How to Talk to Your Boss About Recruitment Marketing
Everybody’s hiring right now and doing what you’ve always done with recruiting is just not getting the results that you need. Part of the problem is the employment landscape and the economy as we come out of a pandemic, but for some industries the low labor supply was already anticipated before the pandemic. Whatever the reason for the current situation, competition for talent is fierce and it’s putting stress on businesses, making it difficult if not downright impossible for them to meet their goals.
You can’t manipulate economic conditions and you can’t do anything about long term employment trends, but there are changes that you can make right now that will help you attract more of the right job candidates and that’s modernizing your recruitment strategy - and your recruiting process - with recruitment marketing.
Recruitment marketing is the use of marketing tactics to meet recruiting goals. You’ve probably never done this before, so you don’t have a budget. You’re going to have to get buy-in from your boss and possibly the leadership team. How do you even start that conversation, talk it through and tie it to better recruiting outcomes?
Recruitment Marketing Talking Points
The following are talking points to help you start talking about recruitment marketing. Read to the end for how to respond once you have your boss’ attention.
1. Our message is the same as everyone else’s.
Everyone is saying “We’re Hiring” and having the same message as everyone else doesn’t help us. We need to be different. We need to have a message that people will remember and will motivate action.
2. We’re missing a big opportunity to manage our employer reputation.
We have a reputation as an employer. We can either neglect managing our reputation and continue to be at the mercy of the people who choose to speak out. (usually the negative ones) Or we can intentionally spread the messages that we want people to hear by proactively managing our employer reputation.
3. We have to sell our company and our jobs.
Our best job candidates have options so we have to do more to influence their decision-making process. We have to give them the information they want so they can feel confident that they’re making the right decision to work at our company or even to take the step to apply.
4. We’re not aligned with modern human behavior.
Technology has changed human behavior and people use the same actions to research jobs that they use as consumers. People are dropping out of our process when they have trouble with our website or if they can’t get their “Why should I work for you?” questions answered through our online content.
5. We can’t keep throwing money at this problem.
Doing more of the same thing isn’t going to get different results. Let’s direct some of the resources towards a different strategy.
Related: Four Reasons to Switch to a Proactive Recruiting Strategy
What to Say When You’ve Got Their Attention
Now you have their attention. What do you say next?
The first step in a long-term recruitment marketing is the also the one that can give you some quick wins. What is it? It’s gathering and publishing employee stories and testimonials.
1. Employee experience is how we change our message.
“When we have stories and testimonials that illustrate what it’s like to work at our company, we suddenly have the opportunity to change our message from one that’s transactional (job for wages or salary) to one that communicates value like professional growth, culture, appreciation, and the opportunity to make a difference.
2. Sharing positive stories is how we manage our employer reputation.
Look around at our employees and pick out who we want more of. Those are the people who we want to choose for our first employee stories and testimonials. Not only can we promote the stories to our community and social media followers, but we can also share them internally putting a spotlight on the behaviors that we want to encourage.
3. Answering questions is how we guide candidates’ decision-making process.
Candidates are implicitly asking “Why should I work for you?” as they research our company and our jobs. While that question can be different for individuals, it can be answered through employee experience stories. For example, if someone is wondering about how we’ll support their professional growth, a story about how that played out in real life will answer that question and make us stick out in their memory.
4. Aligning our process with the candidate journey is how we match up with real human behavior.
We can give job candidates a path to follow that answers their questions and communicates our credibility as a good employer by publishing online content (starting with employee experience stories) and giving them a great experience on our website.
5. It doesn’t cost much to give recruitment marketing a try.
We can learn how to gather employee experience stories that will give us several months of raw content that we can turn into social media posts and testimonials to go with all of our recruiting messages.
BONUS – Discover What Employees Really Value
Hopefully, that gives you some ideas on how you can talk to your boss about getting a recruitment marketing initiative started with employee stories and testimonials. In addition to making your recruiting messages more compelling and memorable, something else will happen… you’ll discover what employees really value.
Get Started with Employee Experience Storytelling
My online course - Better Message. Better Talent Pool. - can help you get started with employee experience storytelling and walk you through how to interview employees and turn what they say into compelling recruiting messages. Details coming soon.
