By now you know that blasting your resume to fifty employers and praying for an amazing response rate isn’t going to propel you to new and amazing career experiences. You also realize (hopefully) that taking the time to network, personalize messaging, and incorporate social media into your search tactics is a more productive approach. However, what you may lack is a road map to incorporating these elements into an effective job networking strategy.

This article offers eleven guidelines for using your content marketing skillset to create a following and dramatically improve your chances of finding an optimal career opportunity. In fact, this approach worked for me a handful of years ago when I landed my job at ExactHire, and I’ve witnessed it being a game-changer for many others since then.

Be Assertive

You have to put yourself out there when seeking a new position. While that comes naturally to some, it can be very uncomfortable for others. However, it is less daunting these days because so much proactive reach-out can be done digitally.

When you first embark on a job search, you may decide to tell your existing contacts that you’re looking for a new job in the hopes that they will remember to tell you about open positions they discover. The only problem with this incomplete approach is that who knows how long it will take to land a job so that you can then send out the customary “here’s my new contact information” message. Consequently, it’s reasonable to expect your contacts to forget you are looking during the gap between those two events.

Therefore, in the spirit of CAN-SPAM compliance, invite your circle of contacts to receive periodic updates from you about your job search activity. Not only will this keep your employment situation top of mind for those people, but it will also put you in a position to hear about job openings that aren’t necessarily posted anywhere, but rather, presented to your network by their other contacts. Here’s a call-out message to get your viral job networking team started:

Hello!
I’m contacting you to ask if you’d be willing to be a part of my job search networking team? With your permission, I’d like to send you a brief, weekly message that highlights the jobs/companies to which I’ve applied. That way, if you know anyone at any of the companies mentioned, you might be willing to help me get a foot in the door by referring my information to the right employee.

I would really appreciate your assistance. If you’re willing to accept my job search updates, simply respond to confirm. Plus, you may opt-out at any time.

Thanks!

Be Respectful

Now before you blast this message to your entire contact list, make sure you are approaching this initial call-out with care. For example, consider the best medium for communication based on your personality, current employment situation, and network following.

If you gravitate toward email communication, then the call-out content above is certainly suited for that medium. However, if you have far more Twitter followers or LinkedIn contacts than you have close acquaintances in your email address book, then short, direct messages on those social networks may be a more efficient use of your time. It is important to make the message one-to-one instead of a mere status update on your social profile. It creates accountability to respond on the part of the recipient and it formalizes his/her “opt-in” to your updates.

If you’re really passionate about your craft and your network would be receptive (let’s say they’re mostly other content marketers), then why not create a squeeze page with a form that invites people to opt into your drip campaign of employment updates?

I’m personally partial to email because of the response rate I’ve seen with my own network in the past. If this avenue is the right fit for you, make sure you always blind carbon copy (bcc) all recipients and link to resources within the body text rather than attach large portfolio, reference, and resume files. Plus, then you can track the most engaged “teammates” based on their custom redirect clicks.

Be Social

The wider the net you cast in your job search, the more chances you will catch a job. While you may initially invite-only your inner circle of contacts, I encourage you to push your boundaries when it comes to engaging other lesser-known acquaintances in your efforts. Here are some obvious contact sources plus a few out of the box options:

• Friends
• Past co-workers (current ones, too, depending on your employment situation)
• Community organizations of which you are apart
• Casual connections are made everywhere from industry events to kid birthday parties
• Authors of blogs to which you’ve contributed, and past contributors to your own blog
• LinkedIn group members – even if you haven’t met in person but tend to comment on the same discussion strings
• Contacts made during failed job interview attempts. In fact, this was the most surprising gold mine of team members for me in the past. This is especially relevant in situations where you are one of two job finalists, but don’t end up getting the job.

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Be Concise

As you attract more contacts, keep them engaged by getting to the point quickly. Your weekly updates should serve as a digest of your latest employment exploits, not an unabridged, e-book explanation of your recent interviews.

Create a message template that includes a quick overview of your networking activities. Bullet points are preferable along with clear headings for different auction categories such as applications, interviews, follow-ups, and potential offers. Bold any mention of specific names of people and organizations so that it is easy for your recipients to scan. You should hyperlink to the websites or social profiles of companies and individuals to add context for your readers.

