Part 1 - Talent acquisition & marketing strategy: An integrated blueprint with technology options

People who know me will tell you that not only am I a purveyor of terrible dad jokes, but I also take great pride in my extensive repertoire of famous quotes and clichés, ready to be deployed at a moment's notice for any occasion. They'll also confirm that I'm a big fan of keeping things simple whenever possible (even though that can often be hard to do! [oh the irony]).

With this preference for quotes and simplicity in mind, I'm frequently attracted to the quote below. It was originally shared in the context of football which, as a Spurs fan, I prefer not to discuss at length (let's move on swiftly, shall we? 😭). Nevertheless, I find that it often remains relevant when substituting the word 'football' with a term that represents our profession.

Inspired by Mr. Shankly's words, I've set out to create a resource for my Acquisition and Attraction / compadres. My goal is to provide an easy-to-follow guide for anyone looking to build or evolve an end-to-end talent acquisition and attraction , regardless of their starting point. This blueprint is designed for those in SMEs or large corporate enterprises, for those stepping into senior roles or already established professionals who may be experiencing the strategic equivalent of 'writer's block'.

My intention, whether positively received or not, is to offer something that can be referenced to spark ideas, providing guidance on what to do next and suggesting actionable steps people may be able to add to their plans, strategies and to-do lists.

Before we dive in, there's something else that's useful to know about me. My brain works in a highly organised, logical, and sequential way. I'm certain that if you scanned it, you'd find a waterfall project plan Gantt chart imprinted on it. However, I'm fully aware that the world doesn't work in this perfectly tidy way. Events don't always unfold in the order they should, and usually, multiple plates are spinning simultaneously. To make matters more challenging, it's often not even the right plates.

The sequence presented below is just one perspective on how things could be ordered. Some may agree, while others might not – and that's perfectly okay. There could also be elements that some people feel are missing from the outline provided. For example, I'll be covering the steps from employer value proposition () to onboarding, so I haven't delved into earlier stages such as workforce or talent planning. If you're passionate about something you believe should be included, I encourage you to contribute to the discussion by adding your thoughts in the comments section.

With all that being said, let's dive into the first part of this series and explore the first three stages. The remaining steps, four to seven, will be coming your way soon (basically, once I've had the chance to write them! 😊)

(UPDATE: Part 2 on and is now live and can be found HERE)

(UPDATE: Part 3 on job and distribution is now live and can be found HERE)

(UPDATE: Part 4 [final] on 'candidate assessment' and 'new starter onboarding' is now live and can be found HERE)

Overview

In this high-level end-to-end overview, we'll be covering the following stages over a three - four part 'series' (the content & social part ended up being quite long!):

1. Employer value proposition (EVP)

2. Employer branding and audience identification

3. Career site , ATS and CRM

4. Content marketing and social media

5. Job advertising and distribution

6. Candidate assessments

7. New starter onboarding

This first post will cover steps one to three.

1. Employer value proposition (EVP)

For some, an EVP is basically a posh way of understanding what the 'give' and the 'get' is for people working in your organisation. For others, its just the 'get' as they believe the 'give' is covered ad nauseum everywhere else (job descriptions, interviews, competancy frameworks etc...) Whatever camp you're in, its commonly agree to include the unique combination of benefits, rewards, and company culture that attracts and retains top talent. It's vitally important because it serves as the foundation for an organisation's employer brand, differentiating it from competitors and enabling it to attract the right people.

Ideally, to establish your EVP, companies should consider using external partners to help with research. Employees are more likely to provide open and honest feedback about the real culture when speaking to an outsider, safe in the knowledge that the information and insights they provide will be anonymised. This prevents skewed results and improved authenticity in your future messaging as employees are more likely to share what they think leaders need to hear, rather than what they think they want to hear.

Additionally, when it comes to analysing all the qualitative and quantitative data you receive, an external partner is more likely to draw conclusions without being influenced by conscious or unconscious biases, or pressures to steer the narrative 'in a certain way.'

You may have heard this before, but your employer culture and brand, which we'll come on to in the next section, is 'what people say about you when you leave the room.'

(Although don't be deluded enough to think people are actually talking about your company when you're not there! There chances are, they're not. But you get the sentiment).

