How Engaged is Your Community?

One of my connections recently commented, ‘When are you going to feature a mere mortal recruiter in this series of personal branding articles?’

It was said in a jocular tone, and made me laugh, but it got me thinking – am I writing too much about recruiters who have too high a profile?

My intent is purely to promote recruiters who have a great reputation and have built their online community. I want them to be able to offer advice to others who haven’t … yet.

The next guest in my eyes is indeed a mere mortal; just like the other interviewees.

He’s a recruiter, a nice fella, doesn’t mind talking about food and owns a business called Crew Talent Advisory. They help companies transform their recruitment from a cost centre to a profit centre.

So why am I writing about Simon McSorley?

Simple. He knows how to answer the question in the subject line far better than most:

‘How Engaged is Your Community?’

I sense community is important to you. What advice would you give to others looking to build an engaged one?

 You’re right, it’s important to me personally and professionally. I think when you’re trying to run and grow a business, and that business also happens to be the thing you like doing the most, the two become entwined.

 A lot of communities centre around a shared interest or belief but it’s probably important to understand the difference between a list and a community. Most recruiting businesses have lists of people in an ATS somewhere, that they could do something with, but the transactional nature of contingent recruiting means that they devote their time and energy to the things that benefit them. Not their community or even their list. 

 Recruitment businesses, by default, devote their energy to the activities that drive revenue in that month or quarter. And I totally get this, by the way, we all have targets. But if that long-term focus of building a community isn’t the activity you are focusing on, you’ve most likely got a list … at best.

 Building an engaged community takes time and most likely won’t translate into an immediate revenue opportunity, which explains why a lot of recruitment businesses don’t do it. 

The communities of the most value are organically grown and are usually focused on giving, as opposed to taking. Look at Joe Rogan, who just sold the rights to his podcast to Spotify for an estimated $100m a year. This is a guy who smokes weed on his show and talks about anything from bodybuilding, chemtrails, ancient civilisations and space travel. He has 11m subscribers. He asks for nothing and you can watch his podcast for nothing. He grew that in about 10 years, pretty much organically.

Now I’m not suggesting that recruitment businesses take ten years to build an audience, but if you use that as inspiration you could build something relatively quickly. The technical tools are out there to link different systems and capture leads and so on. Anyone can do it.

The things I think have been proven to be effective in building a community are: be genuine, be consistent and make your community about giving and sharing.

 What can you tell us about Rocketship?

 Rocketship was borne out of an idea around getting more people from industry into recruiting. For example, if you’re a software engineer who likes what you do, but you don’t love it, what else could you do? 

You know, you’ve probably been to uni, but now feel a bit trapped because you’ve given so much time to study that you don’t want to put it to waste. So we messed around with this idea that we could find people like that and help them transition to recruiting by providing desk level training. I mean who better to engage with software developer communities than a software developer, right?

To validate what we thought was a solid hypothesis, we went out and spoke to a bunch of recruitment agencies to get their thoughts. Pretty much all of them liked the idea but asked if we’d provide the training to their current people. So a classic “right, so we’re piloting that idea” moment.

Our training is predominantly in person and group based with real interaction. With the greatest respect to all the online training that’s out there, and there are people doing some amazing work, how does someone who hasn’t actually filled a job in a decade show your recruiters how to fill roles?

Anyway, Covid happened and there’s not a lot of training budget out there at the moment.

 Why has Covid woken more recruiters to tap into brand marketing?

I’m not sure, to be honest. I suspect that it’s a combination of more introspective time being available and also a necessity. If the traditional sales funnel isn’t working you kind of have to build a new one, right?

What type of marketing has worked best for you?

Well, I can’t give you many stats, because for a long time I didn’t really measure anything. I did get told a while ago that my LinkedIn feed was a “stream of consciousness”, though. I didn’t know what that meant, so I had to look it up. 

LinkedIn has been big. We’re now a bit more sophisticated with multiple channels but we’re also building our mailing list. You know, platforms come and go but email remains. We’ve now got a minimal unsubscribe rate and it’s a key focus for us each week. We look to delivering things that we find useful, interesting, funny and maybe controversial. If we think that way, our audience probably will too. 

Who do you think has a knockout personal brand and why?

 In terms of recruiters, I’d say Troy Hammond, and not just cos we’re mates. I heard him speak at a Melbourne Recruitment MeetUp a few years ago and he was really inspiring. Again, I think he’s insanely genuine, unpretentious and his work is all about giving. Just a thoroughly decent human. 

He kind of subconsciously confirmed to me that the ideas I’d had at that point were on the right track. When you just give without expecting in return, people give back. 

Outside of recruitment, I’ve already mentioned Joe Rogan. He’s at another level to most

“Brands”. And that’s the thing about being genuine, right? Marketing agencies charge their clients sometimes millions of dollars for getting their products in front of the right audience. But there are kids in their bedrooms getting a million followers in a week on Instagram or Tik Tok or whatever platform you care to name. Why is that? Because people connect emotionally when others are genuine and aren’t overtly selling to them. There’s a lot we can learn from them.

You were a chef in the army. If this was your last day on earth – what would be your last three-course meal?

Oh my god, it would be all the carbs and sugar probably. 

You’d have to start with a caprese salad though. Amazing mozzarella, tomatoes at room temperature - please don’t put them in the fridge. And basil from the pot out on the balcony.Main course - Cacio e pepe. If anyone’s still bored through lockdown, learn how to make fresh pasta. You’ll never go back. Get the kids involved, they’ll love making it and eating it. It’s cheap, delicious and fun times for the family. I sound like some kind of advert for flour or something, don’t I? Seriously though, learn how to make pasta. 

Given it’s the last night, I’ll have had about a kilo of spaghetti, so there won’t be much room left. But I’ll have a little bit left for burnt Basque cheesecake. The easiest cheesecake in the world to make and hands down the best you’ll have ever had. Jazz it up by putting in some great (the best you can find) marmalade. 

You’ll die happy after that lot.

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Thank you, Simon, for speaking with me.

I’d love to hear your comments, even if it’s just to share what your last three-course meal would be, or how you got on making your very own homemade pasta.

You can follow Simon here. And check out some of his writing contributions on #Chat Talent.

My next guest is the infamous Adrian Carty from Greenbridge Recruitment.