My They Ask, You Answer Connection to Recruitment Marketing
As I was writing my online course - Better Message. Better Talent Pool. - I became aware that there were three main influences that have guided my approach to recruitment marketing. One of them was “They Ask, You Answer” by Marcus Sheridan.
In his book “They Ask, You Answer,” Sheridan tells the story of how he brought his swimming pool business from the brink of collapse to thriving success by using his blog to answer all of the questions that prospective buyers might have. He not only saved his pool business but pivoted his success into this book and a marketing agency. He now travels the world to share his down-to-earth insights and tactics surrounding They Ask, You Answer (TAYA) marketing.
TAYA is About Answering Questions to Influence Decision-Making
As a content marketer, I made it a practice to plug Sheridan’s TAYA approach to content creation into the content plans I created to follow the buyer journey. I even included a separate sheet on my planning spreadsheets to capture prospect questions as they came up in sales conversations.
What kinds of questions and answers are these? Sheridan talks about five main categories:
What does the product or service cost?
What are some problems that someone might encounter related to your product or service?
How can you compare options and weigh their pros and cons?
Who are the best companies offering the same product or service?
What are people saying about their experiences in reviews?
How does this relate to recruitment marketing? A job candidate’s journey has a different objective compared to a buyer’s journey, but there is one thing that’s the same: their behavior.
Technology Has Changed Human Behavior
Because technology has changed human behavior, people use the same activities to explore and research job opportunities that they use as consumers. In both scenarios, people hop around to different digital destinations gathering the information they need to gain confidence that they’re making the right decision.
What kinds of questions might job candidates ask in their decision-making process? They’re essentially asking what I refer to as the burning question: “Why should I work for you?” That question looks different for different people because they want to know things like:
What’s the work environment like at your company?
Do you value what I value?
Does your idea of work-life balance match mine?
Will my personal career goals matter to you?
How will you help me in my professional development?
Are you generous?
How does your company impact your customers’ success?
The way to answer these questions is through employee experience storytelling.
Related: Learn more about the burning question that job candidates are asking.
Answer Questions and Nurture Trust with Employee Experience Storytelling
Through stories, you can both answer questions and nurture trust. Job candidates are assured that what you’re saying is true because it’s not your company-voice speaking - it’s your employees talking. It’s the difference between saying, “This is what our company is like” versus “This is what it’s been like for me.”
Answering questions through storytelling isn’t as direct as answering a question like, “How much does this cost?” You must depend on the reader (or the viewer, if it's a video) to make their own connections, and you don’t have any control over that.
For example, an employee might share their experience about how they’ve been supported in their professional development by their employer. A candidate doesn’t see this as an example of the exact career path that they want to pursue. Instead, they get a feeling that they will also be supported in their career growth.
Did the word “feeling” pop out to you just then? As humans, we like to think that we only use logic to make decisions, but our emotions are woven into the process more deeply than we realize.
I encountered many examples of this when I did a series of new hire interviews for a client. As I asked people about how they researched the job and the company, they repeated things like, “When I read that _____________, it made me feel like ______________.
What Questions Are You Answering for Job Candidates?
Have a look at the way you’re presenting and promoting your job opportunities. What questions are you answering for candidates? If all you’re answering is “What will I do?” with a job description, you have a lot of opportunity to grow. You can answer the question “What will this be like?” when you start gathering and sharing employee experience stories.
There are two ways that I can help you stand out from the crowd by answering candidate questions through employee experience storytelling:
1) I can teach you how to do this through my course – Better Message. Better Talent Pool. (To be launched soon!)
2) I can do it for you – see my services page.
Either way, the first step is a meeting to get acquainted and explore your options.
