Stuck on Content? Make Your Candidates Famous

Content is the great undiscovered country of recruitment marketing. Many agencies are deploying strategies and tactics to grow their brands, with content marketing at the forefront. Whether you’re investing in video, blogs, or podcasts, determining a content strategy is an important part of building your business.

You’d think the easiest thing to do would be to produce content about yourself. That is the definition of brand awareness, right?

But here’s something they won’t tell you down at the LinkedIn watering hole: engaging people is about telling stories – and your story is kinda, well, boring.

Think of it this way: would you want to visit a news website that only published stories about itself?

Recruiters need to shift their minds on content. Brand awareness is seldom about ‘getting your name out there’ and more about an association with a story, an idea, an experience.

What makes recruitment agencies unique? Their candidates. 

Rather than publishing content about the recruitment process, think of innovative ways you can tell the stories of the humans you’re recruiting for.

Example A:

A small-medium recruitment agency working in hospitality wants to use content marketing to build their brand. They have about 50 chefs on their books and they want to attract more. They realise that video is a huge opportunity, but don’t know how to go about it.  

Idea: A video series starring their chefs

Food content is wildly popular and has great traction on social media. This agency could create a video series where their chefs share their favourite recipes and signature dishes.

The videos could be shared on social channels – Instagram video and Facebook video are ideal – and the recipes could be turned into secondary content, like blogs or shareable images.

Make the videos fun, fresh, funny. It’s a great way to show off your candidate’s expertise and make inroads into a highly-competitive industry.

Plus, who doesn’t love a cheeky foodie video?

Example B:

An agency specialising in life science recruitment wants to become the voice on behavioural science.

Idea: A podcast series

Podcasting has exploded in the past five years and the barriers to entry have all but disappeared. You can buy broadcast-quality audio equipment for under £200, and unlimited audio hosting on a platform like Soundcloud will set you back £70 a year.

Producing a weekly or fortnightly podcast series where you interview candidates or experts in a field would be a great source of value. It’s informative, shows off a candidate’s expertise, and positions you as a source of knowledge in your sector.

 

The secret is the story

Stories are everywhere. There’s a yarn to be told in every single facet of life. Agencies should think of adopting a similar approach to a news organisation when producing content: Topical, relatable, valuable, and human.

Having a marketing expert who understands how to tell great stories is crucial. And if they know how to tell those stories across multiple channels and platforms, the better.

Content is king and the recruitment industry is starting to realise this. But the difference between your content strategy and the agency down the street is the way you tell the story of your candidates.

Make them experts, make them famous, and you’ll find more eyes and ears tuning into you.