One effective strategy for building and maintaining relationships with clients and potential customers is through hosting in-person events. These events not only allow for face-to-face interactions, but also provide a unique opportunity to showcase your company in a new light on social media.

When I talk about recruitment marketing and employer branding with people who are new to these disciplines, the topic of “employer value” comes up quickly in the conversation. My explanation challenges people to think beyond pay and benefits for the reasons why people not only decide to work for them but stay with the company.

I once read that the biggest compliment you can give a teacher is to create something new with what they taught you, and that’s what I did with Adele Revella’s Buyer Persona framework. I learned Revella’s process for talking to buyers to find out about their decision-making process from reading her book and taking her Buyer Persona Masterclass. I synthesized what I learned into the framework that I use to talk to employees and find out what they value.

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.

As I was creating my online course – Better Message. Better Talent Pool. – I had to think hard about the process that I was using to interview employees and turn what they say into compelling recruiting messages. The challenging part was taking what I did intuitively and distilling the process so I could teach other people how to do the same thing.

When I was at the beginning of my learning path in recruitment marketing, I came across the concept of “employer value.” The idea of communicating with value isn’t any different from what I had been doing for years for my marketing clients and employers. I just never intentionally applied the concept to creating messaging for job candidates.

It’s generally less expensive to sell more to your existing customers than it is to go out and find a new customer. What if you could add a category to your marketing consulting or agency business that could increase the amount of work you do with existing clients and open the door for new business too? You can with recruitment marketing.

What you’re relying on the most to pull in quality job candidates might in fact be doing the opposite of what you want it to do. It’s your job posting. To find out if you’re totally misusing your job postings, ask yourself if you’re doing this - Does your job posting a click-through to a pdf? Does your job posting link directly to your applicant portal instead of a page on your website? Are you using your internal job description as your job posting? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then you’re missing out on the real purpose of your job postings.

How many “We’re hiring” messages are you seeing in a day right now? A lot, no doubt. If you need to hire, you’re probably trying to get the word out in as many places as possible. However, if you’re always leading with “We’re hiring,” your message is blending in with every other company with the very same message. What you need to do, is to stand out and be memorable in the minds of your candidates and referral community. The way to do that is with employee testimonials.

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.

If the only way that people can respond to your recruiting messages is by applying for a job, you’re missing a big opportunity to build a recruiting pipeline. Not everyone who’s interested in a position at your company is ready to apply when they become aware of you. And you might not have an open job that’s a fit for a potential candidate at the exact time that they made their way to your website.

There are so many “We’re Hiring” posts on social media right now. While there are unique challenges for different industries, just about anyone who needs to hire workers is struggling with recruiting. Sharing your hiring needs with your network and community is definitely the right thing to do, but when you attract the attention of a potential applicant you might be sabotaging your success when they go to your website to learn more about you and can’t find what they’re looking for.