when they try to position themselves as thought leaders?
JH:The main thing is that they don’t know what they’re doing, so they just start putting content out there, and it’s just noise. It’s not actually thought out. To do it right, there needs to be a thought-out strategy or a blueprint to go by that has your persona, that has your goals aligned to it. You have to extract the content in authentic ways. You have to have a process in place to get the deep, personal experience of your employees out there.
At the same time, you need to have a development and editing process that matches it with the publication or the place that it’s going. It could be LinkedIn, it could be an email marketing list — it depends. So having someone that knows your audience and knows where the content is going.
Also, leveraging it across marketing channels. Like I said before, you’ll miss out on a lot of value if you don’t. You’re creating this asset, and a lot of companies just create it, it gets out there, and they don’t use it in the proper way.
Companies may do one or two of those things right, but they just don’t do the whole process from strategy to actually leveraging that content, and that’s where there’s a lot of value that’s left on the table.
RC:You write that “content humanizes your brand.” I think that’s a really interesting statement, and I was wondering if you could expand on it a little more.
JH:We’re in a different world where it’s not just a brand voice, it’s actually the individuals within the brand getting out there. One of the best examples is LinkedIn opening up their publishing platform. Now, you’re able to contribute on LinkedIn, as an individual, where you’re out there representing the brand. There are more opportunities for individuals to get out there for a company and to have that voice. That leads to more opportunities to humanize your brand — for customers, partners, or potential hires to feel like they’re dealing with someone they can relate to, rather than a brand overall. A lot of time, people don’t trust brands, or they don’t feel close to them. But now you have these opportunities. It’s a perfect chance to get people to look at your brand and relate to it and to feel connected.