By Mike Vilimek
The term ‘Recruitment Marketing’ has been generating a lot of buzz in recruitment circles for quite some time now. Contrary to what many recruitment technology vendors may say, Recruitment Marketing is not a product or feature, but rather an increasingly critical competency of a successful recruiting organization.
The term seems to have been spawn from the growing list of similarities between what Recruiters do and what Marketers do. In a recent blog post on ERE.net, Jacque Vilet made a strong argument that Recruiting should be moved to the Marketing department. Regardless of where the Recruitment department sits, the table below shows how similar their activities are, even if in some cases, the terminology is slightly different.
Marketing | Recruiting |
Find prospects to turn into customers | Find candidates to turn into hires |
Strengthen consumer brand | Strengthen employer brand |
Create and promote advertisements | Create and promote job postings |
Build web sites / landing pages | Build career sites / job pages |
Ensure web sites are mobile friendly | Ensure career sites are mobile friendly |
Create corporate social network pages | Create career social network pages |
Push corporate content through social channels | Push careers content through social channels |
Streamline and optimize the buying process | Streamline and optimize the application processes |
Nurture leads | Nurture your talent network / communities |
So for me, this begs the question. When hiring people for your Recruitment function, should they have a Marketing degree or have prior Marketing experience? A quick search of Indeed for Recruiting positions shows that this is already the case more often than not. In my not-so-scientific research study, 2/3 of the Recruiting jobs posted on the first page made mention of Marketing skills being required or highly preferred.
Maybe at some point there will be academic programs graduating people with Recruitment Marketing degrees, but I’m not aware of any today. So until then, if you are trying to hire your next top Recruiter, take note of what level of Marketing experience a candidate has under their belt. They may be an expert in many of the activities you need, just with slightly different terminology.
Mike Vilimek is an experienced technology professional and an active blogger, presenter, and thought leader on topics including recruiting and HR technology. As the Director, HCM Product Marketing at Oracle, Mike is responsible for defining global positioning and messaging for Oracle HCM solutions. Prior to joining Oracle, Mike led the product marketing teams at Talemetry, a recruiting technology provider and Oracle Platinum Partner, and data analytics provider ACL Services. Mike has been a frequent presenter at HR Technology events and webinars and has most recently presented at Oracle CloudWorld 2014, Oracle Open World 2013, the OHUG Annual Conference, and Collaborate.
Mike graduated from Simon Fraser University with a business degree in Marketing and International Business and was a member of the SFU Football team. Following graduation, Mike had a 7-year professional football career in the Canadian Football League (CFL). Follow him on Twitter: @MikeVilimek
