The key to effectively positioning yourself as an expert is through the selective use of data without context. This is why according to some random report by a now-bankrupt Polish workforce management SaaS solution written in 2012 and found on the fourth page of Google Scholar results by some junior level account executive at a marketing agency, 99% of companies who don’t leverage content as part of their recruitment marketing strategy report not seeing any results from their content marketing efforts.
Think about that for a minute. Big data, people.
Furthermore, another 68% of HR Leaders say they’re either thinking about or plan to initiate some sort of content marketing initiative “sometime in the future,” according to some research report paid for and distributed by some recruiting CRM startup, who clearly understands the power that this type of insight and information can truly have when it comes to driving sales.
Well, my friends, the future is now.
Welcome to the Golden Age of recruitment marketing content.
5 Genius Content Hacks for Recruitment Marketing Gold (TM)
Don’t worry. If you’re a recruiter, there’s good news. You too can become a content marketer, even without any formal training, writing skills or even an understanding of the concept of return on investment. Shoot, you’ve been paying for job board subscriptions for years and have made like three hires, so it’s not like anyone’s going to know your content campaigns aren’t working.
All that they need to know is it’s there, and it’s a best practice. Just ask the content marketing consultants and agencies who are writing the content telling you how important content is. I’m sorry.
You probably know them as the thought leaders and influencers you need to follow on Twitter (need, of course, being a somewhat relative term).
And let’s face it, you need to follow a bunch of “employer brand gurus” on Twitter, or else catastrophe may well ensue for you and everyone you know. Think of it like a chain letter – I mean, it doesn’t hurt to send those along just in case those stories are true, right?
Well, meet content marketing for recruiting – it’s the chain letter of the new generation.
Here are 5 things you need to write great content about recruiting while thinking like a marketer, earning a seat at the table and becoming a data driven recruiter who thinks buzzwords and best practices are more or less interchangeable.
5. Use Exclamation Points!
If you’re not passionate about something or don’t know what to say, don’t worry. That is why the exclamation point was invented – it feigns excitement so you don’t have to.
There’s nothing that says, “wow, we totally get your pain points” more than emphasizing every single declarative sentence with the proper punctuation!
It never gets old! If you want proof of how convincing this convention is, try using them in an offer letter!
4. Have You Thought About Asking Rhetorical Questions?
Recruiters know what most other business functions obviously don’t – that human beings are too stupid to start their own conversations on topics that interest them on social networks or any other communications channel for that matter. Just kidding. Twitter is obviously the only communication channel candidates pay attention to besides InMail.
But did you know asking rhetorical questions is the only way you can get people to join the conversation? Why didn’t you think of that? How is this not the key to building engagement? And we all know, Millennials can’t communicate without using .gifs, so bonus points for keeping it real, yo. Play on, playa.
You can’t hate the player when you’re making up the game, you now.
We welcomed #TweeParents to @TwitterSF for the first ever Bring Your Parents to Work Day yesterday. One thing was universally clear: our parents have no clue what we do at work. 🙃
What do your parents think your job is? Describe with a GIF! 👇 pic.twitter.com/y5luFcD8Bz
— Twitter Careers (@TwitterCareers) November 14, 2019
What do your parents think your job is? If it’s recruitment marketing or employer branding, this is a valid question that your executive leadership and finance team are probably wondering, too! Thank goodness for .gifs.
Speaking of rhetorical questions, did you know there are some great questions to try if you’re stumped?
“Did you know we’re hiring?” “Did you know we were just named a Best Place to Work by the Boondock Business Journal?” “Did you know that metrics like reach or impressions are worthless?” “Did you know your social media analytics that you get weekly from your agency are a screenshot of a free social media reporting tool’s dashboard and you could get the same exact thing for like, zero cost?”
Are you ready?
3. #Hashtag #Everything #Even #When #Hashtags #Are #Unsupported
So, you want to look like the cool kids on the social media block, but you aren’t a cool kid and you don’t know a thing about social media, right? No problem!
