how to build a strong brand for your recruitment business #rechangout highlights

The monthly LIVE discussion show for recruiters

How to build a strong brand for your

recruitment business

5th March 2015

#RecHangout is supported by:

https://www.colleaguesoftware.com/



Hangout Participants

Mark Stephens

TRA + Smart Recruit

Online

Alan Whitford

Recruitment Strategist

Abtech + RCEURO

Louise Triance

Community Owner

UK Recruiter

Louis Welcomme

CRM Comms Manager

Colleague Software

Russell Amerasekera

Personal Branding

Epiphany

Clair Bush

Marketing Director

Broadbean Technology

Felix Wetzel

Marketing Executive

Candarine + eiTalent

Paul Sharpe

Marketing Director

InterQuest Group PLC




“Branding is the only medium consumers

engage with and it’s what they base their

decisions on”

Clair Bush

Marketing Director





“I prefer to talk about reputation and look at

where it comes from. Brand depends on the

people in a company – they make your

brand.”

Felix Wetzel

Marketing Executive





“Before social media marketers believed that

a brand could be controlled. We now have

no control over brands, we can only

influence its perception by a wider

audience.”

Felix Wetzel

Marketing Executive





“There is a massive convergence at the moment

going on between the marketing space and the

recruitment space and I think there’s not many

organizations that I’ve spoken to that understand

the importance that marketing has got to play in

recruitment.”

Paul Sharpe

Marketing Director





Russell Amerasekera

Personal Branding

Epiphany

“I think the recruitment industry is very un-

imaginative when it comes to taking itself to

market. Very few invest in their personal brand in

an environment where it’s very difficult to

differentiate and not using the opportunity to sell

who you are as a person limits your ability to sell.”




“I think it’s really important that the agencies

themselves understand who they are so that

their brand is visible in the first instance. How

can their personality stand out? How can their

good work stand out if they don’t know internally

who they are and what they do?”

Clair Bush

Marketing Director





“The key is your business culture. Knowing

what you stand for, getting that right and then

recruiting the right people. Everything else in

terms of marketing and branding, would stem

from.”

Louis Welcomme

CRM Comms Manager

Colleague Software




“Recruitment bosses need to start letting their

consultants stand out. And if they don’t want

their personal brands and personal culture of

their employees to have a public face, they

might be recruiting the wrong people.”

Louis Welcomme

CRM Comms Manager

Colleague Software




“Three years ago we realized that the

proposition we had was quite confusing. We had

lots of different brands – there was no identity,

no meaning. For me it is about getting your

strategy right and being clear about what you’re

trying to stand for.”

Paul Sharpe

Marketing Director





Russell Amerasekera

Personal Branding

Epiphany

“It’s a bit of a misnomer to think that they have to

spend fortunes on a very expensive brand and

marketing strategy. I don’t believe you do. It’s

about going back to the essence of who you are

and what you’re about.”




Russell Amerasekera

Personal Branding

Epiphany

“One of the challenges I give to businesses is

‘What’s your story?’ I have a number of questions

I ask - the first one being, ‘What are you famous

for?’ ‘Why should I choose you?” and secondly,

“What do you stand for?” and most importantly,

“How do you want to be perceived?”




Russell Amerasekera

Personal Branding

Epiphany

“There is a wonderful quote that the chairman of

Amazon uses which describes beautifully what a

brand is, “Your personal brand is what people

say about you when you are not in the room?” If

you can’t answer that question I don’t believe

you can sell yourself.”




“You need to understand ‘Where are you

now?’ the second thing is ‘Where do you

want to go?’ the third thing is ‘How are you

different from other people?’ the fourth thing

is ‘Do I have the resources to do what I want

to do?’”

Felix Wetzel

Marketing Executive





Russell Amerasekera

Personal Branding

Epiphany

“One of the things that I see in the recruitment

industry more than any other industries is that

there is a tendency to try and mimic your client.

What a client really wants is for you to think

differently – to not think like them and to

challenge their thinking.”




Russell Amerasekera

Personal Branding

Epiphany

“Clients are saying, ‘I only want to hire people

who can challenge me – who can help me think

differently – who can add something different.’

It’s impossible to engage with clients in a

meaningful way if you’re trying to be exactly the

same as them.”




“From my perspective customers want

reassurance that we are able to connect and

engage with specialist talent – people who are

hard to find, difficult to get hold of in the market

who aren’t always on LinkedIn.”

Paul Sharpe

Marketing Director





“People don’t want to be sold to now. I hear

more and more of people turning off their

LinkedIn profiles because of recruiters. What

clients want to see is how you are engaging with

people. How are you representing yourself out in

the market place? How you are adding value?”

