Employer Branding Part 14:
Marketing — Magic for your HR

How do you stay ahead in the “war for talent”? — You are a commit­ted employ­er. Your employ­er brand­ing is right. Yet your work­force does­n’t seem very enthu­si­as­tic. Appli­cants are stay­ing away. The solu­tion to the riddle: You don’t have the meth­ods to get the power on the road. This requires more than tradi­tion­al HR manage­ment. HR manage­ment today needs mind­sets and process­es that are famil­iar from prod­uct manage­ment, market­ing, sales and customer loyal­ty. In this feature of our Valdivia Employ­er Brand­ing series, we present the most impor­tant points of contact — and use them to promote cross-depart­men­tal collaboration.

Borrow­ing from Market­ing & Sales

Modern recruit­ing today utilis­es the same approach­es, tools and media as prod­uct market­ing. We have already present­ed indi­vid­ual forms such as social recruit­ing  sever­al times in our news­room. Here is an overview of the most impor­tant parallels:

• Presen­ta­tion of the offer
  Job descrip­tions need many simi­lar features to a prod­uct offer, e.g. bene­fits or advan­tages over competi­tors. Content market­ing also has its place: compa­nies become more under­stand­able and acces­si­ble via corpo­rate blogs and social media; poten­tial inter­est­ed parties are moti­vat­ed to stay in touch.
• Target groups
  As with prod­uct offers, content and media should match the appli­cants you are look­ing for. A “one-fits-all” format for job adverts no longer appeals to anyone today.
• Appear­ance
  Design and language should also fulfil the purpose. If you promise a posi­tive work­ing atmos­phere, for exam­ple, people want to feel this as soon as they read it: “Just write to us. We look forward to hear­ing from you!” instead of “We look forward to receiv­ing your application.”
• Conclu­sion
  The idea of offering
  inter­est­ed parties sever­al access channels
  stems from sales. Vari­a­tions on the clas­sic appli­ca­tion are, for exam­ple, infor­mal short appli­ca­tions, video inter­views, job exchanges, etc. Unique events, which construc­tion and prop­er­ty compa­nies in partic­u­lar can realise with their special resources, have a special effect.

HR managers can — and should — clear­ly bene­fit from market­ing exper­tise. This also applies to port­fo­lio manage­ment, as the follow­ing section shows.

Concepts from customer loyalty 

“Reten­tion is the new recruit­ing” is often read these days: keep­ing exist­ing employ­ees is far cheap­er than look­ing for new ones. We recent­ly present­ed an effec­tive approach to employ­ee reten­tion. But how can the concepts from customer commu­ni­ca­tion be “trans­lat­ed” for this purpose? Here are a few examples:

• Clas­sics of the analogue world 
  The poster on the notice board, the compa­ny event or the employ­ee maga­zine are still impor­tant tools¹ .
• Digi­tal networking 
  Intranet and employ­ee app offer oppor­tu­ni­ties that are often bare­ly utilised. For exam­ple, group func­tions can be used to create social networks with­in the work­force in order to organ­ise leisure activ­i­ties, hobbies, sport and e‑sports together.
• Media and content 
  “Live­ly” image and sound media are partic­u­lar­ly popu­lar. This can also be used to retain employ­ees: Podcasts, videos and webi­na­rs allow deci­sion-makers and experts to intro­duce them­selves person­al­ly and provide inter­est­ing insights into their tasks and projects.

Think­ing like in prod­uct management 

Is it possi­ble to treat jobs like prod­ucts and simply “invent” new ones in order to appear more attrac­tive on the market? At first, this seems diffi­cult to imag­ine. Job profiles are usual­ly defined by demand, profes­sion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions, a profes­sion­al code of conduct or a legal frame­work. On the other hand, digi­tal­i­sa­tion is produc­ing new job profiles almost on a week­ly basis, such as the current prompt engi­neer for AI control.

Howev­er, inno­v­a­tive elements can also make tradi­tion­al jobs more inter­est­ing, e.g. through new or expand­ed devel­op­ment and career oppor­tu­ni­ties. Simi­lar­ly, cross-divi­sion­al tasks and inter­face func­tions can provide an inspir­ing work­ing envi­ron­ment. Agile work­ing models in partic­u­lar ((Link 4)) are ideal­ly suit­ed to this.

HR & Market­ing togeth­er in the lab

The chal­lenge is clear: in times of a labour market, HR managers need a “market­ing sense” in order to secure the neces­sary work­force for compa­nies. Some may already have this today. Howev­er, where this sense is not yet present and exter­nal help is too expen­sive, inter­nal collab­o­ra­tion can lead to solu­tions — for exam­ple, by having colleagues from market­ing coach HR managers. Such collab­o­ra­tion can also serve as a labo­ra­to­ry project for other new, inter­est­ing work­ing models.

¹ “Employ­er brand­ing in B2B — status quo, trends and exam­ples”, Vogel Commu­ni­ca­tions Group 11/2022

(Image source: istockphotos)