How can Blogging be used for Talent Acquisition
Not used very extensively by recruiters currently, blogging in fact has the potential to be used as a very powerful recruiting tool. Recruiters have traditionally relied more on social recruitment strategies focused on using LinkedIn and Facebook for recruitment. Employee referral programs also have largely focused on encouraging and incentivizing employees to share posts on their Facebook page and LinkedIn profiles as a means of spreading awareness of the opportunities available within the organization.
However, the very fact that there are currently over 14 million blogs on the internet and an estimated 80000 blogs being added every day is enough to highlight the power and reach of this particular medium of communication. This throws up an interesting challenge for recruiters. How can they harness the power of blogs to reach out, connect and hire quality talent? To answer this question, recruiters first need to understand what are the real benefits that can be derived from using blogs as a recruiting tool.
Blogs are an excellent source of hiringwith the potential to equalize the playing field between companies with large advertising spends and smaller organizations with limited or no advertising budgets but with an equally urgent need for quality talent. With the help of blogging, organizations can build awareness regarding their employer brand and generate buzz marketing to pull potential candidates to apply for opportunities within the organization.
Blogs allow employers to have more personal communications with candidates. They also act as a medium of recruitment by pulling potential candidates to the company as they talk about the company, its work ethics, corporate culture and the kind of people that work for them.
Key benefits of using blogs for social recruiting of quality talent are:
• Higher search engine ranking helps drive more job seeking traffic to your site.
• Creates shareable content that has the potential to go viral creating a pull factor to attract job seeking people to your site
• Employee blogs help to showcase skills and knowledge possessed by employees adding to your employer brand
• Recruiter blogs help establish credibility of the person making it easier to approach potential candidates
• Provides opportunity to engage with passive candidates who might not be actively looking out through comments and posting
Tips for writing a blog
Very often, the primary reason recruiters shy away from writing blogs for recruiting is because they are not sure of what to write on and how to go about doing it. The very fact that there are so many blogs and bloggers on the net also means that unless your content is focused and distinctive, it is not going to be read and shared by many.
The best way to go about using blogs for recruiting is to link blogs to your careers page so that potential candidates are directed to the appropriate page within the site. Below are some tips on how to write blogs that draw potential candidates to your company.
Before starting a blog for recruiting, it is important to be clear about:
• What is the purpose of writing the blog
• Who is the targeted audience to read your blog
Profile the ideal candidate that you would like to hire and then think of the topics that would interest and attract him or her. Some blogs that are known to work in general and can also be used in recruiting efforts include:
• Blogs that provide opinion or rating on a particular service or technology. Blogs that list down the top 5 organizations to approach for a particular service generally get more traffic so you can start by feeding relevant information to potential candidates, through them
• Blogs containing tips on recruiting, best practices and other related information is also a good starting point to use for recruiting. For instance, Zalp’s blogs speak extensively on how to go about making your referral program more effective as well how to integrate your referral programs with social media strategies through the use of technology.
• Writing blogs on topics related to careers and opportunities within the context of your company or industry is also a great way to connect with your audience.
• Always try and choose a topic that is currently trending so that you manage to draw the maximum traffic to your site
You do not need to go about blogging alone. Engage your key employees and subject experts within the organization to write on key topics as well as their experience within the organization to build employer branding. Companies like Accenture and Microsoft have made employee blogging a primary feature of their career site and it seems to be working wonders for their recruiting efforts.
