Inbound Marketing Methodology Will Make You a Hiring Beast
I had an excellent opportunity to work with an inbound marketing agency back in 2014, and that was the point where my hiring skills started skyrocketing.
As I was going to join an agency that was doing Inbound Marketing, I decided to get some certifications on it (which is, by the way, provided by HubSpot). In short, inbound marketing focuses on creating high-quality content that attracts people toward your brand/product through delivering relevant content. So you align customer’s interests, pain points with your content and attract inbound traffic that you can later convert, close, and delight over time.
I really liked the idea of inbound and implemented it in my hiring process with some tweaks, and it fitted quite well.
The image above shows how it works in marketing. Here’s how it works in recruitment:
Attract: I started to attract my potential customers with relevant content in social media first. The Linkedin professional network was a good start. I began writing articles like “How to get hired,” “How to impress the interviewers,” “How to position yourself as a professional” etc. That was the point a lot of people started to follow me, ask questions, and engage.
Convert: Once I started to get the right “visitors,” I began to build trust by providing them with valuable information, such as that related to their CV. I gave them tips, support, better CV templates, pointed out to their strengths and weaknesses. All of this could potentially help them get noticed by recruiters.
Close: From a marketing perspective this is the stage where leads are transformed into customers. You have to make sure the right leads are closed at the right time. As a recruiter at this stage, I started to filter people who need changes, are ready for them, want to get hired or try something new.
Delight: You have to deliver outstanding content both to your customers and your leads according to the Inbound methodology. And they’ll become promoters of your business. After each hire, I kept the connection as a recruiter, as a personal branding specialist, and as a friend.
Even after landing a role candidate wanted, there were times they received an angry call from me where they heard something like “What the f*ck is wrong with your Linkedin, man. This looks unprofessional, fix this, fix that, change that photo, or change this in your CV so applicant tracking systems accept it, add keywords in your Linkedin profile, so recruiters and decision makers can find you faster and easier” etc.
For some of them I became some kind of a “lifetime job supporter,” and everywhere I go I take them with me (won’t let you go, guys, sorry).
This kind of approach helps us grow a community where everyone supports each other. Of course, if they get to the next stage they become friends, and you have to do all the future actions free of charge because you don’t charge friends man, and that’s kind of sad.
Sad, but beautiful! Haha!
Another important point is that these people who trust you on an intuitive level start to refer their best friends to you, which is the part I highlighted earlier. They become promoters of your business.
I take it to the next level from here. My network has to know each other in person, so I use every opportunity to introduce them to each other, and later I brag about it drunk in bars like “Ghuuuukassss, connecting people” (sorry Nokia, you’re late). Here’s why it’s important:
- You give them new opportunities
- They form new connections
- They start something fresh and new
- They create a new product
- They come back to you as a client for recruitment
- You overcharge them and deliver bad candidates
- They fail later because of it
- Cycle repeats
Jokes aside, you help them grow, and you eventually grow with them. So, here is a tip for my fellow recruiters — keep people engaged, keep delighting them, keep supporting them, don’t be afraid to give them their first chance, because when they change the world, they’ll come back to you, look you in the eye and say “thank you!” And you won’t, believe me, you won’t be any more proud in your whole f*cking life, this is something you can’t describe with words.
There are a lot of other things you can learn from the inbound methodology and use in your hiring process. I may go deeper into details regarding this later.
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