Paul Sharpe

Marketing Director





“What companies want to see and hear is how

you are engaging with people. How are you

representing yourself out in the market place?

How you are adding value to them as an

individual. How you are sharing information?”

Paul Sharpe

Marketing Director





“I like to look at what is happening outside of

recruitment, especially in inbound marketing.

Bringing such approaches and tools into the

recruitment space will revolutionise the way small

agencies work –they’ll be the ones that get to the

candidates faster and make the big wins.”

Clair Bush

Marketing Director





“When we’re talking to clients we try to suggest to

them that rather than trying to win minds during the

recruitment process they will be better to

concentrate on the candidates and give them a

better experience during the application process so

that they build a reputation up that they are a

Company that cares.”

Mark Stephens

TRA + Smart Recruit

Online




“The great thing about modern marketing methods

is that small businesses, especially niche

recruiters, can make a big impact. Speak to the

people in your niche, speak to bloggers, speak to

the content creators, speak to your candidates and

clients and ask them to create content for you.”

Louis Welcomme

CRM Comms Manager

Colleague Software




“You don’t need to write it all yourself - speak to

specialists and your employees – ask them to

write white-papers, ask them to come onto

webinar shows, ask them to write for your blog.

And then start to push the content out through

all your social networks and email.”

Louis Welcomme

CRM Comms Manager

Colleague Software




“Start to build relationships around the content

you’re creating and around what you, your

clients and your candidates, are interested in.

Rather than selling all the time start

conversations, online and at events, around

your content and expertise.”

Louis Welcomme

CRM Comms Manager

Colleague Software




“There are ghost writers out there who can help you

put articles together or you can do what Louis does

and pinch everybody else’s ideas. So it needn’t be

expensive is my message to everybody it’s about

understanding what you can do, it’s about using

content and it’s about building on it slowly.”

Paul Sharpe

Marketing Director





Russell Amerasekera

Personal Branding

Epiphany

“If you’re really going to make yourself stand

out it’s critical to have a point of view. Otherwise

you’re trying to put yourself in the same place

as the bigger companies you’ll just simply

loose. What is it you really want to say? What is

your point of view? And how do you stand out?”




“I think the marketing plan doesn’t need to be

complicated, it doesn’t need to be War & Peace,

and it could literally be “I’ve got an idea for getting

out there with a webinar but where else could I

take it?” Mind-map everything that you can do with

one bit of content and then once you’ve repeated

that a couple of times it becomes second nature.”

Clair Bush

Marketing Director





“You fall into a routine of ‘I must blog about this’ or

‘Tweet about that,’ ‘I’m going to follow some more

people today’ and then your network grows – so it

becomes by virtue a cycle that continues, no day is

the same. It means that I’m constantly learning but

also working on what I’ve done yesterday and

moving that forward as well.”

Clair Bush

Marketing Director





“From some of the research that I’ve seen the vast

majority of consultants interest in that candidate is

minimal. Candidates are saying, ‘Why are you

contacting me?’ Because no one has contacted me

in the last two or three years and you only ever ring

me or contact me when you want something!’”

Paul Sharpe

Marketing Director





“With recruitment we are dealing with a luxury

product. If I'm an employer with a small

business and I’m paying someone £30,000 -

that’s a luxury item. If you bought a new car at

£30,000 you would be treated completely

differently.”

Felix Wetzel

Marketing Executive





Russell Amerasekera

Personal Branding

Epiphany

“Whilst most businesses both small and large

seem to be comfortable about selling their

propositions, selling their products, selling what

they do for customers – there is a real culture of

reluctance – particularly in this country around

selling ourselves.”




“There are still millions of adverts out there coming

from a client perspective. The few agencies doing it

the other way around are not just doing it through

the job-boards – they are doing it through social

media, they have their own websites and they’re

positioning themselves in front of

candidates.”

Clair Bush

Marketing Director





“It’s less about the representation, for me it comes

back to how you use content to engage with

people. I think if you do that from a candidate

perspective people will perceive that you are

adding value, they’ll see that you’re credible and

you’re trustworthy. Then they are more likely to do

business with you.”

Paul Sharpe

Marketing Director





Russell Amerasekera

Personal Branding

Epiphany

“We’ve got to make everything sexy these days

because that’s the currency we are dealing with.

I think to make recruitment sexy it’s all about

tone of voice. I’m amazed we can talk about

people in a way that seems so utterly

impersonal.”




