Bringing Recruitment and Marketing Together

Why is it essential to bring recruitment and marketing together? To lead the future of talent acquisition.

We’re with Lori Sylvia, the Founder & CEO of Rally Recruitment Marketing, who runs a new online community forum where the best ideas in recruitment marketing are learned and shared.

Rally mentors include our friends Ben Gledhill, Adam Glassman, Debbie Celado, Jared Nypen, Lane Sutton, Shaunda Zilich, Audra Knight and many more.

Have a listen to the interview below, keep reading for a summary and be sure to subscribe to the Employer Branding Podcast.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, Google Play or SoundCloud.

How did you start Rally?

I started Rally last year and the reason why is before I started Rally, I was the CMO at Smashfly, which provides a recruitment marketing platform. When I joined recruitment marketing wasn’t new, but it was well understood. So my team and I set out to help educate the market and why you need technology to help you do recruitment marketing. While I was there, I noticed that it took a while for people to learn about recruitment marketing because they don’t come from a marketing background. So that led to me leave my fabulous team and start this company called Rally to help upskill the people who are in TA and HR with skills in marketing and branding which I believe are required for the future of talent acquisition.

Here’s what influences a candidate to join an organization today! Courtesy of @MalloryPorterB from @GDforEmployers at #RallyFwd pic.twitter.com/27T1ZNsf5N

— Rally RM (@Rally_RM) May 1, 2018

Is recruitment marketing still a ‘new’ thing?

I think we have redefined what it is:

• Years ago it was called recruitment advertising, and it mainly involved marketing through advertising. In my view marketing involves many aspects and advertising is just one of those.
• It has evolved into encompassing many more things, and the digital nature of marketing has changed recruitment marketing. So it’s not new, but it’s constantly updating.

What’s the difference between recruitment marketing and employer branding?

This is something that many people won’t agree with but the first thing you will find is that the titles are totally different. So in my view, the overarching profession is called recruitment marketing, and I think that recruitment marketing is something that you do and an employer brand is an asset that you have. You need recruitment marketing to market your brand or your employer brand.

What challenges do you see facing recruitment marketing professionals right now?

I talk to two to three recruitment marketers a week, and I hear consistently the same two things:

1. Nobody understands what they do. Most of them are the first to have this job in their company. By nature their pioneers, go-getter and opportunity seizers.
2. The next challenge is them helping people in the company understand what they do. So they need a way to demonstrate their value to the organization.

What is the career path for recruitment marketers?

It depends on how you got into the role, some ways are:

• Social recruiting
• Career website
• Employer branding

But I think that the career path for this folks is to become more comprehensive in their skillset and their approach to recruitment marketing, and then to align what they do to the business goals. That’s something that I do lots of coaching on, with some of the mentors we have in our community as well. As you learn, you can take more and more responsibilities and maybe develop a full team. I think that the person that really understands recruitment marketing is going to become tomorrow’s talent acquisition leader.

How do you measure the effectiveness of recruitment marketing?

It’s a personal question. It has an impact on them and their career. If you can’t demonstrate your value and then people don’t understand why you’re at the company. I think that the best way to do this is by aligning yourself with what your company’s goals are, and what are the TA’s goals and what you can do support the goals. As a recruitment marketer, you have to align yourself with those hiring goals and your TA leadership goals for this year.

This means tracking what you do all the way to your hire. It’s not useful just to focus on impressions and clicks, but you need to understand how your campaigns are translating into the right hires for your organization. There aren’t many ways to do this. It’s a big challenge. One of the things that we suggest is to look for the number of phone screens. This would be an equivalent of a sales-accepted lead in the marketing world. Someone who wants to have a conversation with your recruiting, getting to the screening stage of the application process. So tracking how many of your clicks and impressions lead to real conversations.

Connect with Lori on LinkedIn.