Most Recruiters Aren’t Marketers
One of the most agreeable topics I’ve ever posted about is the idea of recruiters being marketers.
Here's the problem: most recruiters aren’t marketers.
It’s not their fault––they’ve never been trained to be.
And neither have most Talent leaders and the industry folks touting this idea.
If you're a Talent leader, here’s what being a marketer looks like:
You understand market behavior and map your actions to it.
In practice:
You’re candidate obsessed. You conduct ongoing market research by talking to candidates with the intention of building empathy, not selling.
You place a strong emphasis on copywriting.
You’re a content creator.
You understand the value of brand and the qualitative data + execution behind it.
You measure what matters to your org.
You run experiments to test ideas.
Your outbound is designed to create awareness and build trust, not sell.
You market content, not jobs.
Yeah, this is a lot. And why it’s so rare.
But the outliers doing this are reshaping the way companies and candidates meet, engage, and interact.
So while marketing is the future of recruiting, the execution will lag behind until people-centric marketers step into this function and take recruiting and employer branding to the next level.