Dave talks to Rohit Kapoor – Talent Matters Podcast
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Dave talks to Rohit Kapoor about the idea that all recruiters are marketers, digital recruitment marketing as the evolution of traditional job advertising, the 3 pillars of recruitment marketing, consistency as a central tenet of recruitment marketing, the importance of hashtags, the power of personal brands and how hiring won’t cease in a recession.

The One Where They Talk About…

In episode 9 of the Talent Matters podcast series, Wave CEO Dave Jenkins talks to Rohit Kapoor, Co-founder of Paiger, an AI marketing assistant built for recruiters. Having worked in the recruitment industry for many years, Rohit identified a gap in the market for recruitment marketing automation – making it easier and faster to share content, jobs and perform market research. In 4.5 years Paiger has grown hugely, proving that there is a real need for a platform that will help automate the marketing that recruiters must now do in order to find talented candidates and clients and grow.

Rohit talks about the vital importance of recruitment marketing as a way to source clients and candidates, increase brand awareness, and drive growth, plus shares valuable tips on how to market effectively. The podcast is well worth a listen and available to stream now. In the meantime, we’ve listed the key takeaways so that you don’t have to take notes!

Every recruiter is a marketer

Marketing can divide opinion within recruitment agencies – some see it as an essential tool to run and grow their business, others feel it takes consultants away from being on the phone, speaking to clients and candidates and making placements. The truth is that recruiters engage in marketing on a daily basis – it’s a fundamental part of recruitment even if it’s not always recognised as marketing. Job adverts are a form of marketing. When you advertise your jobs, you market yourself as an individual recruiter as well as marketing the agency. In order to source candidates and new clients, recruiters work their networks – that is marketing. When you put out a great job ad – that is marketing. Recruiters have always been marketers, it’s just that some don’t realise that what they do day in, day out is marketing.

Recruitment marketing is merely the evolution of job advertising

Marketing didn’t begin with the rise of social media. In the days before socials, recruitment marketing was the way you marketed your job ads – taking those ads to the right place, in front of the right audience. You’d know which newspaper to buy space in, which job boards to post to. In 2022, you have a pool of candidates on social media waiting to be engaged with. You still need to know where to go – the demographic you’re targeting will determine the platforms you’ll want to focus on. In many ways, it’s no different to having a book of contacts that you call around when a suitable job comes in. What has changed is that social media pushes those boundaries, allowing recruiters to connect with candidates they’d never have been able to before the social media era.

The 3 pillars to grow organic followers on social media

It’s hard to know where to start with social media, but there are 3 key pillars for a solid recruitment marketing foundation:

1. Curating content – Find news relevant to your market and share an opinion on it. Share news stories and articles, create a poll based on current challenges and talking points but always have an opinion and invite others to share their opinions too.

2. Job ads – This is the service you provide but it is also a great opportunity to market your agency and create brand awareness through the quality of your ads and through the use of brand colours. It’s important to push ads out to where the demographic sits and drive candidates back to your application page. An option to immediately click and apply is essential or you’re likely to lose them. You need to always be thinking, “how do I get that candidate back onto my website and into my ecosystem?”

3. Creating content – Create content that is relevant to your business, your market, your demographic. This could be in the form of an article, video, podcast, quiz, or something else. It could be company news, industry news or advice. It’s about pushing out value rather than a service that you’re trying to sell. Give value to candidates other than just your job offerings. There are a range of advice topics that would work. If you’re stumped, simply think about what are you saying to candidates on a daily basis throughout the recruitment process. Take what you’d say to individual candidates and put that into pieces of content. For example, how the interview process has changed in the last five years, how to deal with counter-offers in today’s world, how to return to the workplace after an extended break from it.

Consistency is key

The three pillars provide a strong basis for your recruitment marketing campaign but all three need to be achieved consistently. As a LinkedIn Marketing Partner, Paiger receives LinkedIn’s algorithms every quarter and the biggest takeaway is consistency as LinkedIn rewards you for being consistent over time. However, consistency isn’t just important to achieve on LinkedIn but across your entire recruitment marketing campaign. The three pillars together build a picture for candidates and clients. They will know that you understand the industry, have insightful opinions, and publish interesting job ads. You may have built a relationship with them over time – both seen and unseen – from comments on posts but also from engaging with other content that you’ve published and shared. The more they see, the fuller the picture. It’s a branding exercise built over time.

Hashtags are essential but only if used sparingly

Rohit advocates the use of hashtags as a way to reach second and third degree connections. Without them your reach may not extend beyond your connections. However, use a maximum of five hashtags – any more and LinkedIn assumes you’re spam. When narrowing down the hashtags to use, think about the market you’re targeting and what they may be interested in and searching for.

Utilise the power of personal brands

Echoing previous Talent Matters guest Mitch Sullivan’s thoughts on agency branding, Rohit believes that clients and candidates largely choose an agency because of the personal brand of the consultant rather than the brand of the agency itself. “People buy from people,” Rohit maintains, so it makes sense to utilise the the individual brand your consultants build over social media. It’s irrelevant whether they choose to move onto another agency in the future – use them while you’ve got them.

Despite a recession, hiring activity won’t deplete

COVID and Brexit have ultimately created the position that jobs aren’t going to slow down. We will continue to face the challenge of loads of jobs but low candidate numbers for a while to come yet. Every sector Rohit speaks to is struggling to find candidates still. However, it’s a good thing for good recruiters. The value of recruiters that excel at their jobs has increased hugely as quality candidates have become so rare.

Keep your eye out for upcoming Talent Matters podcast episodes where you can expect more insights and advice from an incredibly diverse line-up of figures from the world of recruitment.