The Future of Recruiting: Combining HR with Marketing

Old Lovers: Sales & Marketing

Marketing and sales. Sales and marketing.

There are VPs of Sales, VPs of Marketing, and VPs of Sales & Marketing. I’ve even heard the term “Smarketer” thrown around – a sales and marketing hybrid.

Sales provides the revenue fuel for marketing to improve their efforts around brand awareness. Marketing provides sales with the collateral and events to attract and push leads through the sales funnel. Thus when marketing met sales, it was a match made in heaven.

Marketing + Sales = Clients

Clients = Money

Newlyweds: HR & Marketing

But what is often overlooked is the match between Human Resources and marketing because it’s in this union that the growth of your company flourishes.

Talent recruiters are headhunters that search for the cream of the crop to pump their companies up and outperform their competition. The process is grueling with follow-ups that are frequent and mandatory.

If marketing is introduced into the talent acquisition process, recruiters’ jobs get easier and their results, far better.

Marketing + HR = Top Talent

Top Talent = Expansion

Why Should You Put Marketing Into HR?

Marketing professionals and recruiters have very similar audiences;

Marketing

• Buyer Persona
• Buyer Journey
• Focus on the needs of the consumer
• Consumer-centric model

Recruiting

• Candidate Persona
• Candidate Journey
• Focus on the needs of the candidate
• Candidate-centric model

They also need to keep track of several KPIs (key performance indicators) to ensure they are engaging their audiences: email open and click through rates, website visits, newsletter subscriptions, company reputation via Glassdoor, along with many others.

Combining HR with marketing can be and should be a seamless transition. Just as important as it is to attract customers to grow your company’s revenue, it’s equally important to attract talented employees to perpetuate the healthy growth of the business.

Today, the world’s population is 7.5 billion with over 43,000 companies internationally (not including privately owned organizations) – a 54 percent and 34 percent increase respectively from 1975. If this trend continues, we’ll see 9.8 billion people by 2050 and over 120,000 companies.

So what does this mean for the talent landscape? The sheer candidate volume will continue to skyrocket and the increase in options for where applicants choose to pursue their careers will elevate the competition.

The days of traditional recruiting are coming to an end. If we introduce a marketing approach to talent headhunting, we arrive at recruitment marketing – and this is NOT just an industry buzzword anymore. It’s now a necessity.

How Do You Marry HR and Marketing?

Technology. It’s the promise that will breakdown the marketing and HR silos so recruiters can yield more from their outreach.

A Talent Relationship Marketing platform will help keep track of the candidate journey – know the job board they come from, how often they visit your website, if their LinkedIn profile experience reads like the job description you’re filling, create email campaign drips to engage your prime candidates until interviewing begins, etc.

What are your thoughts?