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Content’s (still) king in marketing, so why wouldn’t it be in recruitment marketing?

Reading Time: 5 minutes

SmashFly, a Stories Inc. partner, released its second annual Recruitment Marketing Report Card for the Fortune 500. The document provides an insightful look into best practices and emerging trends in recruitment marketing.

Browsing it from the Stories Inc. perspective, you’d think this post would be about the fact that ‘Employee Stories on Career Site (video)’ and ‘Employee Stories on Career Site (written)’ were two of the criteria in the Emerging Recruitment Marketing Practices section of the Report Card. Helping companies with these exact tasks is an important part of our business, so we were glad to see that 45% of the Fortune 500 share employee stories through video on their careers sites.

But I’d like to talk about something more subtle that the Report Card implied:

Content is (still) king in marketing, so why wouldn’t content also be king in recruitment marketing?

As I digested the Report Card, it occurred to me that more than half of the criteria across the three graded sections of the document — Best, Emerging, and Untapped recruitment marketing practices — directly require the creation of content, even if it’s for something as simple as the text of an automated email.

Let’s take a look. I’ve listed the Report Card’s criteria below and highlighted the criteria that would directly require the creation of content in one form or another (note: to be conservative with my highlighting, I did not highlight items that would indirectly require the creation of content, like optimizing pages for SEO):

Best Recruitment Marketing Practices

[Company Careers] is First Result on Google
Diversity Content on Career Page
Mobile Friendly Career Site Home Page
Campus / Internship Content on Career Site
Social Sharing within Job Description
Mobile Friendly Job Search
Military / Veteran Content on Career Site
Job Families Content on Career Site

Emerging Recruitment Marketing Practices

Job Landing Pages are Search Engine Optimized
Employee Stories on Career Site (video)
Mobile Friendly Apply Process
Sign Up for Job Alerts
Outline the Application Process
Employee Stories on Career Site (written)
Send Confirmation Email After Signing Up
Events Landing Page on Career Site
Email Designed with Company Brand and Colors
Social Careers Profiles or Hashtag
Social Content other than Jobs
Join Talent Network / Community from Career Site
Unique Content in Job Descriptions
Send Regular Email Communication

Untapped Recruitment Marketing Practices

Join Talent Network / Job Alerts in Apply Flow
Candidate Blog and/or Resources
Link to Glassdoor’s Website
Candidates Choose Contact Frequency
Personalized Job Recommendations on Career Site
Email Sent from Company Domain
Send Auto Remind Email to Complete Application
Unique Content on Job Descriptions
Glassdoor Widget on Career Site
Referral Button on Job Descriptions
Send Content other than Jobs

If you’re a marketer, you might be thinking, ‘So what?,’ to the amount of highlighted items in the list. You already know that content is king.

But if you’re coming from a recruiting background, the amount of highlighted items might be overwhelming. You’re probably not used to all of the content creation thrust on you now that you’re increasingly expected to think and act like a marketer.

In any case, whichever background you’re coming from, there’s a good chance you’re probably saying, ‘Yeah, but who has the time to create all this content?’

This is where Stories Inc. comes in. Whether you’ve got a marketing background but also a full plate, or you have a recruiting background but lack content creation resources, we can help you feed the beast that is recruitment marketing content. And while clients usually approach us for niche storytelling content needs, you’ll find that our process of uncovering stories can help open up the floodgates for all kinds of content—even the text for a simple automated email.

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