Succinctly follow up regarding any movement on items mentioned in the previous update as well. While this can be accomplished with bullet points or a short paragraph if you have the time and the know-how to flex your marketing muscles, consider a vlog series recapping the week’s events or a series of tweet screenshots that tell the story of your job search-related updates on Twitter. Not only will you more likely engage your audience, but also demonstrate your content production know-how in the process.

Here’s a message format that worked well for me:

Hello Networking Team!
Thank you so much for your continued support. I appreciate the job leads this team has produced for me! Here’s this week’s recap:

Coming Up Soon:

• In-person interview for the Community Manager position this Thursday, 3/17 with Pat Smith at ACME, Inc.
• Coffee with Maria Esposito of Employment Resources this Friday.

My Applications in the Past Week:
Do you know someone at these firms? Could you help me get my foot in the door?

• Applied for Marketing Specialist at Content Profs on 3/9
• Applied for Content Coordinator at Blogs ‘R Us on 3/10

Follow-up from Last Week’s Update:
I had a final interview with the ABC Group for the Social Media Manager position yesterday. I thought my conversations with Joe Johnson (VP of Marketing) and Suzie Chan (Digital Marketing Manager) went really well, and I definitely have a better understanding of the culture and direction of the department and organization.

Thanks for your attention!
[full name]
[email]
[mobile phone]
[link to LinkedIn public profile]
[link to Twitter handle]
[link to resume]

Be Creative

In addition to the aforementioned interactive content ideas, push yourself to better engage your networking team by being innovative with your message content each week. For example, throw in a mini-infographic highlighting your professional accomplishments if you dabble in design work. Or, highlight some posts from your personal blog or link to your personal “employee media kit” via Slideshare. Customize your digital assets based on your specialties, but think about which content has the greatest potential to be shared outside your network (as long as that’s your intent in the case of a public job search).

Be Consistent

Regardless of your occupation, employers of choice want employees who are consistent and reliable. View your job search situation as an opportunity to impress your networking team so that they will advocate on your behalf with organizations to which they are connected. An easy way to demonstrate your focus on delivering results is to stick to sending your update on the same day and time every single week. By doing so, momentum will be in your favor as your following grows and audience members condition themselves to expect and even look forward to your updates. Don’t disappoint your cheer section by flaking out on your regular responsibilities.

Be Candid

It’s important to clarify your expectations to your networking teammates. That is, explain how public your search is, and whether or not recipients have the right to share news of your search, as well as your resources (e.g. portfolio, resume, reference letters, etc.). If you are in job transition, then in most cases it is to your advantage to give others carte blanche on spreading the word about your employment goals. However, if you are already employed and conducting a more discrete search, ask your contacts to check with you before referring your information to individuals and organizations for which you have not yet expressed direct interest.

Be Open-Minded

Your path to your next position is not always a straight line from point A to point B. Depending on factors such as the current economic climate, your particular skill set and the reasons for your job change, there may be many twists and turns along your journey. Therefore, keep an open mind when it comes to considering new types of activities that could be fruitful for your end objective.

Seek out informational interviews in order to network with individuals in organizations that hold interest, but that may not be currently hiring. The goal here is to get introductions to other people that may be hiring at other companies, as well as to use the discussion to learn more about new skill sets and company cultures. Look for networking groups run by like-minded individuals as well as state workforce development initiatives. Lastly, explore position types that you may not have initially considered, but that could serve as stepping-stones to future career opportunities.

Be Reciprocal

You will make more networking progress when you make it evident to others that you want to help them in their endeavors, too. Particularly in the case of requesting informational interviews with newly acquainted individuals, lower any potential uneasiness they may have about speaking with you by offering to connect them with others who may help their own causes (e.g. committee volunteers, friends who share similar interests, potential customers of their company, etc.).

Other creative ways in which you may be able to return a favor include contributing to their blog or offering to volunteer for a short freelance project they’re managing. Having a “how can I help you too?” mentality will help you earn more legitimate networking connections and put you in a better position to be successful once you land your next position, too.

