A Crazy Idea to Align Recruiting and Employer Branding
(30-second read)
Here's a crazy idea to align recruiting and employer branding at high-growth startups:
Separate recruiting into two roles: Brand Marketing and Candidate Management.
Brand Marketing: A non-sales role who's only responsibility is to create and distribute content, build strategic relationships, and drive awareness, not conversions. They're influencers, industry experts, and candidate advocates.
Candidate Manager: Fields new inbound interest generated by the brand marketing team and other inbound sources. They’re responsible for designing and executing a consistently amazing candidate experience, closing, and nurturing a long-term talent pipeline.
This model eliminates the traditional “grind and force” practice of sourcing through cold outbound to passive candidates.
And instead creates a process (keyword: process) where true experts can thrive and candidates opt themselves in or out. Just as they’d prefer.
Influence + Content + Relationship Management.
Everything else feels antiquated––especially if you’re recruiting engineers and highly skilled salespeople.