Part 3 - Talent acquisition & marketing strategy: An integrated blueprint with technology options

Having previously shared Part 1 and Part 2, we reach the third chapter of a series I began with the goal of helping people in / and with their strategies.

Sharp-eyed readers of my previous articles may have noticed that my original plan for a two-part series has expanded, now requiring a third instalment. While I whole-heartedly agree with De La Soul that three is very much the magic number, it turns out we're going to need a bigger boat. So stay tuned for Part 4, which will be the finale (though not necessarily grand). Promise. No one wants another Fast & Furious-like franchise in their lives!

For those who have engaged and provided such valuable and amazing feedback so far, I can't thank you enough 🙏. It's always a bit... Shall we say... 'Bottom-twitching' when you put yourself 'out there'. "Will people like it?" "Will they think I'm an idiot?" "Will I come across as patronising?" "Do I look like a know-it-all?!" "On man, I bet they're rolling their eyes... ARRGGGHHHH!"

I'm so glad I put all that mind-talk aside because this experience has been fantastic. Amongst many things, it's helped me remember what a truly accepting, supportive, friendly, positive and generous bunch of amazing people work in this space. To anyone hesitant about trying something similar, I encourage you to take the plunge. And feel free to holla if I can help in any way. 🤜🤛

Right. On with the show.

Overview

In Part 1 we covered:

• Employer Value Proposition

• Employer Branding & Audience Identification

• Career Site, ATS, and CRM

In Part 2, we looked at:

• Content Marketing & Social Media

In this 3rd part, we'll touch on:

• Job Advertising & Distribution

And in the 4th and final section, we'll dive into:

• Candidate Assessment

• New Start Onboarding

Job Advertising & Distribution

This had the potential to be another huge section so I've done my best to do it justice whilst keeping it as high-level as possible. There are people in the industry who are much greater experts in this space then I am, and I'll leave them to chime in with their additional wisdom if they feel the urge to do so. (not mentioning any names Josh Willows and Mariano Aragunde).

At the risk of stating the bleedin' obvious, job advertising and distribution are essential for finding the right candidates and making sure job adverts are seen by a broad, relevant audience. Using technology to fine-tune job postings and distribute them across multiple platforms is crucial for a successful talent attraction and acquisition strategy. There are plenty of platforms, services, and methods out there to improve your reach and connect with the right talent. Some are well-known in the industry, while others might be less familiar. My hope with this article is that I spend more time covering the latter for most of you reading this.

I covered social media in more depth in Part 2 of this series so will give it a swerve in this one. By way of a TL:DR: Most social media (with LinkedIn being an exception), isn't great if you want immediate applications. It's more of an upper-funnel branding play. This is definitely the case with organic social media distribution. But even paid isn't great for lower-funnel 'Apply Now!' direct response (DR) conversions. If any of the terms used here are alien to you then check the link above to Part 2, where I provide more detail and explanations.

Then you have the likes of Indeed and Glassdoor, which most people reading this will probably know about - both what they are and how they work - so I don't think there's a need to cover these in any more depth. Shout in the comments if you'd like more info on these in a future post.

There's also technology that enables the simultaneous distribution of your job adverts across multiple platforms and channels. Take ZipRecruiter and Broadbean as examples.

ZipRecruiter is a job posting platform that sprays ads to over a hundred job boards and websites. In addition to expanding the reach of your job postings, it can also streamline the hiring process through features like candidate screening, applicant tracking, and analytics. It also boasts a matching technology that can help companies find suitable candidates quickly by analysing applicants' resumes and matching them to relevant job listings. How well it works is questionable and I'd love to hear feedback from people more familiar with this feature regarding how well it lives up to the claims. Again, you know where to go - please leave a comment below.

Broadbean does the job distribution thing too, with the difference being that it integrates directly into applicant tracking and candidate relationship management (CRM) systems. It enables the posting of jobs across multiple channels directly from these platforms, including job boards, social media, and professional networks, whilst offering other features such as candidate search, CV parsing, and analytics tools.