It's not for a person or leaders to tell their organisation what their EVP is. Instead, it involves conducting research, holding up the mirror, and embracing what the findings and insights reveal about your culture. If you don't like what you see in the reflection, you need to venture into the realms of cultural transformation. Attempting to impose your desired culture without robust validations will create expectation gaps, as people join the company thinking it's going to be 'X' but soon realise it's 'Y,' which they didn't sign up for. This will impact future attrition rates. Also, your current employees will see your disingenuous marketing materials and messages and share sarcastic 'yeah, right!' comments around the watercooler, rolling their eyes at the thinly veiled attempts at falsely manufactured PR, which people are far too savvy for these days. This is all further compounded with the likes of Glassdoor waiting in the wings to reveal all the blemishes your poorly applied make-up is trying to conceal.

If your circumstances leave no option but to conduct research internally, some popular survey and interview tools include:

SurveyMonkey : An online survey platform that allows companies to create, distribute, and analyse surveys. It offers a variety of question types, templates, and customisation options. Suitable for small businesses and enterprises.

Qualtrics: A powerful survey platform with advanced features, including branching logic, custom reporting, and integration capabilities. Best suited for large enterprises that require more complex survey designs and analytics.

Google Forms: A free and user-friendly survey tool with a range of question types and basic analytics. Ideal for small businesses or corporate teams with limited budgets and straightforward survey needs.

Typeform: A survey platform that specialises in creating visually engaging and interactive surveys. It offers conditional logic and integrations with various third-party tools. It's suitable for businesses of all sizes that value a visually appealing user experience.

For interview recording and transcription technology:

Otter.ai: An AI-powered transcription service that provides accurate, real-time transcriptions of interviews, meetings, and conversations. It offers speaker identification, keyword search, and collaboration features. Suitable for businesses of all sizes. I've been using this myself recently and it's fantastic! (hat tip Nick Thompson for sending it my way).

Rev: A transcription service that offers both automated and human-generated transcriptions. Known for its accuracy and quick turnaround times, Rev is ideal for businesses needing high-quality transcriptions for qualitative research analysis.

Incorporating these tools and techniques can help companies conduct internal research more effectively, ensuring you gather valuable insights for your EVP creation process. However, at the risk of repeating myself, if the option is on the table, then I'd engage an external partner to run this for /with you.

2. Employer brand & audience identification

is the process of promoting a company as an employer of choice to attract and retain talent. It is fed by the EVP, ensuring that the branding is authentic and grounded in the company's unique (hopefully validated!) values and culture.

Audience identification is essential for creating targeted and relevant messaging to engage with your desired talent audiences. Both elements are critical to an effective talent acquisition strategy.

A well-executed employer branding strategy includes several vital ingredients in addition to an EVP:

i) Target audience identification: If your EVP is 'know thyself' then this is 'know thy audience'. Understanding who your ideal candidates are is essential in being able to tailor your employer branding efforts to appeal to them in a compelling way. It's where you consider factors such as demographics, skills, experience, and cultural fit. Additionally, it's about understanding what they're after at different mental 'modes' - whether active or passive - across multiple touchpoints - whether on social media, websites, email, events, forums etc. What do they figuratively lay awake at night worrying about? And how can you provide something that alleviates this? To help with branding and audience identification efforts, various tools and platforms can be used. For example:

Glassdoor: An online platform for company reviews, salary information, and insights into company culture. Amongst other features (which we'll touch on at a later date) it offers employer branding solutions and recruitment analytics. It's a valuable resource for companies looking to enhance their employer brand reputation and monitor employee sentiment.

LinkedIn Talent Solutions: Has a suite of tools for attracting, engaging, and hiring talent. It includes employer branding tools, and 'Talent Insights' within a vast professional network. Not only does it help amplify employer brand messaging and engage with the right talent pools, but it's powerful in helping you deeply understand your target audiences so that you can create and position your branding effectively.

