Do you think of yourself as a Recruiter or a Marketer? It is not a trick question, but instead a question about how you see your role?
In the distant past when I worked in recruitment at IBM (pre online recruitment days) and at Nokia, recruitment was very straightforward. When it came to advertising our vacancies we knew which newspapers and trade publications to use each week for our target audience.
It was then a case of advertising vacancies on a Thursday and waiting for a mountain of envelopes with CV’s and covering letters to arrive on the following Monday morning! It was a process that worked well for many years, also helped by the fact that people wanted to work at IBM or Nokia.
But what about today? How do you now reach your target audience? And what happens if your company and brand is not an automatic choice for job seekers?
With so many different options for reaching out to job seekers today (job boards, careers sites, social media, mobile, video etc) for Recruiters to attract great talent their role has to evolve and become similar to a Marketer. The only difference is that instead of trying to convince someone to purchase a product or service, you are in effect trying to convince job seekers that your company is the product and that your current vacancy is just what they need.
Job seekers will make decisions on which companies they want to work for based on researching websites, social media sites and talking to friends and colleagues. All of these methods are very similar to when people are making a buying decision.
So where a job seeker has a choice of companies to apply to, what is your marketing edge? What will convince them to apply to your company instead of your competitors?
Feedback
Do you agree? Has your role changed over the years and what are you doing differently today? Why not leave your feedback below.
Mike Taylor
Web BasedRecruitment
About The Author
Mike Taylor runs Web Based Recruitment, the Online Recruitment Marketing and Events specialists, with a focus on Mobile, Video and Social Media. Previous events run by Web Based Recruitment include the Social Media in Recrutiment Conference and the Mobile Recruitment Conference.
NEW for 2013... The Mobile Recruitment Workshop on the 12th March 2013, designed to help you understand and implement mobile recruitment into your company.
Speak Your Mind