Last week I was asked to contribute an article for the RecruiterNewsletter.com by Amy Renz, COO of HireAbility.com (for whom I recently recorded a very insightful webinar). For this article I wrote about a topic that was brought up in a couple of good blog posts last month by Jessica Miller-Merrell (@blogging4jobs) and Amybeth Hale (@researchgoddess). The topic, "Is HR the new PR?" was hotly debated by some of the top recruiters in the socialsphere from all over the world on the recent TalentNet Live chat. The original article on RecruiterNewsletter.com can be found here. My thanks to Amy Renz (@AmyRenz) for including in this great project.
Does Your Recruitment Process Include Some Good PR? from RecruiterNewsletter.com
By Craig Fisher
An employer’s brand is, in part, a product of the people who represent the employer and it’s career opportunities to job candidates and new hires. Whether you are a 3rd party recruiter or an in-house recruiter, you represent, at some level, an employer when you speak with job candidates about that employer’s openings. So are you an anonymous agent? Or are you a pro-active PR machine for the employer you represent?
A pro-active recruiter will often take the approach that their job is equal parts Advertising, PR, Marketing, Recruiting and Sales. This idea, while not new, has a whole new life with the ease and affordability of social media, and the push for employer branding. Even in an employer driven hiring market, 3rd party firms and employers should both be aware that this is more important than ever before. Because if you are not integrating all of these aspects into your HR model for recruiting, onboarding, and retention, you are getting left behind.
Amybeth Hale, a Talent Attraction Manager with AT&T, recently wrote on her blog, www.researchgoddess.com, the following about the function of recruiters:
“Our jobs are all about building relationships. Such is the case with marketers, advertisers, and PR professionals. Our desired end result of building the relationship is really what separates us. Here are some very simple definitions:
- Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.
- Advertising is a paid communication in which the message is controlled by the sponsor, and is designed to gain attention and motivate action.
- Public Relations is planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its public by telling an organization’s story to its public.
Subtle differences between the three, but the basic premise with all of these functions is to establish a line of communication between two or more entities.
Recruiting professionals would do themselves a favor to understand some of the job responsibilities that come with being in marketing, advertising, and public relations. For example: there is much more to candidate advertising (aka job posting) than simply plopping a boring job description into a post template and slapping it up on some job board. There is more to recruitment marketing than bulk emailing a spammy message with an e-newsletter attachment to your entire prospective client database in the hopes of gaining one or two additional job orders. And there is certainly more to creating good PR for your company than simply having a Twitter account or a Facebook fan page.”
Our personal brands are also a reflection on our client or employer. Positioning yourself as a quality resource for job candidates is now an integral part of the recruitment process. If you do not have a professional profile on sites such as LinkedIn that show more than just your job title, many candidates these days may have a better bond with a recruiter who does. The recruitment process is more than an email or a phone call. Its a full on campaign to build quality relationships with the candidate community. Just as recruiters are checking out candidates’ social profiles, so too are candidates examining those of recruiters and employers.
Whether or not the recruiter or employer actively engages with its community on social sites (something previously seen as more of a Marketing or PR function) can now have a big impact on hiring the best candidates. Even beyond hiring, creating the bond that comes with being “friends” with or “linked” with a prospective employee can help ease the transition into employment and enhance retention.
The lines between Recruiting, PR, Marketing, etc. are becoming more blurred. Resistance is futile. Be sure you are positioned as a well rounded, strategic resource to both candidates and employers.
About the Author:
Craig Fisher is co-Founder and Principal of A-List Solutions (www.alistsolutions.com) of Southlake TX, an Information Technology Staffing and Executive Search firm proudly offering flexible pricing and strategic sourcing models utilizing social media for maximum ROI. His fifteen years in recruiting also include positions as an award-winning Account Manager and Sales Director with Stark Technical Group, and as a top-performing Senior Recruiter with MATRIX Resources. Craig started his 18 year sales career as a pharma and medsurge rep with Glaxo and Smiths Medical.
Craig also trains HR and recruiting organizations on Social Media and Recruitment/Employer Branding strategies. As a large social media presence, Craig helped create the #TalentNet social recruiting forum on Twitter, hosting big names in recruiting and social media marketing on the last Wed. of each month from 9-11PM Eastern at #TNL. See www.talentnetlive.com for details. Craig blogs at https://www.fishdogs.com and Twitters at http://twitter.com/fishdogs .