Universum: These folks specialise in employer branding research, advice, and communication. They can conduct surveys and collect data to help companies understand their market position and create targeted branding strategies. They can be a great strategic partner for organisations looking to build a data-driven employer brand.

ii) Strong and consistent messaging: It's important to ensure your employer brand messaging is clear, consistent, and in line with your company's values, mission, and culture. It's also essential to speak the language of your target audience. Companies often use their own jargon and acronyms in their external communications, which can lead to two issues: a) your target audience may not understand what you're saying, causing them to feel alienated rather than engaged, and; b) your SEO sucks because you're using terms that people aren't searching for, resulting in reduced visibility. Poor visibility leads to decreased awareness, consideration, intent, and conversions. By using clear and concise language that intuitively resonates with your target audience, you can establish a unified and recognisable brand identity. Consistent messaging helps build familiarity, which in turn fosters trust. When people trust your employer brand and what you're saying, they're more likely to consider you as a future employer of choice and a potential, future destination for their career.

iii) Engaging content and storytelling: With your messaging sorted you can then weave it into the stories and content that showcase your company culture, values, and employee experiences. More on this in a later section.

iv) A multi-channel approach: This is about leveraging multiple channels to reach your target audiences, including your careers site, job boards, social media platforms, industry events, CRMs, employee referrals, internal career mobility comms channels, alumni, and print (yep, it's still a thing and can play an important role in the right context). More on some of these later.

Another potent method is employee advocacy. Encouraging and enabling your employees to become brand ambassadors by sharing their experiences and promoting your company culture is an extremely powerful way to build trust and credibility with your target talent. People would much rather speak with 'IBM Jane' as opposed to 'IBM'. It's all linked to the psychology of people feeling more comfortable and connected when engaging with someone 'just like me.'

v) Monitoring and measurement: Without clear, measurable goals, you're simply adding more tasks to people who are already stretched thin. Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) for your goals and match them with corresponding metrics. Employer branding can be assessed using various KPIs. While it can be challenging to measure true brand KPIs like sentiment and branded vs. unbranded recall due to outdated tech stacks or budgetary constraints, the basics should be achievable in most situations. For instance, you can track application rates, time-to-apply, quality of application, and cost-per-application. I've intentionally left out 'time to hire' and 'cost per hire' for employer branding, as I think they belong further down the candidate journey. In my view, the role of employer marketers and branders is to encourage the right people to apply, with higher quality, faster times, and lower costs. Once an application is submitted, it's in the hands of the Gods. For example, a marketer shouldn't be held accountable if a recruiter or hiring manager takes weeks to process an application or set up an interview. That's why it's essential to be clear on what employer marketers can and cannot influence, ensuring that not only are KPIs set from the get-go, but they are also the appropriate ones. As Albert once said…

vi) Collaboration and alignment: Work closely with internal stakeholders, such as HR, marketing, and leadership teams, to ensure your employer branding strategy is aligned with your company's overall objectives and goals.

vii) Continuous improvement: Regularly review and update your employer branding strategy to stay current with market trends, evolving candidate expectations, and company changes.

By investing time and resources into cultivating a compelling employer brand and identifying the right audiences, companies can position themselves as an employer of choice, ultimately driving talent acquisition success that supports long-term business growth.

3. Career site, ATS & CRM

Rightly or wrongly, I've grouped these three crucial elements of your talent attraction strategy together. Usually, your career site will be the conduit into your ATS and CRM, with some vendors claiming to offer a combined solution for all three or the latter two.

When it comes to the user journey between all these elements of your tech stack, I can't stress enough the importance of adopting a mindset. Basically speaking, this is an approach that puts your end-users' (read: 'future candidates') needs at the heart of every decision you make about the solution you're building for them. As per my training on this subject, "Design Thinking helps teams understand people's needs, form intent, and deliver outcomes to satisfy those needs, at speed and scale."

Having been deep in the trenches of leading new career website builds many times, I can share, with a certain degree of confidence, the following important points. There are so many more I could touch on, but perhaps I'll save those for a future post dedicated to this subject alone... Or maybe even a book?! 🤔:

• In large enterprises, a governance and steering committee with clearly defined roles, responsibilities and accountability is vital. Senior stakeholders from key areas that have skin in the game, including a senior executive sponsor to cut through any BS and politics that can sometimes arise. You need senior people who can understand, check and approve project plans (at a high level), can monitor progress against those plans, and who are able to constantly reassess the business case to ensure future decisions are aligned or, worst case, that the project is still deemed as worthwhile and budgeted for.

