30 Nov Interactive Marketing Tactics & Tools for Human Resources Professionals

Recruiters and other human resources professionals can benefit from Interactive Marketing strategies in big ways.  Recently, while speaking with recruiters who have placed contractors on my Interactive Marketing Design and Development teams in the past, we identified strategies that they could utilize in order to create new ways to identify potential employees.  Their HR team was WAY behind the times.

Since human resources teams have always had a surge of incoming resumes, there will be importance in how HR professionals find new talent in non-traditional ways AND how they use Interactive Marketing tactics such as Social Media, Analytics, Blogs, RSS Syndication, and other ways to differentiate good talent.

1. Blogs:  I think that HR professionals and recruiters should establish themselves as subject matter experts.  With this, I suggest that Human Resources have representation on corporate websites and/or blogs in order to discuss corporate culture, recruiting techniques, announce job opportunities, remind talent of appropriate behavior, and incentivize employees for talent referrals.
2. Social Media:  HR Recruiters as independent firms, as well as corporate recruiters should have appropriate social media presence.  The idea would be that one hunts where the game is… right?  So HR professionals should stay abreast of the latest social media trends and not only be experts in order to interview new candidates about experience, but also to utilize these tactics in order to attract and communicate with new talent.
3. Syndication:  HR professionals already enjoy syndication.  Once they pay to submit job descriptions to leading job boards, there seem to be many secondary and tertiary job boards that re-post via syndication for the purpose of acquiring lead generation bounties.  However, when strategically done, content can be written on blog sites, and then be re-posted to Social Networks such as Facebook and Twitter.  Subsequently, job announcements/descriptions can then be virally shared amongst friends and followers.  What a nice way to get the word out about jobs!
4. Video Usage:  More candidates are using video to present their profiles.  Human Resources professionals should understand the top 3 Video Sharing websites in order to find candidates.  Most candidates who have placed their information in a video for sharing have pro-actively tagged them for those searching.  So as if this blog post, searching for “Interactive & Digital Marketing” on Youtube.com shows “yours truly” as number 2/1620 results.  But on the flip side, Human Resources professionals can use Videos to promote their firm as places responsible for top placement opportunities through video.  BE CREATIVE!
5. Geo-Advertising:  Some firms are specifically looking for candidates who don’t have to relocate.  Using geographical targeting offered by leading advertising channels allows a search to be limited in scope.
6. Analytics:  Having a key understanding of how candidates get to the career offerings on a corporate site, or what websites are regularly referring candidates to a firm’s internet presence gives great data that allows tracking through lead and candidate conversion paths.  Interactive Marketing/HR Professionals should understand this in order to further market an opportunity to the correct talent.
7. Job SAAS:  Carefully research what software as a service opportunities are out there.  Recruiters can strategically utilize these services to facilitate candidate tracking, automated CV & Resume searches, job board posting, reporting, & document management.
8. Establish Communities and/or Groups:  Piggybacking off of the Social Networking models, joining and/or creating communities that allow recruiters to post jobs and or discuss trends in recruiting can allow job searchers to participate and directly gauge if they are appropriate for the said opportunities.
9. Utilization of Search Engine Optimization:  Because of the high rate of syndications and re-posts, creating the right keyword mixes for available job descriptions is a very important piece of a job opportunity being found.  HR professionals should always use good tagging mixes so that searches in Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. will bring their opportunities to the front of the Pack.
10. Mobile Ready:  Are you ready for the future of resume submission and job applications via Mobile Browsers?  Make sure the Internet Development team is appropriately allowing Careers and Jobs information to be accessed via popular Mobile Phones.

Since we’ve used many recruiters to place positions in the Interactive Marketing space, it has been truly interesting to see who has a firm grasp of Interactive Marketing Tactics and Tools from a Recruiting and HR standpoint.  Hopefully, these are some top level buckets that HR reps can use to further their opportunities to match progressive and qualified candidates with awesome job opportunities.