Depending on your specific needs and existing systems, one platform may be more suitable for your job distribution needs than the other. Or you might need both.

As with Indeed and Glassdoor, my instinct says that most reading this will be familiar with both these platforms. Probably more so than I am, so I'll leave those there for now.

I think a couple of areas where people might be less familiar is with two particular aspects of organic and paid distribution. For organic, let's discuss Google for Jobs, and for paid, let's explore the evolving landscape of how you can buy job advertising media, specifically with programmatic. I think gaining a deeper understanding of these areas can contribute to providing a competitive edge and commercial advantage for talent marketers.

Google For Jobs (G4J):

There was a lot of noise about Google For Jobs (G4J) around 2019 and I don't really hear people talking about it anymore. Either they have it sussed or people have dropped a ball, which I'd urge them to quickly pick up again.

According to the latest data I could find, c 60 - 70% of job seekers start their job hunt with a Google search. Google realised this was going on for a while so they set out to make things easier for users with a job search feature integrated in to their search engine. This aggregates and displays job postings from various sources and, in doing so, makes job discovery easier for seekers by displaying relevant postings directly at the top of their search results.

Search for a job on Google right now (in another tab obviously. I don't want to lose you 😊) and the 'Jobs' box that appears at the top of the page, above everything else, is G4J in action. The feature pulls job listings from job boards, company career sites, and other online sources, consolidating them in a user-friendly, searchable format:

Pay particular attention to the 'pulls from company career sites AND OTHER online sources" bit.

In previous articles I've touched on Design Thinking and UX / user journeys. If G4J ranks a job board's version of your advert higher than the one that's on your career site then it could create unnecessary potholes for people on their path to application.

In an ideal world, companies should want candidates to come to their own site, read the job ad in their owned environment, and apply there, free of distractions from competing recruiters.

Let's go through the problem Battersea Dog's Home have with the below (sorry, Battersea's team. Nothing personal!):

1. I've searched for 'Marketing Jobs in London'.

2. I clicked on the G4J module in the initial search engine results page (SERPs) and was taken to the above, expanded interface.

3. I'm presented with two options (highlighted): 'Apply on LinkedIn' and 'Apply on Charity Jobs'... If I'm a talent marketer at Battersea, this would be my first red flag as I'd be worried that the advert from my own website isn't included here.

4. I click on 'Apply on LinkedIn' and when there, there's no 'Quick Apply'.

5. Instead I have to click 'Apply' again within LinkedIn and I'm taken to the Battersea site to land on the job to appl...

6. Ah. No. Wait. I need to log-in on their site before I'm presented with the job. FFS!... Hang on. Let me just log i... In fact. Sod this... I've lost the will to live.

7. Let my try the 'Apply on Charity Job' option...

8. Nope. It's the same dog's dinner (see what I did there!) of an experience. And as the talent marketer I'm paying someone, somewhere, somehow for my job to appear on this job board. Also, when it comes to renewing this media buy in the new year, they're going to tell me how many "amazing" clicks my ads were getting... (more on this in a minute).

To improve the chances of job ads from your own career site appearing near the top of G4J search results, consider improving the following:

Structured data markup: Ensure that your job postings have proper structured data markup, using schema.org markup specifically for job listings. This helps Google understand and index the job details more effectively.

"What the bloody hell is 'structured data markup' and 'schema.org?!?!'" I hear many of you (who haven't fallen asleep! 😴) cry.

Let's say you want to tell Google about a job you're offering. You need to speak Google's special language so it understands all the details about the job. This special language is called "structured data markup" and it's like putting labels on different parts of the job information. For example, you put a label on the job title, the job location, and the company name. The location and salary etc. When you use these labels, Google can easily understand and share your job with people who are looking for it.

"Great!... Now how do I put those labels on?!?!"

