Killing Recruiting

Over the holidays, we posted a new job on LinkedIn for a PHP developer. All of the usual components for the job description were included, a short write-up on Careerminds, key responsibilities, and necessary qualifications, yadda, yadda, yadda. Over the course of the month, candidates started rolling in, most not even remotely qualified for the job and most having no knowledge of Careerminds as a brand -  not knowing whether or not they could trust us as a company to work for. 

During the same time this job posting went up, I listened to Killing Marketing by Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose as a recommendation from our VP Marketing, Aley Brown.

The book isn’t about actually killing the marketing function, but about turning marketing upside down and thinking about it in a completely different way. And this got me thinking: maybe it’s time we start Killing Recruiting. 

Before we get into that, I need to set the foundation of what Killing Marketing is all about.

Despite the name, Killing Marketing is about building a community of loyal followers, creating great content, and about turning marking from a cost center to a profit center. Sounds easy in theory but it actually takes a lot of thought and creativity to build a community of followers that align with your brand.

One of the best examples that I can share, the one that blew my mind the most, is that of Red Bull. If you’re like me when you think about Red Bull, you think about a company who revolutionized the energy drink industry, but did you know that Red Bull is one of the largest media companies in the world? If you go to their website, the first three links are TV, events, and athletes, and oh, by the way, they happen to make energy drinks.

Red Bull has an incredible community of professional athletes and loyal followers who are crazy about their brand and the lifestyle that they represent.

At the core, Red Bull is genius at content marketing, leveraging media and celebrities to attract a loyal base of followers. Having an audience gives an organization a lot of flexibility and options - but it takes a while to get there. It’s not easy to say the least..

Let’s look at another example: Schneider Electric, a French multinational engineering company, took a different approach.  The company acquired 150 websites and magazines. The goal? To appeal to young engineers and develop a market for themselves. Content marketing, in a nutshell, is like an insurance policy on the future of the company.

Here’s another: Johnson & Johnson operates a site called BabyCenter.com, which receives around 100 million visits per month. You won’t find J&J’s brand plastered on the site, but what they are gaining is data about future customers – a pre-customer database. Because of this, the company knows that new moms start planning for their child’s first birthday at around 10 months. They also know which headlines and words - for example, “sleep overnight” compared to “sleep through the night” - will resonate more, allowing them to know how to phrase other marketing materials later on.

So, how does this relate to ‘Killing Recruiting?’ Well, more and more talent acquisition organizations are following this community-based marketing approach by creating a community of followers of their brand. This allows them to have a pool of candidates for future roles who already understand the company and are on their way to becoming loyal brand ambassadors anyway.

Jeanne Meister, in her book “The 2020 Workplace” reports the following are the top 5 reasons people join a company today. They are:

• Strong brand

• Strong Values

• Will develop skills for the future

• Flexible benefits and rewards

• Offer employees work-life balance

The question then becomes: how can companies convey their employer brand in a way that gets people interested in following their brand and excited about one day potentially working at their company. 

Meister says, “Attracting employees is like dating. For a serious relationship to work, you need to be clear and upfront from the beginning.” Job seekers today are more savvy consumers of the employment contract. They expect more from potential companies like customers do for products. Below are two very different companies that have a great track record of creating talent communities.

The first example is Drift,  a fast-growing marketing company, who really understands the power of community creation for talent and for sales. Now, don’t get me wrong, they are a marketing company, which means that they think about community a lot more than other organizations might. Just attend their annual Hypergrowth conference and you’ll see what I mean. Still, the variety of content they create for recruiting and building a talent community is phenomenal. Let’s take a look at their process to understand more.

First off, notice in the image below that there’s a little chatbot specific to recruiting that asks “Thinking of joining the Drift team?” This is what it looks like when you engage with the bot:

The bot delivers Q&A options to provide tailored content based on where candidates are in the application process. I clicked “I’m not sure yet,” and they offered four separate links to videos on their YouTube channel that would be useful and interesting to someone still learning about the company as an employer.

At the bottom of the page, they offer another opportunity for candidates to join their talent community. This time they provide links to all of their social channels, and have a specific hashtag for their talent community for prospects to see what employees share about their workplace.

Drift combines their marketing know-how and their technology (they make marketing-based chatbots) to create a pool of talent ready and waiting for when they need them.

GE Digital, on the other hand, keeps it simple. Their form page informs candidates how to sign up for their talent community and what they’ll receive in return. Signing up can be done on LinkedIn, Facebook, by uploading a resume, or with an email address. Providing a variety of ways for candidates to sign up ensures no one will be excluded from the community for something as trivial as not having an account for a certain platform. 

Promptly after signing up, the follower receives an email that explains the value of their talent community, what they can expect moving forward, as well as links to their social media, blog page, careers page, and other pages that provide more information about the company for interested candidates.

These two examples show how companies are leveraging a community of followers to inform them of their brand, values, employee testimonials, and workplace culture. Next time you’re about to post a new job online, think about how impactful the community would be as a place of loyal followers who love your brand and are ready to work for your company. You don’t have to be a GE to have an amazing brand. Drift has only been around for a few years and is incredibly well branded in the market. 

With social media and technology, building communities are much easier today than ever before, but it takes time, commitment, and capital from the leadership team.

As business leaders and talent acquisition experts, we should consider paying more attention to talent communities at every turn and should start “Killing Recruiting” alongside these other companies.