Be Responsive

You know that feeling you get when your phone chimes to alert you that someone just retweeted your latest status update? It’s a good feeling. It means that your contribution is valued and it makes you want to do more. Give your networking teammates the same high by acknowledging all of their contributions. In my job search experience, I was often surprised by the short and sweet replies of encouragement I received from mere acquaintances after my weekly update was sent. No matter how short the reply, I always reached out to that person to continue the conversation and let him or her know that I valued the correspondence.

The direct, personalized conversation is a rare commodity these days, and therefore more engaging than ever. Remember that these people are volunteering to help you so it is critical to get back to them in a timely manner.

Be Gracious

In the spirit of responsiveness, mind your manners and always thank others for their efforts to help you. Make the exercise more meaningful by reiterating to the person what he/she specifically did that truly made your search easier and more pleasant.

For bigger occasions, send an elaborate thank-you via any one of a number of communication channels. For smaller wins simply call out that person (by their initials only) in your weekly update to let them and others know you appreciate their help.

You know your job search content strategy is working when:

• Others forward new job descriptions to you that you haven’t seen posted anywhere,
• Hiring managers reference people in your network while they are interviewing you,
• Your audience offers you unsolicited encouragement and champions your cause,
• Your job applications actually receive a response
• People are happy to make introductions for you.

If you follow these guidelines, you can have more success in your job search. Be authentic, accountable and resourceful as you build your audience and please let me know if I can be on your job networking team!

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The post 11 Step Content Strategy to Help You Land Your Next Job appeared first on Relevance.

If you haven’t already found the yin to your marketing yang, then go ask a corporate recruiter to lunch right now! That’s right—your recruiting counterpart in human resources overcomes similar obstacles as he strives to attract, and be the best talent acquisition team for your organization. In fact, many of his methods are the same as yours. Each of you has your strengths; however, you could very well round out each other’s challenges if you team up for some special projects.

Here are four project ideas that will make marketing and recruiting the new dynamic duo in your company:

1. Employment Brand Alignment

You spend a ton of time making sure that your corporate brand is a shining beacon of truth for your organization’s endeavors. From perfecting standardized email signatures to enforcing the consistent usage of only the logos and colors referenced in your media kit—you’ve got branding down pat. However, how much do you know about what recruiting and HR folks are doing to align your organization’s employment brand with the perception your customers have about your corporate brand? After all, some of your customers may turn into employees and vice versa.

A partnership between marketing and recruiting presents an organization with the opportunity to craft the hiring experience. In the same way that marketing conducts surveys and sales makes calls after a major purchase to reduce cognitive dissonance, recruiting and/or HR staff members should plan activities to engage individuals who have accepted offers but have not yet started their first day. A content series can be developed to nurture those new hires with information about the history and culture of the organization, as well as set expectations for job success.

Marketing should ask recruiting to think about whether the hiring process is easy (enough) and pleasant. Can prospective new employees receive alerts about new job postings via social media and/or text? How can the selection process experience be improved for individuals who do not get hired (so that the employment brand is still preserved)?

Idea: Create a tangible brand for your Talent Acquisition process.

• Does it have a special name? My previous employer called our department the “Talent Acquisition Agency.”
• Does your employment brand warrant its own logo?
• Can you easily identify the “top talent” applicant personas that you intend to target?

2. Uncover Applicant Influencers

Your organization may not always be involved in talent acquisition. It just depends on how frequently you hire employees and your stance on maintaining a passive applicant pool. I will say that the latter is a good idea since you never know when a hiring manager will surprise you with a new job opening that needs to be filled “yesterday!” But even if you don’t have any openings presently, you should always be serving up employment- and culture-related content.

If you’re doing a great job with employment branding, then odds are you have some followers who will readily engage in social conversation and amplify your reach by sharing content with their own audiences. These people are your applicant influencers. They may not always be past applicants. In fact, they could include existing employees, devoted customers, enterprising vendors, workforce development advocates, and other friends of your company.

