Why should they be thinking about working for you?

I spent almost 20 years helping companies advertise their jobs, communicate their work culture, and develop new and better ways to attract interest from people so that they apply, and eventually come work for these organizations. My expertise was also sought out by my clients to help them keep their people once they made the hiring decision, and once the employees decided to accept their offers of a job.

The nature of the business was HR Communications, also known as Recruitment Advertising. A natural extension of this was Retention Communications, as well as a host of other titles, terms and areas of services. Essentially, I was in the business of advertising companies to people - in newspapers and journals, on the web, on the radio, outdoor advertising, brochures and other collateral materials, trinkets and trash, events, on movie screens, in public washrooms - anyplace people were able to see the employment message!

I worked with my clients to develop the message, identify their audience, and then choosing the most targeted media to deliver the message to this audience.

And now, having departed the HR Communications/Recruitment Advertising company I founded and built, I am gaining a completely different perspective as a job seeker.

So with this unique perspective, I'd like to return to the original question - Why should they be thinking about working for you? (And in case you're not sure, They are the candidates; You is your company)

Employers often lack the perspective to effectively engage candidates - to get people excited about the prospect of coming to work for them. While very important, its not only about creating a slick ad or job posting with a catchy headline and snappy body copy. Nor is it enough to have a cool careers website, or job fair booth, or employment brochures.

It's about all of these, but there's more - it's holistic in nature - it's about the entire candidate experience.

Its about getting people to stop, look, listen ... and to continue listening. Its about laying the groundwork for a dialogue; a 2-way relationship where the employer has something to sell to the candidate, and to create an environment where the best candidates are interested in buying.

So now that I've laid the groundwork in my inaugural blog post - I'm going to throw in a To Be Continued.

In future posts, I will share my thoughts and observations on the good, the bad and the ugly of employment communications. I'll do this from an industry veteran's perspective, as well as through the lens of a jobseeker.

Hopefully I can stir up some dialogue; maybe I'll even be able to generate some interest from recruiters or employers and provide a useful tip, or cause them to do something a bit differently, resulting in them achieving greater success in their recruiting efforts.

Stay tuned, please come back, and tell your friends!

HJW