Category: Branding

Effective Blogging Strategies for Recruitment

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

image_010Locating and then recruiting the right staff members is a challenge for any organization. As job candidates increasingly look to blogs, online postings and social media to search for jobs, one way that Human Resources personnel can recruit the top tier of applicants is by taking to the blogs themselves and enticing the best candidates to apply for openings within the organization. These top four blogging strategies for recruitment are effective and efficient at getting the most desirable person into the job.

Infuse the Blog with Personality

Even corporate blogs should be infused with personality that is in line with the operations of the organization. The tone of the blog should allow readers and future applicants to get a feel for the culture of the organization. A light touch of humor can go a long way in helping applicants feel welcome to the company.

Vary the Posting Types

Readers of a business blog do not want to read the same material over and over again. Vary the type of posts to maintain reader interest. Consider various post options such as tips for applicants, hints about what is going on in the industry and success stories of people working in the company. Interviews with current staff members and list-type posts also help to recruit top-notch candidates.

Make a Point in Every Post

Give applicants a reason to come back and join the corporation. Every post should have a point. Making each recruitment posting worthwhile helps applicants understand that their time is respected and that future events at the company, such as staff meetings, will be productive and worthwhile. Blog posts should not be too wordy or too vague.

Share Industry Insights

Keep it interesting by sharing industry insights that show why the business is top in its field. Infographics are an up-to-date means of sharing information in a way that is eye-catching and easy to understand. Embedded videos are another way to share insights while maintaining the applicant’s interest in being recruited to the organization.

 

Best Practices for Engaging Top Talent in Interviews

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

image_015A prospective employee’s interview is part of the hiring process continuum rather than an isolated stage. Top talent engagement begins before the formal interview and continues while they remain in the pipeline, during training and throughout their career with your company.

Engagement Based on Employment Brand

Your organization’s employment brand derives directly from the company’s shared vision of the future. The brand image must be comprehensive and present themes tailored to your hiring demographics.

Each organization’s brand is unique, but encompasses basic values:

  • Open communication and information sharing
  • Support for learning and growth
  • Meaningful work goals
  • Regard for work/life balance
  • Generous compensation for great work

These and a shared sense of mission towards personal, department and company-wide goals are the basis for recruit engagement.

Prior to the Interview: Consistent Branding

Smart companies will have developed suites of videos communicating their organizational values and showing off their “best place to work” attributes. Videos reinforce brand image after an interview and are easily shared via social media.

During the Interview

Despite a consistent brand image, a top candidate may remain skeptical about whether the organization means what it says. Prepare for their doubts about how their career goals align with those of the company. Listen carefully and address these with relevant, concrete examples. If possible, enlist a member of the team with the requisition to address their questions.

Post-Interview Engagement

Especially if your candidate was identified with the help of social media, utilize that media after the interview to maintain engagement. Sharing relevant media or comments shows interest as long as it is tasteful and non-intrusive. Regular contact lets the candidate know there is ongoing interest, and he or she will greatly appreciate the attention to any further questions they have.

Benefits to Interview Engagement

Candidates who feel that a company has a place for them and listens to their concerns and ideas are far more likely to accept an offer and subsequently grow to be high performers. They also have potential to become one of your organization’s greatest proponents of the company culture to other recruits.

Take Control of Your Employer Brand With Buyer Advertising

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

In the fight for talent, a strong Employer Brand is your best weapon – it differentiates you from competitors, and helps you attract the right candidates. A strong Employer Brand can lower your cost per hire by 50% and can reduce your employee turnover rate by 28%.

Our Employer Brand development services include:

  • Brand Audits
  • Leadership Interviews
  • Employee Surveys & Focus Groups
  • External Audience Research
  • Competitive Analysis

For more than 47 years we have been helping our clients take control of their employer brands! Learn more about Buyer’s employer brand development services by clicking here or by viewing the video below:


 

Search Engine Optimization for Jobs

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Your career site’s ranking on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo is based on what the search engine considers most relevant to user. Our Talent2You Job Optimization SEO solution from Buyer Advertising delivers an automated way for recruiters to attract talent directly to your career site!

View our YouTube video which goes into detail about SEO and how our Talent2You Job Optimization platform can help you:

Learn more by clicking here, and contact us today to discover how our Talent2You Job Optimization SEO solution can help you!

How to Create an Attractive Corporate Culture

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When it comes to recruiting, having the right company culture is the key to drawing top tier talent. Even companies with high wages and great benefits can still experience high employee turnover if their company culture is lacking. Here are some tips on how to create a more attractive corporate culture:

Encourage Innovation

Few people enjoy being micromanaged. Many businesses find that allowing employees to be creative and take ownership of their work leads to increased performance. Communication is the key to inspiring employee ownership within your organization. At the beginning of a project or company initiative, encourage managers to sit down with employees and discuss their vision for the project. Once they have a clear understanding of what the expectations are, allow them the freedom to accomplish it in their own way.

Promote Fun

Creating a fun work environment is a great way to boost employee satisfaction. Company sponsored sporting events, family days and barbeques are great ways invest in morale-building activities. Another idea is to give your company break room an overhaul – consider adding a Ping-Pong table, pool table or designated nap area for your employees. Remember that the more your employees enjoy working for you, the more productive they will likely be.

Embrace Company Values

Employees enjoy being part of something larger than themselves. You can accomplish this by establishing and maintaining the priorities and values of your organization.