Russell Amerasekera

Personal Branding

Epiphany

“Recruitment deals in human emotions. It deals

in the ability to communicate who we are and

what we’re about. And yet so often you guys

reduce it to transactional language. It almost de-

humanises the process.”




Russell Amerasekera

Personal Branding

Epiphany

“If you want to make recruitment sexy it’s about

really connecting on a basic human level and

talking about people, talking about emotions,

talking about stories and really brining what you

do to life in a much more empathetic way.”




Russell Amerasekera

Personal Branding

Epiphany

“Whenever I talk to people who work for

corporates they say the same thing to me – “I’m

not a number” “I want to be treated like I’m a

human being” And until the recruitment industry

adjusts its tone of voice to reflect that I think

again its missing a huge opportunity.”




Russell Amerasekera

Personal Branding

Epiphany

“If you really want to stand out, if you want to

build your business in a different way, simple

language - human emotions - is a very good

place to start, the ability to be able to talk as

normal people talk, as customers talk.”




“I think we’ve got it wrong for now. I think we are

still going through a transition in terms of what is

happening outside the industry. I think unfortunately

we are all quite guilty of reverting back to type.

When it comes to Monday morning it’s about

getting the deals and getting the cheque in the till.”

Paul Sharpe

Marketing Director





“Over the last 3 years we have gone from one to

five people in the marketing team – so we have a

great team who is absolutely brilliant at what they

do. They work very closely with the business - they

advise people how to not only represent

themselves but also to represent the brand, and

what people can do to connect with talent.”

Paul Sharpe

Marketing Director





Russell Amerasekera

Personal Branding

Epiphany

“A really clever brand strategy really needs to be

constantly evolving. You’ve got to recognise that

brands evolve as we evolve as human beings

and therefore you may have looked at your

brand a year ago but a year later the world can

look very different.”




@media2knight

Best of the #RecHangout Twitter Buzz

Encourage your engaged EEs and new

hires to review your business on

@Glassdoor!

Encourage your brand ambassadors to

share their story on social media...very

cost effective marketing strategy!

To get in front of passive talent, recruiters

must be marketers!

Culture is KEY for employment branding!

Do you really know yours? Start there.

Can #Rec be sexy? We SHOULD

have amazing hats, bt let's focus

on the message, language & be

personal, its a 'people' industry

It truly is integral to focus on your

audience, stay focused, stay

genuine and be true #RecHangout

@Aida_Walsh




@louisetriance


Spot on with the #RecHangout

How do we make recruitment

sexy? Ditch the transactional

language and dehumanisation of

the process.

On the #rechangout

@EpiphanyRussell says to

promote yourself or your small

business brand you need a point of

view

@SarahHGordon1

Clair Bush hits the nail on the head

- candidate experience is how

people touch/judge your brand

Hasn't it always been said in

recruitment "people buy people"?

#rechangout says: Agencies need

to know what they stand for and

recruit people that match that -

then let their personal brands stand

out...




@vaidoshia


So true: your personal #brand is

what people say about you when

you are not in the room

#rechangout

The #businessstrategy must come

before the #brand - Who are you?

What makes you better than the

competition?

'the brand is not what you say

about yourself, its what your

audience says about you'

#RecHangout

@InterQuestGroup




Next #RechangoutHow are recruitment businesses attracting,

engaging and retaining their talent? Best Companies Special

2nd April – 1pm BST

Graeme Hubert – Co-founder of Consol Partners

Kieran Behan – Managing Director of Phaidon International

Adam Metherell – Commercial Director at ChapmanBlack

SIGN UP TO WATCH HERE



https://www.colleaguesoftware.com/webinars

https://www.colleaguesoftware.com/webinars/how-are-recruitment-businesses-attracting-engaging-and-retaining-their-talent-best-companies-rechangout-special


The Recruiters Hangout is a monthly, free discussion show, where special guests,

business owners and industry experts join our regular panel to share their top tips,

insights and advice with a live online audience.

The #RecHangout is hosted by Alan Whitford (RCEuro / Abtech

Partnership), Louis Welcomme (Colleague Software), Mark Stephens (The

Recruitment Alliance / Smart Recruit Online) and Louise Triance (UK Recruiter).

Want to take part? Call Louis on:

01603 735 932 - [email protected]



https://plus.google.com/u/0/107316572126877981416/about

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+LouisWelcomme/about


https://plus.google.com/u/0/110381692378202076750/about

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+LouiseTriance/about

mailto:[email protected]

how to build a strong brand for your recruitment business #rechangout highlights

Recruiting & HR

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recruitment space

recruitment business

strong brand

recruitment industry

personal brands

right people