Not too long ago, I wrote about the 9 channels of employment branding. Employment branding is one piece of your overall recruitment strategy. It is the most strategic part of your recruiting plans and activities. Employment branding incorporates traditional marketing strategies and uses them for the purposes of gaining trust, engaging and reaching qualified jobs seekers with the end goal of applying for your job, but at minimum sharing your custom content and information with friends, family and colleagues.
Company Career Sites Are Essential to Recruiting Strategies
Company career pages and career websites listing your job openings are no longer a nice to have. They are a must have when it comes to building your employment branding strategy. Job seekers need a place to apply for jobs and learn about your company in an online environment that is fully customizable and controlled by the recruiting function of your company.
Online & Web Recruitment is Key to Driving Targeted Candidate Traffic
Online activities that happen outside of your company careers page should serve a single purpose which is the goal of driving referral traffic to your company career site. This online property is the only one that you fully control and customize making the experience you provide your job seekers and future employees truly unique. How you do that is completely up to you.
When building my own website, Blogging4Jobs, I consider the website or in this case my blog to be the center of my online universe. It’s the sun where all other online properties revolve around. It is the one thing I can fully control and know that the experience is all me. I don’t compete with Twitter advertising or Facebook sponsored stories. It’s the reason, I’ve spent so much time in creating a unique experience that caters to my specific audience, the HR, recruiting and operations community.
Your own online strategy is no different than mine which I’ve picture above. I’ve labeled it in the context of recruiting and hiring because it makes the most sense to those in the industry. The online communities, social platforms and websites where you frequent will be different depending on the audience you wish to reach but the goal remains the same. These sites and communities serve as a referral platform driving candidates, blog readers or job seekers to your website where you can further cultivate that relationship with the end being that they choose to apply for a job opening or join your talent network or community. Once they’ve made the buying decision to apply or join your talent network, you must continue cultivating the relationship, but most importantly they have agree to continue the conversation and go from a passive viewer to someone who is engaged.