Recruiters are Marketers

Since the emergence of social media as a recruiting tool, I have heard a number of people comment and read articles that suggest recruiters now need to think like marketers. This is very true, but please tell me something new! 

Whether you are working in an in-house recruitment or agency role, without doubt much of what you do and have done for ever requires good old fashioned marketing principles. I remember one of the toughest things I had to learn when entering the recruitment industry was how to write a compelling ad that stood out from the crowd and represented my client with pride. Marketing is it not? 

So let’s consider the following marketing terms and how they relate to recruitment functions:

Target Market
 I have not worked with a client yet that doesn’t have one or several difficult-to-source role types within their business. These are the business critical roles that stand out from all others and should be the prime focus. Therefore, as a recruiting function it is essential to identify your target market, network within them and build a talent community to fulfil vacancies quickly when they arise. However, there are still many in-house functions and agencies (yes agencies!) that are still operating on a reactive basis when fulfilling roles within their target market.

Return on Investment 
What does it cost to acquire new talent? Much like marketers would work out how much it costs to acquire new customers, unless we know this, you cannot calculate your value to the business or if an in-house function is more effective than use of recruitment agencies. Often recruitment technology will provide reporting on key talent acquisition metrics, but even if you do not have a high-end technology that provides this, you can establish your own reporting dashboards for a nominal cost.

If your company engages recruitment agencies, please don’t forget that they might as well work for your marketing team. Therefore, select them carefully and ensure they have access to all available information to enable them be great ambassadors instead of a ‘brand detractors.’ And why not measure their effectiveness as you should your own internal functions through candidate and hiring manager surveys? 

In summary, recruiters have an important role to play in a company’s marketing mix, just as much responsibility as sales and marketing professionals have to enhance a brand in my view. If they can do it well it will also benefit their own performance enormously.