Marketing can lend its expertise to recruiters by helping them seek and identify other influencers for various job categories. Furthermore, both parties should brainstorm new job-related hashtags and try some sponsored social advertisements that target these influencers.

Idea: Produce an advanced piece of content featuring your top employment influencers.

• Identify your brand ambassadors from a diverse cross-section of occupations and relationships to your organization.
• Invite them to participate in a survey that collects their impressions of what makes your employment experience unique.
• Make it easy for your influencers to share the finished piece with their networks by using tracked URLs within social media sharing links. And why wouldn’t they want to share your piece? You’ve built a content distribution machine by including them in the resource!

3. An Internal Campaign for Great Talent Acquisition

While your new dynamic duo is surely a force with which to be reckoned, think about what could be accomplished if you rallied your entire workforce around the goal of finding and securing the best and the brightest for your team. Launch an internal campaign across departments to educate others about the benefits of having the best talent and what they can do to help with talent acquisition. This is a large undertaking, so much support is required, but here’s a list of milestones to include:

• Ask recruiting and HR to work with hiring managers to conduct thorough job evaluations to make sure that job descriptions (and subsequent advertisements for said listings) are truly accurate about the requirements of the position. You can dress up a job description when you advertise it, but newly hired employees will figure out your bluff and exit quickly, sending all your employment branding efforts down the drain.
• Analyze data from your company’s recruiting software to look for trends in successful applicant referral sites and popular landing pages. Then, provide in-depth keyword research to recruiting and share ideas with them on how to appropriately use keywords in job descriptions and career-related content.
• Find out about the purple squirrel positions for your organization (there’s always one!) and help recruiting consider whether some paid search and retargeting ads are a feasible option for sourcing applicant interest.
• On the training front, have HR teach hiring managers and other interviewing stakeholders about the appropriate way to conduct candidate interviews. Then, as a marketer, conduct small group sessions with employees and brainstorm ways in which they can support the employment brand through their individual actions (promoting content on social media, welcoming new employees on their first day, acting as a new hire mentor, etc.).

Idea: Develop a series of videos for potential applicants to explain how the hiring process works.

• Invite individuals from across the organization to participate in the videos. This will create buy-in and “win over” additional people to be your employment brand star promoters.
• Be as transparent as possible with applicants and set expectations for how long the process will take and how many steps will be involved. Being honest and accountable to this plan will help you be more efficient in hiring. For example, individuals who cannot accept your timeframe for hiring are more likely to self-select out of the process and appreciate your candor (more points for your employment brand).
• Evaluate the quality of your interviewees once the video series has been available for a while. It will be easier to spot the candidates who didn’t care enough to prepare and learn about your organization.

4. CrowdSource Content Development

Your recruiting friends are probably well-liked (they tend to have the social gene) and their interpersonal skills can be the key to helping you persuade other budding writers in your organization to share their ideas for your blog, case studies, white papers, videos, etc. Recruiters’ social networks also tend to be incredibly vast, which is an amazing benefit when it comes to creating awareness for your content across multiple channels.

You can return the favor by helping them create career-focused content for their applicant-sourcing efforts. While you may run across a recruiter that dabbles in blogging every now and then, the majority of them spend all day every day screening candidates on the phone and posting job opportunities in short bursts to social media. They need you just as much as you need them.

Idea: Have a widespread competition to invite others to create content in exchange for a group prize.

• Determine whether it should be company-wide or branch-wide depending on the size of your office.
• Invite teammates to contribute and vote on prize ideas so everyone looks forward to victory.
• Not everyone has the time, focus, and/or talent to write. However, they surely can make up for it in other areas such as social media posting, video participation, Q&A interviews, etc. Recognize that a variety of strengths make the outcome even better, so you’ll need to provide many different kinds of content opportunities to earn points.
• Celebrate victory with unique experiences, and by all means—document and promote your success, too.

One of the best parts about befriending your talent acquisition teammate is that it offers you a chance to think outside the box and focus your efforts on a different kind of audience—your potential new employees. Those are the people that will help your organization succeed tomorrow, too, so go schedule that lunch!

The post 4 Content Marketing Ideas for Talent Acquisition Dominance appeared first on Relevance.

