Think Like a Marketer for Your Next Hire
The fundamentals of good marketer are to attract the consumer with a strong and reputable brand, motivate them into action, provide an excellent experience and retain their loyalty. A company brand that is well recognised and delivers in experience and performance will continue to attract customers over its competitors. Now apply this tactic to your next recruitment strategy.
What may seem like an unlikely pairing is in fact a critical partnership that can create a working culture that is on-brand and effective at delivering a talent-centric approach to the overall employment experience.
Once you have a strong and clear brand, it will translate as a holistic company culture that communicates an authentic and meaningful experience for its current employees. Positive employees who are fulfilled in their roles will be the biggest ambassadors to attract more talent to the organisation.
An employer brand is critical to not only attract the top talent but provide a culture that incites ongoing loyalty to the company. A company culture must be inclusive and true to the core values of the organisation to attract those with a shared vision and filter out those whose ideas are not aligned. This can only be obtained once a brand is strong, clear, consistent and instantly recognised as one that favours the employee experience.
Marketers know how to sell a product by making it sound and look attractive – and a necessity. Job descriptions should be written as creative copy alluring the top performing talent with an offering beyond the salary and company car. Include a description of company culture and any added value such as mentoring programmes and ongoing training to keep employees relevant in their industry.
Beyond an attractive product, marketers know how to reach their audience. Gone are the days of desperate talent actively seeking and competing to fill roles they found in the back of a paper. The way people search and apply for roles is changing. You need to understand your audience and know how to reach and influence them.
Marketers know how to sell a product by making it sound and look attractive – and a necessity.
Strategic brand engagement will create an opportunity for your biggest ambassadors to market your organisation, so start the loyalty from within. Employees must understand and feel connected to the brand through engagement, value and ongoing commitment.
Company social media channels are an opportunity to ‘advertise’ your staff and culture so all your digital should be up to date and truthful – employees can Google Glassdoor and find out what it’s really like to work for you. If you are claiming Friday socials and a ‘fun’ culture but your ‘said’ values are not consistent with employee experience within your organisation, your culture will be illusive and turnover high.
Employees want an insight into what it is like to work for an organization and the role they will fill. For this reason, use of video in your recruitment campaigns can be highly effective and tenure extended. Keep your social media active with team bonding, events and socials.
Marketing success is measurable by data and analytics. A marketer has a deep understanding of their audience through the study of behaviours and attitudes. They can conclude what works, when, why and what doesn’t. Their tactics are then adjusted to target specific demographics – ultimately pulling a small group from the masses that will have the most effective application on your product or service.
Recruiters can strategically use data to understand current employees, motivations and determine the traits of the top performers within the organisation. Once you understand what attracts and retains a top performer, you can adapt your recruitment strategies to target these specific traits. Strategic use of data can determine the effectiveness of training programmes. Data-based strategies can be implemented via training programmes, new employee orientations and performance evaluations.
Data is key to continually improving processes. HR must think about data more strategically; it’s not just about collecting the data but knowing what the data empowers you to do when you have it.
With the adoption of marketing techniques, organisations are able attract and manage talent, gain better insights and create a holistic positive experience for current and future staff.
Mike Taylor
Founder and Managing Director of BBT Digital.