Repelling Candidates With Bad Recruitment Marketing? | @MissMaimePeas on The #SocialRecruiting Show

Isn’t all content a form of marketing?

This week on the show we talk recruitment marketing with Mary Palmer, self-confessed newbie to the world of recruitment. As a former journalist, she shares with us her journey into the industry and her surprise at how most recruiters approach made it sound like the candidate CV was,

“Going into some sort of recruitment vortex and completely failed to make them feel special.”

Joining HRC Recruitment in early 2017, Mary realised very quickly she “didn’t really know anything about recruitment”, whereupon she set about learning the terminology and how the consultants “sold themselves to clients and how they tried to bring business on”. More importantly, she specifically analysed “how they tried to market to candidates” and her conclusion was that

“A lot of recruitment marketing is absolute rubbish.”

At this point, she realised the scale of the challenge in front of her and set about “breaking down those barriers” that was endemic of the legacy approach and supporting recruiters to start “actually looking across their social spectrum”.

Professional veneer or real humans?

Mary advises against having multiple social media accounts for work and personal, in her opinion,

“If you’re trying to present yourself as a genuine credible person that clients and candidates should buy-in to, then everything should be out in the open.”

When asked about the best social media platforms to use, she simply states, “wherever the conversation is happening is where you need to be”.

Additionally, she singles out agencies that deliver just a constant flow of job adverts through their social media streams and offers a candidate perspective – “there is nothing there for me that gives me value” or “lets me know how that recruitment agency works” – she says, “I want to know if there are humans on the other end”.

If that wasn’t enough, below you’ll hear Mary talk about:

• Tips on writing engaging job advertisements
• Ghostwriting content to build social personas
• Creating engaging video content
• Harmonising your personal and professional social media
• Removing the corporate veneer and using natural language in content