Q: As a CEO at a startup, one of the biggest areas we’re struggling with is talent acquisition. How do you best recommend attracting the best employees and retaining them?
A: I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but the way people shop and buy has changed. That’s why outbound marketing (think interruptive ads and billboards) and outbound sales (think cold calling and buying lists of contacts) are on the down, and inbound marketing is on the up.
Why? Outbound activities are no longer effective, and so they’ve been replaced by inbound marketing and inbound sales.
The reason why I bring this up is that as we’ve continued to develop the concept of inbound sales and marketing at HubSpot (where I work), we noticed something that we weren’t expecting. Not only has sales and marketing changed (and is still changing), but HR and recruitment are being disrupted, too. Outbound recruiting is becoming less effective (think job boards and cold calls from recruiters), and recruitment and HR teams are shifting to inbound recruiting to attract, engage and hire top talent.
Related: Why You Need to Think ‘Tools’ When Hiring, Not Just ‘the Job Post’
What is inbound recruiting?
To best understand inbound recruiting, let’s start with what it isn’t. Outbound recruiting is when you rely solely on posting adverts and interruptive head-hunting to fill your vacancies. Not only is it an inefficient and expensive process, it also only taps into those employees that is actively looking to change jobs, which only represents 15 to 25 percent of the total market. Inbound recruiting on the other hand, is all about attracting the top candidates into your recruitment funnel, before they’re even looking.
You’re most powerful inbound recruiting asset, and the one that is totally free, is your blog! Now, I’m not talking about your company blog that generates you leads and customers for your business. I’m talking about your careers blog.
While 73 percent of candidates start their job search on Google, most companies don’t have a careers blog to take advantage of these searches and get found. Now, the content you create on your career blog needs to be very different to what you have on your existing company blog; after all, it’s designed to attract a different persona.
Before you can begin, you need to know who you’re trying to attract. If you’ve not done so already, begin by creating some key recruiting personas for your business. Each of your recruitment personas should have a unique set of challenges, goals and aspirations. It’s these unique characteristics which you will use to curate your content so that it attracts, converts and retains employees.
Here is how it’s done:
Attract
Inbound recruiting works similarly to inbound marketing. You create content that your ideal persona is looking for (e.g. a top candidate), and when they find the content online, they learn more about what it is they were looking for and about your company. You build a relationship with them and showcase your company…