• Candidates really don't give a shit about your homepage. Sorry. I know a lot of internal debate (sometimes heated) takes place with stakeholders about this, and a lot of resources can go into creating them. However, the vast majority of your traffic will come in via the vital piece of content most career sites should focus on the most - your job adverts (and I'm intentionally not using the word 'description'). In fact, whether in the context of a career site or not, your job ads are up there with the most important pieces of content talent marketers have at their disposal. Yet they're often the most neglected. Amongst all the blog articles, social media posts and emails etc., (the 'cool stuff') the one form of content that gets engaged with the most are your job ads. Yet whilst so many people focus on the new shiny TikTok trend in the long grass, these invaluable assets are often left in disarray even though they're usually the ultimate destination, directly or indirectly, that all your other content efforts signpost towards at some time or another.

• On the topic of job ads (not to be confused with 'job descriptions' - which is where more detail goes), they should focus on key role aspects and include only essential information for candidates to decide whether to opt in or out. All too often, companies try to cram absolutely everything into a job ad. There's a time and place for certain things, and trying to shove everything down someone's throat at this point of their journey will only serve to bamboozle and disengage. Be highly aware of the end user's current stage and 'mental mode' at this step of their UX and prioritise what to share now vs. what can be covered at earlier or later stages of their journey towards application and hire. Data from millions of career site visits across various sectors reveals that, on average, people spend about 2 minutes browsing 1.5 - 2 pages before leaving the site or entering an ATS. They then either bounce away or the connection is severed as they enter the underbelly of an ATS that's poorly interconnected to your site's analytics. With average adult reading speed at around 200-250 words per minute, 2 minutes equates to 400 - 500 words. If your job ads are longer than this, visitors aren't fully reading them. The takeaway? Keep ads short, concise, compelling, and honest, so candidates can quickly work out whether they're a match or not. Additionally, the titles should be SEO optimised with terms people OUTSIDE your organisation use. Companies love using their own language in their job titles. Anyone know what a 'Brand Sales Specialist' does? Nope. Me neither. But you know instinctively what a 'Technology Sales Specialist' is, right? In this case, they're the same thing. Use the latter in your SEO'd, externally-facing job title and in the opening paragraph of your body copy you can bring people into your company's lexicon. For example, "A Technology Sales Specialist (what we internally call a 'Brand Sales Specialist') at [ENTER COMPANY] is responsible for..." That kind of thing.

• The less bouncing around your site people need to do to find the information they're after, the better. I consider Nathan Perrott a genuine thought-leader in these matters and I love his steer of "bring content to jobs and jobs to content". For example, and with a Design Thinking hat on, don't make people work hard. If they've come to your site via a job advert then ideally you want to present all other, relevant branding content about your culture etc., on the same page. Likewise, if they land on a page that's describing a department, then present the jobs for that specific team on the same page. The more clicking and navigating a user has to do, the greater the chance of them getting frustrated, forming a negative impression of your employer brand, and leaving.

We'll go deeper into job advertising in a later section. Let's move on to Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS).

It's crucial to ensure seamless connectivity between your careers site and applicant tracking system to create a smooth user journey and maintain the aesthetic quality that your employer brand deserves. In an ideal world, your career site and should be considered together. Your ATS plays a significant role in streamlining the recruitment process at the back end. It helps companies manage applicants, track candidates throughout the hiring process, and maintain relationships with potential future hires.

But here's the rub. Too often, a careers site offers an outstanding experience, only to have it undermined when a candidate clicks 'apply' and is taken to the horrible front door of an ATS. At the risk of coming across as a complete Nathan Perrott fanboy (😳), I can't think of a better way to put it then what he shared with me whilst I was doing research for this post. I'm paraphrasing but essentially, to provide an optimal user experience, it's ideal to avoid direct interaction between the candidate and the ATS. Instead, use an 'apply interface' that leverages API technology to present the application fields in a visually consistent way to the rest of the career site's (hopefully) gorgeous design.

Once the data is entered, the API transfers the information into the ATS, creating the application profile with all the correct fields properly completed in the back-end. This is win:win. The candidate on the front-end continues on their journey of aesthetic bliss, whilst on the back-end, the recruiters get all the info they need to be able to progress the candidate through their recruitment process in a way that can be internally coordinated, communicated, and tracked.

There are a load of ATS options out there. Too many to list and detail here. Instead, allow me you share this incredibly helpful resource that Hung Lee shared on his even more helpful Recruitingbrainfood

Finally, in part one of this series, let's delve into the topic of Candidate Relationship Management systems ().

