People ask me all the time what I read and how I continually educate myself in recruiting. Honestly, I rarely read stuff from other recruiters. There are a few folks who I think get it at another level – my BFF, Kris Dunn (dude, is the best TA leader on the planet, and you can’t find me a better one – truly). I really like Jan Tegze and his takes. Hung Lee just continually immerses himself in our space. But, for the most part, I read content from tech, economists, and things outside of our space because I think recruiting and talent acquisition, for the most part, lag behind a lot of industries.
When we take a look at consumer marketing and behavior, I think there are a lot of things we can take from that industry that have a major impact on recruiting. One of those is buyer behavior. In a real sense, a candidate is buying a job/boss/company, when they decide to accept an offer from you.
Think about how you buy something today.
Tomorrow, you need to go buy a new vacuum cleaner. Do you just go to a store and purchase one off the shelf? Or do you do a little research first? 99% of consumers do research today before making almost any purchase. If you’re like me, that feels about right! If I buy a $10 bottle of vitamins off Amazon, I’m going to read reviews, take a look at a few others, etc. Even though we know many of those reviews might be bogus, we still look for ones that seem real to help us validate our decisions.
Now, let’s go back to recruiting.
How often do you use “reviews” as part of your recruitment marketing strategy? Most of us, still don’t. “Oh, you mean like, Glassdoor?! or Indeed reviews?” Yes and no. You can use those, but I read those like I read Amazon reviews. I get lost in all the crap. You have disgruntled low performers who tend to post too much in those spaces, so you tend not to believe most of them.
You know what I would believe? Short, 45-90-second videos from real employees who tell me what it’s like working at your company. Not overly produced hostage videos. Ugh! Those are the worst! Authentic, real cell phone video of an actual employee being themselves, unscripted, telling me why this place is right for them. Almost no one does this, and it’s perplexing because they are so swaying toward other candidates!
It takes almost no time. No money. Very little effort. Maybe that’s why we do use them.
We buy stuff because we tend to believe people won’t lie to us. They do, but that doesn’t really change our behavior because they don’t always. Humans are very trusting, for the most part. We love to say we aren’t but our actions speak differently.
Go out and use reviews more. You’re missing out on a great way to get others interested in you and choosing you, simply because your own employees tell them it’s the place for them.