That’s what hashtags are for – the more of them you add in an average update, the more people will be able to find you – and likely, see how awesome you are at social media.
This will inevitably lead to them following you or clicking the link to your product site and making a purchasing decision, so don’t worry if your bosses ask what you’ve actually accomplished pimping out your brand name on a hashtag, because you’ll have millions of impressions! Suckers!
Just tell them that your employer branding initiatives on social have a reach “in the thousands,” or that you’ve garnered “half a million impressions across social networks every month,” and they will be so impressed by your grasp of big data and marketing that you will not only have a seat at the table, but you’ll buy the thing at Ikea and assemble the particle board yourself, amigo.
#BestPartyEver
We might not all recruit for sexy brands with big budgets like Google, Facebook, Disney or Indeed, but hashtags are free – and a great way to prove how much your five employees in the recruiting function love working at your company (until they get a new job and say the same stuff from another company’s account).
If you need to create a really unique, memorable and effective branded hashtag, all you have to do is simply take the name of your company and append the word #Life to the end (or #LifeAt before the company name if it sounds cooler). Thus Boring Business Systems, for example, becomes #BoringLife (a subject on which many of us are SMEs already).
The occasional pictures you’ll get from a company BBQ or weird all hands team building offsite are just the thing that will convince top talent to work for you – and they’re too busy following branded hashtags to find out about your company otherwise.
And remember, your employer branding challenges could always be worse.
2. Don’t Worry About Facts when You Can Manipulate Data.
Because you work in recruiting, no one expects you to actually tell the truth, do any modicum of research or correctly cite data or fact check sources. You can make any claim you want, really.
“Our people are our greatest asset” is used by almost every Wall Street Investment Bank, which shows that even the SEC doesn’t actually care about employer branding enough to actually investigate these kinds of claims.
Candidates, as we have established, are idiots, which is why obviously the reason they want to work for your company has nothing to do with money, but everything to do with that foosball table and free bagel Friday.
Also, if you put out any content on salary data, this obviously means you can pay whatever the hell you want, you market maker you.
*Not actually JP Morgan’s greatest asset.This means you can say you’re the greatest company in the world, or that you’re one of the most respected companies in your industry, or hold more patents than AT&T and GE combined, and the good news is – no one will ever, ever know.
If you have trouble fabricating or misrepresenting information for the purposes of lead acquisition or to win a numbers game, try talking to your HR Technology service provider. They often have deep expertise in this critical core competency, particularly during the contract renewal process.
While 87% of unsubstantiated claims and unverifiable facts are never questioned or called out, try building a landing page that reads “404” on the top and use this as an anchor link to any citation that might involve a little old fib. This way, if you’re ever called out (this never happens) you’ll be able to say, “but I swear I read it there. I don’t know what happened.”
Make sure to schedule these regularly in a social media management tool like Buffer – doing so on Tuesdays at 11:37 AM can cut your cost per hire by close to 25%, according to Buffer’s official blog for employers (it’s not really in there, but no one ever clicks backlinks, either).
1. Recruiting Is Like Dating.
If you know this metaphor, you now have a decade’s worth of “thought leadership” content sure to get your personal brand valuation soaring and get the thought leadership credentials required to be included on a random list of “Top HR Experts to Follow,” even if you aren’t actually in HR!
Remember, if you can transform an extended and cliched aphorism into omnichannel content, you’ll build followers, fans and a pipeline of great candidates who are magnetically attracted to how profound you are. Recruiting can also be like marketing, like sales, like storytelling, or really any other discipline besides recruiting, which, as we all know, is really boring.
The key is that you’re not actually a recruiter anymore – you’re a content marketer, which means that you should never metaphor you didn’t like (ideally augmented with a stock image of a diverse work team gathered around a single laptop screen, staring intently).
Remember. Your job should be your happy place. But if it’s not and you have to write content, you can always at least fake it!
Trust me on this one!