To put the necessary 'labels' on the job information, you can use a special code called schema.org markup, which is like a set of stickers for different parts of the job details. To add these 'stickers', you or your website developer can insert the schema.org markup code into your job posting webpage. Once in place it can all be fairly automated. All you need to do is add the job advert in the back-end as you usually would and let the system do it's thang when it places it on your site.

Accurate, clear and SEO optimised job titles: Make your job titles concise, clear, and descriptive. As mentioned in Part 1, avoid using internal jargon or overly creative titles, as this will ruin your search engine optimisation (SEO) and damage your job ad's visibility and discoverability in search results.

SEO optimised job ad body copy: Provide details that clearly outline the responsibilities and requirements that include relevant keywords to improve SERP rankings.

Location information: Clearly indicate the job location, including the full address, city, and postal code. This helps Google accurately display your job listing to candidates searching for jobs in specific geographic areas.

Keep listings up to date: Regularly update your job listings to reflect accurate information, including removing expired postings. G4J prioritises fresh and relevant content, so keeping your listings current is crucial for better visibility.

Include salary details: Ha. I thought I'd save the most controversial one until last. Including salary information in your job postings can have a major impact on their visibility in G4J search results. Job seekers often filter their searches based on salary expectations, so providing this information can help attract better qualified candidates to your listing.

Here's the kicker. If you don't include it, Google will try doing so automatically anyway. G4J uses machine learning algorithms to estimate salary ranges for job postings that do not include specific salary information. The problem is that these estimates might not be as accurate as the actual salary offered by your company. I'm sure we can all think of several negative side-effects with this happening. Providing accurate salary information in your job postings can help ensure that potential candidates have a clear understanding of the compensation package and set the right expectations.

Now I've lobbed that grenade I'm going to just duck behind this wall whilst you go and have that chat with your HR, Finance and / or Comp & Bens stakeholders.

"What if the new role is offering more than current incumbents are on, and they see it? 🫣"

(In hushed tones) - "What if this exposes our (*awkward 'ahem') pay (*cough) gaps? 😬"...

Good luck.

That said, laws are changing, and more and more companies are legally required to include salary ranges in their job postings. To dodge any awkwardness, companies currently use very broad ranges, which can be as useful as a chocolate teapot for candidates assessing their suitability. However, I expect new laws and increased legal pressure to increase in the next couple of years, pushing companies to provide more accurate pay ranges for the roles they advertise.

If you haven't given Google For Jobs much thought regarding your talent attraction strategy up to now, or you did but it's fallen through the cracks, I'd urge you to give it some needed love. It continues to gain significance as it's advancing algorithms and machine learning capabilities are enabling it to continually deliver more relevant results, making it an indispensable tool for modern job searches.

Organisations that optimise their job postings for Google for Jobs will not only benefit from increased visibility, attracting more relevant, quality candidates, but it can pay significant commercial dividends, too.

How?

Because the search results your jobs appear in are organic. I.e., you're not paying for them to appear in the SERPs (knowing Google, this is a 'yet'). And as I covered in this article HERE, talent marketers and branders really need to get better at proving their positive financial impact to business leaders to make our future careers more secure.

Annual Media Buy-Bye

The method of purchasing advertising media is evolving. We can refer to the past and majority of current practices as 'channel planning,' where the following typically occurs:

• Talent marketers or recruiters liaise with multiple vendors to buy 'packages'. E.g., seats, ads, licenses as part of their annual or quarterly channel planning process.

• Usually, these purchases are made based on performance data provided by the media vendors themselves, who often (and understandably) present their products and services in a favourable light to encourage clients to spend.

• Recruiters and marketers then often manually manage the packages they buy, putting ads up and down, and waiting for vendor representatives to report on their package's performance during QBRs (quarterly business reviews).

• Recruiters and marketers hope that candidates visit the channels they've purchased so their ads reach the right audience and they can justify their spend to the big boss.

• At the year's end, often due to recruiter and marketer time constraints and their limited capacity, packages are simply renewed. People are busy, favouring the path of least resistance, they've seen some successes, so renewing the previous package without much due-diligence becomes the easiest option.

