The recruitment industry has evolved dramatically in recent years. Most notably, there has been a shift from a totally sales-based business to a multi-channel sales and marketing-based industry.
Marketing efforts are becoming non-negotiable for recruitment agencies and are an essential part of the recruitment process.
Personal Branding
Investing in marketing efforts allows agencies to build their consultants’ personal brands, as well as a community of individuals who are interested in what they are recruiting. The goal of branding on this level is to convey what a business has to offer for customers and convince them to take advantage of what you can do for them. An engaged, industry specific community will enable consultants to find better candidates more quickly, drive new client opportunities their way and allow for more effective candidate and client reach out by the consultant.
By investing in this aspect of the business, agencies can increase brand awareness, ad reach, and gain new clients and candidates for their consultants. Through this process they can further establish their identity in the industry and increases the chances of a candidate reaching out to them about an opportunity. Branding is about selling to and reaching out to the whole industry rather than an individual. It allows an agency to broadcast a consultant’s message effectively to hundreds, even thousands, of customers rather than one at a time like traditional sales.
This is a time saver on the part of the consultant and is a huge benefit to the agency on a whole, allowing them to streamline their sourcing process and improve their consultant’s ability to deliver for their clients.
Employer Branding
Communicating your employer brand to your audience is very important and is something that agencies need to be investing in to see the benefits for their consultants. As your company’s identity, your brand should be evident through every step of your sales process. A good agency will ensure that the brand is consistent through social media channels, job ads, website, and more, from logo and colors to the brands vision and promise.
Once their brand has been established, agencies need to be investing in effective methods of communicating their brand to their audience. They need to ensure that sales and marketing are working as a seamless entity to deliver a consistent message to their target audience and enforcing that message with every touch point with that candidate or client.
Branding is an Essential Part of the Marketing Strategy
A solid branding process is a catalyst for all other marketing efforts to take off. Once an agency has established their brand, it allows every other marketing effort to be more successful because your target audience already knows who you are.
As an example, seeing an advertisement for a job is all good and well, but seeing an advertisement for a job when it is posted by a company that you already know (and like), vastly increases the likelihood of you clicking on that job. If agencies are not helping their consultants by investing in marketing and branding efforts, they are missing out on the valuable support that they should be offering their team.
Not All Agencies Are Equal
Consultants in today’s market need to look for an agency that is going to invest the time, interest, and money in supporting their marketing needs. Parts of personal branding and communications are obviously still a function of the consultants’ day to day role, but consultants are too busy to be able to effectively run a multi-channel marketing strategy integrated with all other parts of the agency. This is the role of the marketing function within an agency and the level to which the agency is committed to providing this support should be one of the first questions a potential new agency recruiter should be asking the owner.
If you are a candidate in building materials who is looking for a new opportunity contact Stephen at [email protected]
