Hired out

The London themed reception desk

This past week has been particularly exhausting as I have been out and about visiting regional Kier offices and external agencies. However, I was definitely most excited about my Friday appointment as I was invited by my Human Resources colleagues to present a Digital Marketing Workshop at LinkedIn's London office. This has only been open for about six months and is definitely designed to impress clients with it's London theme (including an underground room and desks with built in 'Boris bikes' which charge your mobile phone). Needless to say we made the most of the exciting new surroundings!

Using the facilites at lunchtime

As a department our HR team has always been a priority of mine when ensuring the business engages digitally. Job searches are consistently in the top three on our website (as with everywhere I've ever worked) so streamlining the user experience is paramount. I've also noticed a trend of companies recruiting for 'Resourcing Digital Marketing Managers' who are given the responsibility of developing and delivering a significant upgrade to a company's recruitment and digital attraction assets. This goes beyond new customer acquisition as everyone competes for the very best talent available.

Outside of our content marketing strategy for LinkedIn we work hard on delivering a consistent experience for applicants and my training session emphasised the need for both Marketing and HR to work together to give a consistent view of the company which follows through on the promises made in our advertisements. Some of my key themes and tips for the team were:

• The importance of managing online profiles - if you are a recruiter it's essential you look the part online and maximise the opportunities available to you
• Conversely, it's important to understand the person as well as the worker of whoever you are about to interview. I always undertake background checks on potential interviewees, as if someone has seen fit to share something then it there is no reason not to do your homework on them before you meet. It also gives a good understand of how digitally savvy they are before they start
• Create content beyond just job advertisements - as with a customer acquisition campaign it's just as important to ensure that there is the content available to show what a good place your company can be for people to work. Once a candidate clicks the job advert you need relevant landing pages showing all of the benefits/information available to them as we did with our Apprenticeships Week campaign
• Make your job advert pages as good as they can be - these are your product so it's important they are the jewel in the crown of your careers pages
• Listen as well as talk to shape the employee brand - Along with the usual social media channels, websites such as Glassdoor give you a valuable insight into how you are perceived and if all of the work you are doing is paying off
• Be proactive to find 'passive candidates' - Andy, our LinkedIn Account Director, informed us that only 15% of LinkedIn members are actively seeking work. If you want the best candidates then you have to find them as many people would be open to the right job offer coming along
• Use tools to take away the manual process and filter the best fit candidates - Tools such as LinkedIn recruiter are an excellent way to find your next employee of the month. You can filter by location, experience or job type and it even allows you to use an exemplar employee for a search to find someone else just like them!

Anyone for pool?

To present yourselves as the best employer over your competitors you will need a mixture of all of the above as we're not all blessed with the fantastically modern offices of Tech companies (with table tennis tables and free snacks in every corner) such as LinkedIn!