Are HR and Marketing the Next Epic Love Story?

Image via Pixabay

In the last post, we discovered how having a digital presence can strengthen your employer brand and help attract potential employees. This week, we will delve into the ways marketing can help HR in this new mission.

What exactly do marketers do?

To put it in the simplest terms, marketers create awareness of your brand and a drive desired action from the group of people you are trying to reach. Marketers do extensive research, develop strategies, and employ tactics in order to accomplish these goals. While some of these aspects can be handled by a singular person, there is often a group of people that work together to turn each element into a cohesive strategy based campaign. This is very similar to how HR functions in terms of different people handling different aspects that all fall under the same organizational goals.

How can marketers help HR?

Marketers can help HR immensely when it comes to the arts of employer branding and talent acquisition. Traditional branding as an intangible idea is based on the work and strategies from marketing. Yes, companies can have an amazing product or service and survive off of those things alone. However, if they want to not only survive, but thrive, they should have some form of marketing, and the branding that comes from marketing, in place. Just think about almost any company that you are familiar with. Do you know why that company came to mind? You guessed it: Marketing.

Marketers can bring the acquired knowledge from crafting –and maintaining; traditional branding to the task of creating a strong employer brand. While the many details of how a digital presence should be built and handled thereafter could be daunting to many HR professionals, these would be second-nature for a seasoned marketer.

In a previous interview, Sebastien Girard, VP of Talent Acquisition for Parkland Health and Hospital System illustrated the bond that is forming between marketing and HR when he said, “There are even some companies that have talent acquisition not reporting to HR anymore, but instead, a standalone department or reporting to marketing. Talent acquisition is becoming less about “post and pray” and more about building employer brand awareness.”

Target the right talent with marketing strategy.

For talent acquisition, take a moment to think about what this really entails. Yes, it entails writing a killer job description. Yes, it also entails deciding who you want to apply for the job. It also entails figuring out how to best reach those people that you want to apply. This is where marketing comes in. Before, crafting strategies and tactics for the latest marketing campaign, marketers have to decipher who the target audience actually is. Part of this is discovering what matters to members of that audience, finding the right messages to send to them, and where they will most likely go to find that message.

Let’s say that you are trying to attract a part-time representative for a call center. This position is considered entry-level and would not provide more than 20 hours per week.

A marketer would look at this position and think to themselves, “Who would be the right target for this position?” With this frame of mind and a bit of market research for your area, the answer would likely pop up as college students. From this, it could be determined that the way to communicate the benefits of this position would be something like:

“Our company is seeking a part-time representative for call center operations. This is a great position for college students! We offer flexible scheduling of work shifts that do not exceed 20 hours per week. During call downtime, there is an opportunity to do homework activities. This position provides experience in X, Y, and Z with opportunity for movement into other areas upon completion of education.”

In this example, all of these benefits that have been communicated are things that college students may worry about when thinking of adding a job to their already full schedule. Then a marketer would think about where college students would look to find jobs. In this case, college internship boards, school newspapers, and other such places would be the best bets for getting this posting in front of potential candidates.

Once potential pain points are alleviated and the position is posted in the right place, the desired candidates will apply.

This is nothing new to marketers. If a close relationship with HR is formed, part of the biggest battles in the war for talent can easily be won.

This piece was originally published on More Than Resources. To get new posts first, visit morethanresourcesblog.wordpress.com

Columns reflect the opinions of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect the views of Human Resources IQ.