Ten years ago I stood in a board meeting and presented how a successful recruiter needed to adopt a consumer lead approach to
recruitment marketing and business and become more customer centric with our candidates. At the time there were more than a few blank faces.
The question returned was why?
And the response I was given was ‘Recruitment is a process; we advertise jobs, we search our database for candidates and we process applications through to interview and offer.
At the time the business was forgetting that
recruitment is about people and people make decisions based on feelings, emotions, experience, recommendation and influence, as well as informed research. The same factors which influence our buying decisions from cars, holidays and clothing through to our choice of supermarket.
The average person spends half their waking life at work. The working environment, the job and how they feel at work is fundamental to that individual’s happiness. This makes their choice of future employer one of the most important decisions their life.
Marketeers for many years in all areas of business work with a simple acronym AIDA; Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action to define the stages a potential customer goes through.
The experience and messages they receive will define whether they become a customer. Replace customer with ‘candidate’ and this relates to whether a potential applicant decides to become a candidate, decides that the company or role isn’t for them, or drop out of the process. The experience they have will also determine whether that individual becomes a brand advocate.
The use of
Social Media in corporate recruitment marketing has been the focus of many a conference and event, but this has broadened. At the recent
4MAT Business Breakfast ‘Recruiting the Best Talent’, with guest HR and Resourcing professionals from a wide range of companies, including RWEnpower, Virgin, Sainsburys and Apple, a common theme developed. In the modern era of recruitment the whole experience is important and this goes beyond
recruitment social media to embrace a broader marketing approach to candidate attraction and engagement.
Taking AIDA as point of discussion, I will be looking at each step over the next few blogs and how we can apply this to recruitment in the following manner:
1. AWARENESS
2. INTEREST
3. DESIRE
4. ACTION
David Johnston
