The 8 Signs of A Great Recruitment Marketer

You can listen to a podcast of this recording here. The recruitment landscape is changing.

Opportunity abounds as organisations look to employ talented individuals for their team. Though internal recruitment teams are also on the rise, many couldn’t do their job without working with a specialist recruiter.

All good news then provided you are the recruitment company that both clients and job seekers choose.

The challenge today is that business is more competitive than ever and to stand out you need to ‘market’ your brand.

Greg Savage on his recent tour of the UK stated categorically that recruiters who didn’t embrace digital marketing would be left standing.

That is probably why many recruitment organisations are now recruiting marketers to their team.

So what do you need to look out for in that marketer you bring into your organisation?

They Have Experience ‘Doing’ A Marketing Job

This might not go down well for many and employing a young grad that has zero experience rarely ends well. Some of our clients were put off recruiting marketers because in the past they had hired someone who didn’t have the skills or capability.

Remember you get what you pay for and expecting a new young grad to come in and be ‘amazing’ from the get-go is crazy.

Some companies get one of their admin team or consultants to step into the role. We understand this is tempting to do…. and if you are going to do this, you MUST give them your support by providing training or help.

They Understand Recruitment

Recruitment is different. We should know we have been delivering consulting, training and services for approaching 12 years.

It can take a while to understand the client and candidate journey, resourcing, contingency versus retained, how passive candidates interact and all while producing results and leads!

If they don’t understand recruitment and how marketing works you need to help them. It’s no surprise that over 30% of our Superfast Circle companies have both a marketer and their MD go through the programme. 

They Understand Your Clients and Candidates and Are Fascinated By People

Today competition is everywhere, and people work with individuals they know like and trust. It’s critical that your marketer understands how to communicate with these individuals, and this starts by being fascinated with people.

Marketing is about creating demand and awareness, and generally, people buy what they want and need. Our role as marketers is to;

1.       Understand what that is

2.       Speak into their issues and provide solutions

The mistake many marketers make is that they make it all about ‘you’ rather than the customers they are serving.

Marketing is about understanding the bigger picture and taking control and of working with you their manager to build a workable marketing strategy that will deliver what you need.

They Are Amazing Communicators

Communication is vital in every aspect of marketing:

·         From working with clients and candidates and understanding how to get your brand message across to the people, it’s designed for.

·         ……and then how you work with internal stakeholders like the leaders in your team and the recruitment consultants to ensure the strategy is delivered

Your marketer needs to be super good at questioning and influencing otherwise all those fantastic ideas to promote your brand will never see the light of day.

They Are Grafters

Look I know I am a marketer so might be biased and if there are a group of individuals in the world who work hard, it’s a marketing and sales team.

Marketing is a discipline with many moving parts. From working out the strategy, project management and implementation to updating procedures, writing content, liaising with outsourcing teams and doing the odd bit of design on the fly; it’s involved.

Hiring a turn up at 9 and clock off @ five individual I respectfully suggest isn’t what you need.

Interestingly one of our client’s comments about the respect they have for their marketer. Consistently they are the only other person remaining in the office after 6 at night; from driven marketers, this isn’t uncommon behaviour.

They Are Obsessive Learners

To say marketing has changed significantly over the past few years is an understatement. The basic principles still apply, i.e. a message to market match, provide solutions, and get in front of more people who want your service and are likely to buy; are still a given.

The good news is that how you can implement these tasks is endless and full of automation opportunities too.

Back in the day…. When we launched our company, I learnt HTML to build a website! I know bonkers. Now I could buy a WordPress theme and have a new site up within the hour; by the way, I am not advocating this at all for you, I am just demonstrating this as an example.

The possibilities are endless.

You can now show an advert on Google of Facebook to anyone who visits your website. Hey, you can even track the company who visits too.

The data we can now get hold of is endless, and it informs our decisions.

They Are A Great All-Rounder

Having listened or read this far, it’s probably landed for you that a marketer needs several different skills. From the ability to research, analyse and make informed decisions, to adding an email into a campaign or understanding how firefish or bullhorn can be implemented into your system is what marketers can do…. and without bitching and moaning too #moodhooverpleasedontapply

They Are Coachable

In honesty, this trait goes for any employee. If during the interview you hear words and phrases like, ‘yes but’ or ‘we always do it this way’, or that, ‘that doesn’t work in this sector’, run a mile. With the speed of change, a marketer is involved with they have to be coachable to enable their ability to grow and develop and be leading edge in what they do so that your organisation gets to benefit.

Useful? I hope so. If you have a marketer, you want to support get in touch here. We have exactly what you need.

Thanks,

Sharon Newey

About Sharon Newey

Sharon Newey is the M.D. of Super Fast Recruitment a company that provides marketing training, coaching and services to the recruitment and staffing sector.

To accelerate your marketing at speed, you need to know your starting point and be clear on what good marketing looks like.

That is why we have designed a complimentary Marketing Audit Checklist that you can download here.