Is Recruiting like Sales, Marketing or Both?
Imported 9 months ago. See original articleAPCQ’s and Kennedy’s recent recruiting benchmarking study discovered that very few organizations ask new hires about their experience during the recruitment process. It’s simply not something companies measure. But most people agree that the candidate experience has a direct and significant impact on the quality of hires, turnover and overall brand appeal.
Simply put: You treat people like crap (during the recruiting process) and they won’t want to work for you, they’ll be the wrong fit (and leave quickly) and they’ll tell all their friends that your brand sucks.
Rachele Williams and Lawson Arnett say that, “…this is an opportunity for recruiting functions to shift from an internally focused model to one that considers the external customer experience and its impact on the overall corporate image in the marketplace.”
They argue that this is really about shifting the focus from recruiting as sales, to recruiting as marketing.
Without a doubt, too few companies focus on the candidate experience. But it clearly matters. And it’s a direct page out of marketing’s book.
You can read more examples on recruitment as marketing and the importance of the candidate experience in their post, Marketing 101 for Recruiting: A Paradigm Shift.
Take that a step further and think about recruiting as an exercise in customer service. Perhaps that’s the shift we’re really waiting for — the fundamental understanding that job seekers and candidates are customers. Of course too few companies do a great job of customer service, but ultimately customer service and marketing are blending. And companies lose customers all the time due to poor customer service and support.
Social media and social networking are blending marketing and customer service - where communication, dialogue, authenticity and a focus on offering a great experience start the minute someone interacts with your organization as a prospect (or job seeker) through to becoming a customer (or a candidate, or hire.) The delineation between prospect and customer is less and less, and the importance in making sure that people are treated well throughout the entire process is critical to success.
