Think Differently - Think Like a Marketer
How can you disrupt the recruiting industry? Take your cues from other industries that have been solving the issues we face for years.
Today we talk about how applying the fundamentals of Marketing will help you get ahead.
[Transcribed from video above]
Brad Owens
How's it going everyone welcome to another episode of the transform recruiting podcast I'm your host as always Brad Owens and I want to continue today with the series that we're doing about thinking differently to disrupt the recruiting industry. So today. We're going to focus on thinking like um. Marketer now I want to have you put some time and some effort into thinking about what's the last ad you remember seeing what's the last ad that you remember seeing and where was it where was it at now marketers are getting. Predably incredibly precise with who they're reaching out to how they're reaching out to them and odds are if you can think of something that is the last ad that you've seen they put a lot of time and effort into that. And there's a number of different ways that they go about doing that right? They can be like the the purple mattress ads used to be where you look at their website once and they follow you everywhere across the internet or you headed to Linkedin and looked at a particular company at some point and then they followed you. Everywhere after that hey there's opportunities here hey have you looked at opportunities there. Hey if you've tried to do this before. That's the type of marketing that we're talking about and there are a number of different things that marketers do that recruiters don't here's the major issue that I see in recruiting all the time.
01:39.98
Brad Owens
Pray and pray for those of you that know, know what that means and know you're sitting there smiling so spray and pray think of the tools like Broadbean which now I think is part of panda logic as well. So those tools take 1 job posting that you give it and then. Fire it out everywhere they broadcast it to every possible job site that you pick or you can just say hit all of them and obviously you have to have a account at some of those to be able to post. But that's neither here there they post out as many places that they can and then they just cross their fingers that their pipeline fills up with candidates the problem that I see time and time again. Is the amount of noise that creates when you go after anyone that's applying to jobs the number one complaint that I start hearing from either recruiting firm owners or internal recruiting teams is we get all those people that are just applying to apply. They're not a good fit. Well maybe you're not going after the right people marketers have figured out how to fine tune their funnel so that their funnels only filled with quality leads. They have to pay for each one of those little ads that you see they don't want to waste their money on people coming into their pipeline that aren't a good fit. Why aren't we applying that same kind of logic marketers have been doing this for years think about when Google ads came out I think the first Google ad I ever ran was like 2003. It's been twenty years that marketers have known how to do this. Why not recruiting firms. Why haven't we done this.
03:12.49
Brad Owens
So there are tools out there that you can be using I'm not going to go into those because I'm not the expert in those I just happen to know that there's a different way. They do things. So what I want to leave you with is 4 key points about how to think differently like a marketer some of the things that they employ that we as recruiting firm owners or recruiters ourselves have yet to. Ah, implement the very first thing is about going to your audience being where they wants to be already. That's exactly why the majority of us when we get a new search. We don't go to our database. We go straight to Linkedin and we start a fresh search so we do everyone's guilty of it we all do it and then all of a sudden we're like wow it takes so long to find candidates. Well, you're not going to where your relationships already are so side note use your database but 2 you're going to where your audience is. That's where they want to be communicated with that's where you are doing the communication but not every piece of talent that you're going to need for your specific organization is on Linkedin. Maybe you've probably heard the indeed ads that indeed I do if indeed which is the place that's going to post your jobs. Is going to whether it's on the radio or it's a television commercial and they're getting people to come to indeed to apply to your jobs. Why aren't you doing the exact same thing. Why not get in front of all your competitors because by the time they come to indeed and search I don't know forklift operator. They get not only your jobs.
04:40.45
Brad Owens
But the hundreds others that are out there. You want to catch them before they even get there right? So why would you waste money and time posing on indeed when you can get to the same audience a different way I'd say team up with your marketing team and do what you possibly can to get those candidates before they have to make it to a job site and number 2 the key marketing phrase that you will hear from everyone. What's in it for me if your ad is just we need this and we need that and we offered this but but it's not targeted at here's why you want to work here. Here's what we can offer you not just in salary but in life changing benefits in quality of life in the types of reliability you can have in your shift or in your hours and the guaranteed number of hours. Whatever it might be what's in it for me. If you talk about your company and what makes us so great in the first paragraph they don't care I'm really glad that places like California and others have said you have to put the salary range in the job description. Yeah I realize that we've all. Found our ways around it of having these gigantic salary ranges and saying ah salary dependent upon experience that's garbage. Don't do that? Whatever so what's in it for me is the main thing that these potential job seekers are looking for from you and from your job ad.
06:09.00
Brad Owens
That needs to be front and center and then third they're targeted the ads and the descriptions that they send to you are targeted directly at you. They are not um. These spray and prey models of we're going to be looking for a forklift operator and we're going to post our job ad to dice like dice's IT talent you wouldn't do that because you target your message take that a step further. Target it directly to the individual you want to hire stop making it so broad if you have a pipeline that is filled with garbage stop making your funnel so big. Try to find a way to slum it down if you are not getting enough candidates. Try and see if you're fishing in the right pond be targeting the right pond for the fish you're looking for That's a possibility I'm in with analogies and similes and everything else for this entire episode. So just come along with me. It's fun and then fourth and finally. What should they remember here's what I want to avoid for you I have had the situation multiple times where I call someone and I say hey this is Brad Owens calling from acme I wanted to talk to you about our auditor position and they go.
07:35.57
Brad Owens
Which position was that they applied to like 30 or 40 because everyone else is doing the spray or prey model and they don't remember who it was they just saw titles Auditor I'm going to hit it and hopefully they give me a call if I call a candidate and I say hey I'm Brad I'm calling from Acme and. I'm calling about this specific auditor job and also it was the one that blah if they immediately get excited about that and they remember where they saw that they remember what it said you're winning. That's how you're going to win the recruiting game is giving them something to remember. If you look at all the other job descriptions and they read much like yours or if you're going and copy pasting other job descriptions to find bits and pieces of yours that you're posting out to job sites. You're doing it wrong. You're tuning it absolutely wrong because yours will read like everybody elses. So let's recap the 4 things that I want you to do. To think like a marketer one go to your audience go to where they already are don't sprain pray to what's in it for me if you don't lead your description or lead your posting with what's specifically in it for them. You're going to lose them 3 make sure it's targeted. Don't have a one size fits all job description. Don't have a one size fits all posting. It's not going to work for what should they remember add something in there that they can remember make yours different make yours the one that they remember when they pick up the phone and say oh yeah I remember that I'm really excited I'm glad that you called.
09:07.20
Brad Owens
That's what you want. So hopefully that helps you start to disrupt your recruiting process. This is just the third in a series of I've got many many many of these planned so today was think like a marketer how to disrupt your recruiting flow the recruiting industry as a whole by thinking like a marketer I will see you all next time for more like this. You can head to transform recruiting dot com or just check me out on Linkedin. It's just linkedin.com/in/Brad Owens or just go to bradowins.com. Everything's there I will talk to you next time. Thank you so much for joining us on the transform recruiting podcast I'll see you later.