Like many other modern models, it’s helpful to think of this journey as a continuum rather than a linear process. Factors such as the proliferation of digital media and applicant scarcity in the market have created avenues for job seekers to jump in at what used to be “later stages” in the traditional hiring process.

In a previous post, I discussed ideas for creating awareness and interest among potential job candidates by defining personas and customizing an approach across different media types. Now it’s time to move job seekers on to the Consideration and Intent stages of the applicant sourcing cycle.

“Assisting” Job Seekers Through the Hiring Cycle

If we think about recruitment marketing from an attribution model perspective, Google research will tell us that marketing channels in the Consideration and Intent phases of the customer buyer journey will more often act as an “assist interaction” in the conversion process rather than a “last interaction.”

Job seekers in these adjacent phases of the cycle are warming up now that they are aware of your opportunity, but are perhaps not yet ready to commit to applying to your organization. Here are some ideas on how to use owned and shared media (which lead in assists) to further persuade individuals to focus on your specific job openings and initiate the employment application process.

Owned Media

Blog

In addition to mining analytics site search reports to come up with keyword phrases to convert into blog titles, you should also track the types of questions you receive from applicants during the hiring process. By posting blogs that answer the very questions that job candidates tend to ask, you’re already a step ahead when it comes to creating application intent earlier in the recruiting process.

Take it a step further and ask candidates for their comments and suggestions about your recruiting process during interviews and use that feedback as a source for potential blog content. The added bonus of this approach is the ability to weed out candidates that didn’t do their research during interview preparation and fail to give you a quality answer!

Your blog content should also include candid commentary (warts and all) on what it’s like to work at your company. Job seekers at this stage are comparing your corporate culture to other potential employers and your employee testimonials and embedded short videos can help entice them to take the time to apply (or not to) and that can be a good thing.

Email

With email, you’re more limited because you won’t necessarily have the email address of those first-time candidates in the Consideration and Intent stages yet. Make sure your job openings portal includes the ability for candidates to subscribe to future job posting updates via email.

Better yet, give them the ability to customize the types of alerts they receive and the chance to opt in to SMS/text messaging updates, too. This personalized approach will cater to their preferences and increase their chances of future conversion as you have positions available that more closely match their interests.

Depending on the size of your organization, it’s very likely that you will have individuals that apply to many positions with your company at once, or that at least return to apply to future positions on subsequent visits. Email is a significant factor in those passive applicants returning to your site to “repurchase” in the future, especially after they weren’t selected by you in the past.

Here are some ideas on using email to encourage previous applicants to reapply:

• Send an applicant-focused newsletter to feature popular career-related blogs and tell candidates what to expect from the hiring process (i.e. interviewing steps, timeline for hiring, what not to do, etc.).
• Ask them to participate in a survey designed to collect feedback for improving the recruiting process. Many applicants will be impressed that you actually take action to improve your recruitment brand, and are bold enough to ask individuals who weren’t selected for honest criticism. Your brand will improve and those individuals may be quicker to reapply or to convince a friend to give your company a look.
• Share information about changes that have been made as the result of applicant feedback. This action solidifies your organization’s dedication to improvement and earns points when compared to job opportunities with your competitor.

Jobs Page

Job seekers that move beyond the basic job openings page of your dedicated careers portal or corporate website want to consume content about what it’s really like at your organization. If they are going to invest the time to apply, then they want to make sure they could see themselves in your culture. Paint a “day in the life of” picture for them through content.

Include information on your site about frequently asked questions, benefits and employee testimonials. If you’re proud of your working space, post a virtual video tour of your office. If you’re ecstatic about your liberal paid volunteer hours policy, showcase a collage of photos showing employees working for charitable causes.

Shared Media

Subject Matter Experts

Take the idea of an employee testimonial a step further and amplify its reach using social media. Find your best employment brand ambassadors and give them the mouthpiece to demonstrate how they are subject matter experts in all things related to your company culture.

Host a regularly scheduled tweet-up on Twitter that gives job seekers a chance to ask your employees questions about the hiring process, employment experience, and opportunities for advancement. Publicize the tweet-up schedule on your jobs page and organize the best post comments into a summary blog afterward that gets featured in your next applicant newsletter.

