Why Is Content Marketing Great For Recruiters?

How poor is your response rate to LinkedIn InMails (if you even use them)? How many target candidates refuse your request to connect, and how many emails to target candidates go unanswered?  It probably makes for depressing reading, right?
Ever wondered why people don’t respond to your ‘advances’?

Maybe it is some of these?

1. Lazy messaging. Not using any personalisation in the communication, and using the standard requests from LinkedIn. (Note on the Apps you have no choice - it is only the standard requests).
2. Poor targeting. Not understanding the job or the skills you are trying to reach people for, therefore producing a complete mismatch.
3. Misreading context. Understanding someone’s profile and translating that into why they should be talking to you.
4. Not considering WIIFM. The people you are reaching are busy. Even if you can get them to open your message, they will ask themselves the question ‘What Is In It For Me’. Particularly relevant for connecting with people. So many people send bog standard requests on LinkedIn and you look at their profile that seemingly has no relevance for you. Why should they connect with you -  give them a reason.
5. Or in simple terms your approach is crap! Sorry, I can’t put this any other way. If you can’t be bothered to craft the message correctly then you don’t deserve the courtesy of a response!

You know what I mean, you have had them in your inbox as well…….

So how can you start to change the results you are getting and get more people to respond, reply and connect?

One way is to make sure people know about you before you reach out to them. I refer to this method as content marketing for recruitment.

Don’t sigh or immediately dismiss this (too late if you are a recruiter, you have probably already done that!), because IT WORKS!

Talking the time and effort to create/find/source interesting and relevant content and then share it regularly with with your target audience (once you have identified them) is a very effective way of improving your candidate engagement success rate.

Regular sharing of great interesting and unique content helps people:

• Know who you are (and what you do when then check your bio - which they will)
• Know that you are an expert in their sector/industry
• Know you already by reputation (of someone that shares great and interesting content in their industry)
• Know that your call/email/message/connection will be worthwhile

You tell me any recruiter that would not like any (if not all) of the above?

Corporates make the mistake of leaving this to their marketing and/or their communications departments. Recruitment agencies just don’t do it because their focus is on the next placement, the next requirement they get or achieving that weeks targets.

But, in my opinion, with the challenging times ahead in the recruitment marketplace, and the scarcity of talent we are already seeing (and will only get worse), ALL recruiters need to think about how they are positioning themselves in THEIR marketplace.

There is a simple analogy that explains this very well.

Imagine a lake.

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Now think of this lake as the huge talent pool that is the social web and it is full of people.

You as the recruiters are going fishing.

The successful fishermen are the ones that catch the best fish. To catch the best fish they first use ground bait (extra food). They place this ground bait into the part of the lake they have identified as the area where the fish they want to catch are. They regularly do this before they start fishing there. They carry on doing it during their fishing. The fish are attracted to where the extra food is.
Then the fisherman puts the appropriate bait on the end of the hook and casts out to where he has been putting the ground bait. Guess what! He catches the fish he is after.

The unsuccessful fisherman turns up to the lake, picks a random place, puts whatever bait he has on his hook, casts out and sits there. He might catch a random fish of course, but at the end of the day, he doesn’t catch nearly as many fish.

 

Content marketing for recruitment is similar. Identify the best place to find the right candidates and then sharing the right content consistently will yield results.

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If you would like to understand more about getting started with a content marketing strategy for recruitment, you might want to start with looking at this slide deck from a presentation I delivered for the Social Media Talent Acquisition Conference yesterday

Alternatively you could of course give me a call and I will be pleased to help 🙂