• And so the process rinses and repeats.

Enter programmatic, stage left.

I'm not as big a fan of programmatic as I think I could or should be. It's always had huge potential, which is what excites me, but I've witnessed it still being too unreliable and hasn't (maybe never consistently will) reach it's true potential in terms of what it set out to achieve. Also, the cost of entry ain't cheap and can be too prohibitive for some.

"Now what the bloody hell is 'programmatic'?!?!'" I hear many of you (who still haven't fallen asleep! 🥴) cry.

In layman's terms, programmatic media buying is like using a robot helper to buy and show ads on the t'interweb. The robot helper quickly and smartly chooses the best places and times to show your ads to the right people, making it easier and more efficient for you. It's not a channel. It's a way of appearing across multiple channels.

You know when you're looking for a new shirt /dress online, leave the site and the garment follows you around the web for the following few days? (or weeks if it's done irritatingly badly). That's usually 'programmatic display ('display' = the picture and video adverts that appear at the top, bottom and margins of websites you visit). Or, if the item of clothing then makes it in to your social feed, that's 'programmatic social'. There are other forms, too, from appearing in your mobile video games to being heard in your Spotify.

With effective programmatic media buying, the focus shifts from the traditional 'pay and pray' channel planning, where you purchase ad space and hope people visit your chosen channels, to a more effective and efficient 'audience planning' approach.

Recruiters and marketers can work with a single point of contact instead of multiple vendors. This contact focuses on understanding priority target audiences and creates an audience plan. Rather than hoping these audiences visit the channels you've paid for, ads are tailored based on your targets' online behaviour and the sites they frequent. Your ads follow your audience, appearing on the sites and platforms they visit. Additionally, budgets are automatically optimised to target the profiles of the people who engage most and then starts going after others who have similar online behaviours, characteristics and attributes. (all anonymously I hasten to add!) This optimisation process is called:

• Prospecting: Where the programmatic engines send out ads and analyses who, amongst your broad audience, engage the most.

• Retargeting: Then, as it learns, it starts putting ads in front of more people who look similar, and who are more likely to engage.

These stages keep happening simultaneously, continuously learning and optimising. As a result, your effectiveness, budget efficiency, and applicant quality keep improving over time.

When a new target audience is needed, the audience planning data is fed into the programmatic platform and so it goes again. Automatically spending your budget on the channels that it's learnt will achieve the best results for you.

Well. That's the theory at least. Getting it all working smoothly is a lot more difficult. That's because there needs to be a few cooks in the kitchen. Amongst other things, it relies on correctly placed tags, pixels, cookies and other connections between career sites, social media, and other advertising platforms all firing as they should, and playing nicely together. Which they rarely do. And if they do, it can be all rather unstable, requiring constant monitoring to fix any breaks that appear in the chain.

Additionally, the setup can be labour-intensive regarding content. Depending on how many locations you want to appear on, it may require numerous creative assets with different messages. Some might be branding-oriented, like, "You visited our site and left... Here's something helpful to entice you back." Others will need to be direct response (DR), such as, "You didn't finish your application on our site. Click this link to do so." Also, images and videos must be created in various aspect ratios to present correctly and optimised for the channels they appear on. Etc. Etc.

But I've seen, and have been involved in making it work. And when it does it's an absolute game-changer. And don't even get me started on the data and reporting it can enable throughout the whole candidate journey when it does! 🥰

(UPDATE: Check out the comment from Josh - HERE. It's superb and brings to light the above approach is more of an upper funnel, branding play, which can take months for yields to appear. What Josh has added in the comments section details a programmatic approach that's easier to set up, and more of a lower-funnel, direct response tactic for appearing on job boards programmatically).

And that brings us to the end of this Part 3. I hope everyone reading this learnt something. Or, at the very least, validated existing thoughts and knowledge.

I'll be back soon with the fourth and final chapter of this series.

In the meantime, grab the overview pack below, that I've been updating with each chapter, and now includes everything across the entire series.

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

Until next time, friends.