If resources don’t allow for a frequent tweet-up, invite ambassador employees to join LinkedIn groups relevant to job seekers and/or your industry. Mine discussion strings for opportunities to have your subject matter experts contribute and send them the link with an invitation to comment.

Preparation Advice

The internet is overcrowded with content related to popular interview questions and how to prepare for an interview. Your potential job candidates will be more likely to hop on your job wagon if you give them advice about preparing for the hiring process at your company in particular.

Even if they haven’t yet committed to applying, help them see themselves succeeding in an interview later on so they are more likely to take the first step of applying now. Make plans to spotlight candidates who (smartly) mention your preparation-related content during the application process.

Create a presentation highlighting the most valuable characteristics of your top employees and/or how to make a great impression during your interview process. Upload the deck to Slideshare and then invite your employees to share it with their social networks and embed it in their personal LinkedIn blog posts.

Isolate the most digestible tips/facts from your Slideshare and then post a steady diet of them to social media over time using a consistent hashtag. If applicable (hopefully), include quantifiable, flattering statistics about new hire success, productivity, and low turnover.

Automated Employee Referrals

You may be lucky enough to have willing employee brand ambassadors beating a path to your door, particularly if you have an amazing company culture with teammates that brag about your challenging and rewarding opportunities to their friends.

If you’re not there yet or are slightly worried about employees failing to respond to your applicant sourcing battle cry, then there’s no shame in incentivizing referral behavior. In fact, even if you count yourself among the corporate culture elite, you’d be silly not to have an incentive. It’s staggeringly cheaper than always having to budget money for external job boards, headhunters and the opportunity cost of your staff members’ time in interviewing too many “just okay” candidates.

In addition to an enticing referral incentive, automate the administrative aspect of employee referral tracking if your applicant tracking system allows. This type of feature makes it easy for your employees to create personalized job URLs to share with their own social networks. As their contacts begin to apply for jobs, the application auto-populates the referring employee’s name in the “How did you hear about this position?” field. As a result, tracking incentive payouts becomes simple for you.

By creating relevant owned and shared media to target job seekers in the Consideration and Intent/Preference stages of the candidate journey, you’re increasing the likelihood that you will get more chances to convert job seekers into actual applicants. Stay tuned for the next article in this series which will focus on optimizing content marketing efforts for the final two stages of the applicant sourcing journey.

The post Amp Up Applicant Sourcing With Owned And Shared Media appeared first on Relevance.

The SMB scenario can make it challenging to compete for market share with your Fortune 500 counterparts, so it’s no surprise that it can be just as tricky to attract top talent through dazzling content marketing efforts, too. But it can’t be ignored, either. In March of 2015, recruiting difficulty for companies reached four-year highs for the 11th consecutive month. And that’s for companies of all sizes in the U.S.

The key is to make the most out of available resources– starting with formulating a strategy for the recruiting process in the same way you would for customer acquisition. In this first article of a series, we’ll examine persona development and a few ideas for generating initial awareness and interest for your employment opportunities through the use of content.

Define Applicant Personas

Keep this simple at first, as you can always debate the finer differences between job category target personas later. Start off with two different persona definitions. For example, choose one of the following pairings:

• Exempt vs. nonexempt employees
• Executive-level vs. associate-level employees
• Customer-facing (sales, customer service, marketing) vs. internal department employees (IT, HR, operations, accounting)

Once you’ve defined your initial personas, think about how each of their preferences will shape how they respond to recruitment-specific forms of content marketing. Use that info as a guide to map content marketing efforts to each stage of the recruiting and hiring process. We’ll use the executive-level vs. associate-level employee example in the next section.

Create Awareness & Interest Around Your Job Posting

Depending on the scope of your candidate search, it’s quite possible that your future employees won’t be familiar with your company before spotting a link to your job listing. If that’s the case, their first experience with content from your organization may be via a third party such as a job board or an executive recruiter. If you pique their interest, then you could eventually have a chance to grab their attention on your company site and/or careers portal, too.