Celebrate Achievements

Do not let open enrollment and disciplinary meetings be the only interactions you have with employees. This is a quick way to lose some of your top talent. Take time to celebrate accomplishments of all sizes. For small accomplishments, take some space in the employee newsletter or on the interoffice board to congratulate employees for a job well done. Larger accomplishments may warrant a luncheon or a certificate. Regularly acknowledging and celebrating accomplishments is a good way to keep your employees striving towards their personal bests.

The way that your corporate culture is perceived has a huge impact on the type of talent that your organization will draw. These simple tips will allow you to create a company culture that draws and retains high-performing, happy employees.

New Technologies and Growing Pains

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

Sometimes, the little guys have it easy. While it’s easy to conceive of modern, social-media aligned initiatives, implementing them is a task that requires a nimble touch. If you’re a peppery bunch of 20 employees, designing and implementing a tactical approach to blogging, Facebook,’ing and tweeting is a matter of a few afternoons. For larger entities, you’re looking at meetings, discussions, brand decisions, approval rounds, and more. Months of work could be in store before you even give a shout out to your very first of fans.

Our advice to these larger organizations: be like the little guys. The smallest companies can amass enormous followings through charm, personality, and transparency. Shoot for the same attributes—even if more obstacles stand in your way. As a marketing department, stand unified in your decision to engage social media. Set guidelines and milestones from the start that are flexible enough to allow multiple contributors while keeping your voice unified. Here are a few more tips:

– Create Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts—even if you have nothing to say (just yet).
– Your blog should be professional and informal—practice style before posting.
– Once you start, don’t stop! Maintain a regular schedule of updates.

Until next time,

Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com

Recruitment Challenges in Healthcare

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Be your operation a single treatment center or a healthcare system spanning several hospital locations, your challenges are unique. Not only do you have to appeal to a highly educated, specially-trained workforce, employers are already competing in a job market where professionals are highly sought-after. As a medical employer, here are strategies to keep in mind as you staff your halls with exceptional talent.

Consider demographics. Are you hiring young professionals? Established doctors? Seasoned vets? Different experience levels require you to target different age brackets—and in some cases, separate generations. Tailor your message to speak directly to the preferred age group that you’re looking to recruit and retain.

Who are you, really? Big or small, you have unique differentiators that make you stand out. Your employer brand may appeal to some, yet turn others away. Aim to honestly represent your company, and you’ll score employees who truly enjoy what you have to offer—leading to greater retention and a more pleasant work environment.

Concentrate on service areas. A hospital can be considered a library of skilled medical and healthcare professionals, all with separate talents and abilities. Hone in on your preferred professionals with distinct hiring campaigns—different yet tied together under your employer brand.

All said and done, be honest, different, clear, and unique—you’ll find that great people will follow in your wake.

Signing off for now,

Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com

Steve Jobs and the Timelessness of Innovation

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Last night, the nation began mourning the loss of Steve Jobs. His personality and brand represented more than just the genesis of a successful company (Apple Computer)—his vision and pursuit of new user experiences, as well as infusing life and charm into an all-too-often dry technology sector, changed history.

But if one were to distill his legacy to tactical moves, there’s a lot to unpack. Black turtlenecks instead of suits. Revolution instead of status quo. Calm, personal speeches instead of hackneyed, over-exuberant displays that similar companies had employed in the past (cough, cough, Microsoft). Above all else, Steve employed a willingness to ignore everyone else while following a rhythm all his own.

Innovation comes in many forms. For Steve, they were in the promotion of the user experience, and a new amalgamation of great music and geek tech. For you, they can be an exploration into new arenas, a marketing message unique to your organization that’s never been heard from before. Above all else, never stop innovating and amazing results will follow.

‘Til next time,

Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com

Weird-vertising

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Finding the balance between “edgy” and “on-point” can be a tricky tightrope to walk. You watch in wonder as the goofy commercials from Old Spice become viral hits on YouTube, and can only sit back and contemplate if a similar strategy would work for your company. But for every successful venture into the land of bizarre advertising, there are a hundred examples of spacey videos, confounding print ads, and even re-brands that have left company loyals confused and consumers scratching their heads.

As always in our industry, we need to think of the customer first. Old Spice is deodorant that goes under the armpit so you smell nice. Medical instruments and baby formulas have an entirely separate consumer base—weird shouldn’t be part of your vocabulary. In order to be different, make sure your customers are hip enough to “get it”. Even if you do decide to take a plunge in to the odd, make sure
you still convey your message. Advertising that doesn’t make a point is just… well, weird.

Above all, challenge the conventional with a fresh approach that doesn’t sacrifice your integrity, offend the masses, or lose track of your message. You’ll be surprised at the results.

Signing off for now,
Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com

Reading into QR Codes

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You may have seen them everywhere—from restaurant menus to car dealerships. QR codes are a sign of the times: the ability of our smartphones to quickly decode short bits of information that are the hallmark of these digital stamps. QR codes, short for “Quick Response” codes, can be quickly scanned into smartphones and decoded with an appropriate “app”. The result could be a short, meaningful phrase, an “ecard” with information about an individual or business, instructions on how to enter a contest, or an email contact. The amount of data varies by type of QR code used, and the possibilities are many.

While an interesting diversion, the ability of QR codes to convey meaningful information is limited as things stand right now. As most things in the advertising world, it is up to the businesses and people therein to employ a tool like QR codes creatively and effectively. Look to utilize QR codes as part of a larger strategy: a campaign or a viral endeavor. Don’t pin the hopes of your business on a QR code effort without the gusto to back it up.

Signing off for now,
Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com