When I started my tech marketing career in earnest in the early 1990s, to be honest, I rarely looked across the aisle to my HR colleagues and thought about commiserating over “campaign advertising metrics” or “outbound marketing tactics.” No disrespect—we worked under the same roof, but lived in different worlds, separate and apart.
My, how times have changed.
Fast forward to 2016. When I was recently tasked with creating a Venn diagram to see where employer branding responsibilities fall at a company, I couldn’t help but notice how HR now influences (by professional necessity) important areas like promoting and helping shape a company’s reputation, all in name of influencing great talent to work at their company.
Today, in a candidate-driven market, where job seekers are clearly in the driver’s seat, demanding companies open up about their culture, mission and what makes them special, HR faces a tougher challenge than ever before to sell not only open jobs but also a company, employer brand and reputation to the right talent.
No wonder—by necessity—they’re becoming better marketers.
Time to put on a marketing hat
Did you know that only one in five candidates will open a recruiting email and then less than 3 percent will ever take any action outside their inbox? (MailChimp, November 2015). Pretty dire, huh?
Enter marketing, more specifically, recruitment marketing. Smart, cutting-edge HR pros are absorbing many of the same classic tactics my marketing brethren have used to promote products and services to influence and attract candidates for their companies.
Here are a few I’ve been noticing:
A preview of life at Oracle
Recently I was corralled into sitting for an interview shoot for a “working in Marketing” video at Glassdoor, in effect, a personal testimonial. Ninety percent of job seekers on Glassdoor say it’s important to work for a company that embraces transparency (U.S. Site Survey, January 2016). And what better way than giving them an inside peek at your company via the people that know it best—employees!
Here’s an employee video Oracle has on its Glassdoor profile, offering job seekers a casual, first-person view of working there. It’s a great way to market your company to candidates who may not know about you or even change some pre-conceived notions about an enterprise’s culture.
Seeing is believing at WilsonHCG
I just came back from two weeks holiday to England. So, when I happened to peek into a well-known UK brand’s profile, WilsonHCG, a global talent solutions provider, thinking I might find some stiff upper lip stuffiness, I was quite “chuffed” to see a string of engaging photos showing off its engaging, fun company culture, especially at its Warwick, West Midlands office.
In seconds, I got an engaging impression at how the organization is marketing itself (and its culture) to potential candidates.
L’Oreal gets engaged
Every marketer’s dream is to drive prospect and customer engagement with its brand, product, service or company. So it’s no surprise HR is making hay out of employee engagement, letting workers amplify the company story across social and networking channels.
L’Oreal, the world’s largest cosmetics company, is really upping its engagement game, recently launching a concerted effort to get its workforce engaged on Glassdoor—leaving reviews about L’Oreal, its culture and what it’s like to work there. For its efforts, L’Oreal has seen a 5x uptick in employee engagement.
Why is this so important? Sixty-one percent of job seekers seek company reviews and ratings before making a decision to apply for a job, according to that same Glassdoor survey.
“Glassdoor is first a place to get employee engagement and a place where we look for constructive feedback that will help us build the L'Oréal of tomorrow,” notes Digital Employer Branding Manager Alexander Onish. “We see it as an honest feedback loop that's always on which helps us understand our global reputation.”
Summary
More and more, finding and making great hires now depends in part on an HR pro’s ability to market their company (in the right places), distinguish it from competitors and attract talent by giving candidates an inside look at the organization, engaging current employees as brand ambassadors and letting the employer brand do a lot of the selling.
For more inspiration, download Recruitment Marketing For Dummies®, Glassdoor Special Edition.