CRMs play a crucial role in talent attraction, marketing and branding strategies. These platforms help organisations build and maintain relationships with potential candidates, streamline communication, and manage talent pipelines more effectively.

CRMs are essential for lead generation and nurturing efforts, enabling recruiters and talent marketers to engage candidates through personalised content and targeted email campaigns. They also assist in automating workflows, managing events, building talent communities, and providing valuable analytics to measure the success of recruitment, marketing and branding efforts.

Here's what I find most astonishing /frustrating /weird /all of the above when it comes to CRMs. Companies tend to invest quite large sums of cash in adding them to their TA arsenal. They then spend more time and money filling them with profiles. Then, for some strange reason, the effort that's needed to engage the leads being generated tends to fall off a cliff.

It's usually the case that peoples' knee-jerk reaction for when new Reqs open up is to 'acquire new' as opposed to 'nurture existing'.

I appreciate it won't apply to all situations but studies since the early days of marketing continue suggesting that acquiring a new customer can cost five to seven times more than retaining an old one. For me, the same applies in talent marketing. Just swap out the word 'customer' above for 'candidate.'

I also look at it like this. According to 2019 Glassdoor HR & Recruiting stats, the average cost per hire (CPH) was c. $4,000. In fairness, I haven't done much validation of this and I know this will vary depending on the seniority of hiring it's applied to. But it feels about right, so let's go with it.

Without naming names, I've also worked with companies where the average hires-per-application run at approx., 4%. I.e., you need 100 applications to make 4 hires. Again, I appreciate this won't always apply, but indulge me for a moment.

Now let's say you're sat on a CRM with 250,000 profiles in it.

4% of those 250,000 is potentially 10,000 hires.

Multiply this by the average CPH and you're staring $40,000,000 in the face. That's a big god-damn number!

Taking into account all the potential variables and nuances that could impact this rudimentary financial model, let's be uber-conservative and say that only 5% of this actually holds true.

We're still potentially sitting on a talent goldmine worth c. $2,000,000. And I haven't met any senior exec who wouldn't look at that figure and say, "go save us that money!"

Again, I appreciate the above may be overly simplified for some, but for those who think it's useful to support any case you're trying to make regarding the importance of CRM adoption and /or investment, then I hope that by punching in your own numbers to the above model, it helps you build the case you need.

So what are some of the popular CRM platforms for talent attraction and marketing?

Avature A flexible CRM platform for building and managing candidate pipelines, automating workflows, and personalising engagement. It offers email campaigns, event management, and talent community building.

Beamery: A CRM and recruitment marketing platform for engaging passive candidates, building talent pipelines, and measuring recruitment effectiveness. It includes email campaigns, employer branding, and AI-driven automation.

Phenom: Claimed to be an AI-driven CRM solution for automating candidate engagement, building talent pipelines, and recommending best-fit candidates. It offers features such as email campaigns, chatbots, and analytics.

Yello.co: For streamlined candidate engagement and communication. It has automated email campaigns, event management, and analytics.

SmashFly Technologies Another recruitment marketing and CRM platform to build talent pipelines, engage with candidates through personalised content, and analyse recruitment efforts.

Recommending which ATS and /or CRM you should go for is an impossible thing to do without knowing your business and system requirements. Be sure to consult business stakeholders and establish what these are, and then use those requirements to guide decisions about the technology you invest in.

I say this, but what usually happens is that teams don't have time or budgets for this type of robust due-diligence so they invest in the tech first, realise what it can /can't do, and then have to shoehorn their strategies into the capabilities of the technology. This then becomes a case of tail-wagging-dog. Wherever possible, your strategy needs to determine the shape of your tech. Not vice-versa.

Get it right, and by incorporating a properly connected career site, ATS and CRM tech stack into your talent attraction efforts will give you a significant competitive advantage. One that will help you better engage and nurture candidates to ultimately find the best talent for your organisation.

Phew! We've covered a hell of a lot here today. If I didn't lose you at the Bill Shankly reference, then thank you so much for sticking with me this far! Continue the story with part two of this series.

In the meantime, feel free to grab the whole series' overview pack below, which I've created to summarise the main points across all chapters.

And if we're not already, feel free to connect with me on here, too.

See you again soon.

Cheers.