Wow, I just listened to this podcast interview of the self-proclaimed “Employment Brand Boundary Breaker” Audra Knight (her real title is Recruitment Operations Manager for Tenable Network Security).

And a shout-out to TA/Innovation consultant Matt Alder of the Recruiting Future Podcast who interviewed her — I enjoyed your interview style and am now checking out your other episodes.

Audra and Matt were so awesome that I transcribed my favorite 3 minutes (the full interview is 29 minutes!) in which Audra gives her take on the impact of content marketing, job descriptions and recruitment videos on recruiting strategy:

Audra Knight Matt Alder Content Led Recruitment Marketing

Matt: Why should recruiting teams be investing in video? For those that do, what are some of the common mistakes?

Audra: Too many generic videos that I don’t think are very useful on career sites where it’s like one employment brand video and they say all of our employees are fantastic and our CEO is the best, those things might true, but if everyone is saying it who cares it’s just not interesting.

They are often overproduced so they just feel like a big yucky commercial and for me I don’t want to watch that, I’d much rather see an employee with their phone saying I went to this cool event or conference because my company paid for it.

I think the future of video is going to be less produced and more authentic, more in the moment. Less produced is very important.

Live video I think is going to be huge.

Matt: What’s your advice for employers using job descriptions as content?

Audra: My friend James Ellis said “Your career site doesn’t matter at all”, which is kind of controversial.

But his explanation was spot on, people aren’t going to your career site first, they might go there if they have an interview to do some research, but they are landing right on your job descriptions from Indeed, Google, or whatever job boards you’re using.

They are going right to your job descriptions, they are missing your careers site, so we need to focus more on having some culture content on your job descriptions and more what’s in it for them.

Recruiting Future Podcast Logo

I think it’s too easy to say we need this, this, and this, apply today.

They want to know what’s in it for me, why should I work for your company. We are trying to flip that a bit and say we need this, but here’s what we’re going to give you and then also a bit about our culture.

We’re rolling out templates so at the bottom of the job descriptions it talks about our teams, our culture, and for engineering jobs it’s engineering stuff and for sales it’s more sales content, that depends on your ATS though…

…I know that’s a challenge for some and everyone can’t do that, but you definitely can spin the messaging a bit more to say what’s in it for them and add a few photos or more info about your culture.

So it kind of becomes a mini career site, each of your job descriptions, I think that’s ideal.

For tips on writing job descriptions, check out How to Write a Job Description — Best Practices & Examples.

by in Job Descriptions