Door 13 of our #TRN Advent Calendar we welcome Tracey Barrett of BlueSky PR, who takes us through what we should leave in 2017 and what 2018 has in store for the recruitment industry in 2018?
What are the best brands doing right which will continue into 2018?
From a PR and content perspective, the best brands are talking about what they know – rather than what they do. It’s an age-old problem that too many recruiters still write content about how good they are, what services they provide, and why people should use them. That’s not added value content – that’s just spam. Think about the information that you have in your business right now that could add value to your target audiences. Hint – it isn’t jobs or CVs! You have data – tons of it – that can be sliced and diced to produce reports on a whole range of trends from salaries to gender to regional differences to the top skills in demand….why not write about that!
What do we do in 2017 that will be done differently in 2018
While there is a lot of scaremongering about GDPR – it is coming, and it will be law. Consequently, content marketing will have to be smarter, more targeted and higher quality but in my view, that is no bad thing. It’s a great excuse to really cleanse that CRM and have a relevant and up to date data set to work with. I also see it as a real opportunity to raise the bar in terms of quality marketing – and for marketers within recruitment firms to really be able to demonstrate value and return on investment.
What should we be leaving behind in 2017?
We need to dump the crap candidate experience. There’s still a mentality among recruiters that if they get a prospective candidate lead through marketing – and it’s not something that can be acted on right here and right now, then it isn’t really a lead. And so they just don’t engage. Wrong. There’s one group of your competitors, namely internal talent acquisition teams, who have been very busy using technology to enable to them to build talent pools and pipelines – in other words keeping future potential talent engaged with their brand. If you are not doing the same, then you are missing a trick.
What can recruitment companies be doing right now to be ready for the future?
Recruitment is a process – and so it is really difficult for recruitment firms to demonstrate USPS. I think that recruitment firms should stop talking about USPs and instead start talking about what value they can add to the process. That means looking at different services that you can offer that align with what you are already doing. The RPOs caught onto this a while ago and the smart ones have morphed into talent management consultancies that look at not just the attraction and recruitment elements but also the onboarding, retention, development and even exit. What are you doing to innovate? Put that challenge to your people and ask them all to come up with one thing that they think will add value to their clients – they may just hand you the next big thing!
Have a happy Christmas and a truly prosperous 2018!
Tracey Barrett
BlueSky PR
Tracey Barett is the CEO of PR Agency BlueSkyPR. partner of choice for many of the world’s most ambitious and innovative professional recruitment consultancies, RPOs, in-house recruitment teams and human resources consultancies. Blue Sky PR help them to engage effectively and compellingly with all of their target audiences through the complete range of conventional, social and new media.
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