Here’s how you might be able to appeal to the executive-level and associate-level personas with an integrated approach using earned, shared, owned and paid media:

Associate Persona

Earned

Free external job boards and job board aggregators arguably fall into the earned bucket because you’re not necessarily guaranteed that job postings will publish. Your odds of inclusion will depend on the reputation of your careers portal and whether you try to game the system by posting multiple positions by the same title and/or frequently refreshing the start dates for jobs.

Make sure your job description includes not only the key responsibilities of the job and the essential requirements, but also a brief description of your organization (including location and general size, since they don’t know you) that paints a compelling picture of the unique opportunities available with your firm.

Name the key benefits offered that make people passionate about working at your smaller company (e.g. flex time, work from home policies, casual dress, beer Fridays, paid volunteer time, etc.). Stand out from most other job postings hosted on third party sites with a video of an employee describing the highlights of the job and then embedding that video in the job listing.

Shared

Social media is a common means for savvy organizations to be discovered by job seekers. Automatically post new job listings to social media via an integration with your hiring software. Be sure to include relevant jobseeker hashtags, including those descriptive of the position, but also of the geographic area, to generate awareness for your positions.

Owned

Assuming you’ve intrigued job seekers enough to read through the bulk of your job description (and its ideal length will, of course, depend on the job, persona and company culture), give them links to additional information if they want to sink their teeth into the role details before committing to an employment application.

Appeal to a persona’s preferences with the appropriate writing style (e.g. entertaining top 10 lists for extroverted marketers or detailed flow chart graphics for operations professionals). Take it a step further and publish these position snapshot blogs on Medium, LinkedIn and other platforms that may resonate with your persona.

Paid

Perhaps the most obvious source of this media type for recruiting is the use of paid job boards such as Monster, CareerBuilder, Dice and more. It can be a budget stretch for SMBs to use these resources frequently; however, if they are to be fruitful, make sure that the message is crafted in a way that captivates, informs and converts the job seeker to the point of application.

Smaller companies that don’t command brand recognition should focus on putting position-specific keywords at the beginning of the posting, and elaborate on organizational details at the end of the job listing. That way, the job listing snippet that appears to the job seeker will correlate with the search performed by the job seeker.

Executive Persona

Earned

Consider business, news and industry-relevant publications within the geographic scope of your applicant search and pitch them on spotlighting your organization for its unique employment benefits, planned growth increase, corporate culture, etc. Higher level candidates are especially likely to read these resources and appreciate the fact that your organization was news-worthy enough to command prime media real estate.

Shared

For executives, their first exposure to your organization may be the LinkedIn InMail a recruiter sends them describing your opportunity. Work with your recruiter to craft a message representative of your culture and position that will resonate with that persona.

Start or join a LinkedIn group relevant to your industry and regularly participate in discussions that may catch the eye of potential executive recruits. Use the forum as a means to advertise the availability of your organization’s opportunities, as well as to comment on desirable traits in successful performers.

Owned

Create content that describes the factors necessary to be deemed successful six months into the position. This resource can live on your own domain and should also elaborate on the corporate culture and convey the typical day or week (or why it is atypical if that is a selling point). This is often an emotional, warm-fuzzy accompaniment to the typical job description.

Paid

If history has proven that a specific job is a beast to fill (i.e. it requires a boat-load of high-level certifications or is a highly technical job in a remote location), then even the thriftiest of recruiters may need to invest in paid media for this persona type. Conduct research to uncover the most likely outlet for your opportunity. Sponsored social posts with substantial targeting capabilities are a good place to start, and messaging should entice high-level job seekers by appealing to what makes your organization a special and rewarding challenge for the executive (e.g. “Even if you haven’t heard of us, you should check us out and here’s why.”).

By defining your applicant personas and thoughtfully considering what would initially attract them to a job opportunity with your company, you dramatically increase the number of chances you get to convert job seekers into applicants. Stay tuned for the next post in this series for tips on guiding intent within your potential applicant base and using content marketing to increase the number of employment applications your organization receives.

The post How Content Marketing Can Help Attract Top Talent appeared first on Relevance.