I recently met Dharmesh Shah, co-founder of HubSpot. HubSpot is a software product, which they call an Inbound Marketing System. The premise is that marketing departments and small businesses need to make themselves more available and accessible online, which in turn will attract those people that are looking for them already (but to-date haven’t found them.) It’s about blogging, search engine optimization, leveraging social media and social networks, and measuring everything to understand what’s working, what’s not working, etc. Unlike outbound marketing (think: Google AdWords), HubSpot is about attracting people by “being out there” and being able to properly convert those people into leads.
This is exactly what HR needs to think about and start acting on immediately.
Louise Kursmark at Career Hub makes reference to this in her recent post, What keeps recruiters up at night? –
My final thought about recruiting: It needs a shot in the arm from the marketing department. In fact, successful companies need to market themselves to future employees just as seriously as they market their products or services to consumers. Yet most HR people are not marketing oriented, and despite the ubiquitous trend toward employment branding, most companies don’t invest the resources and talent necessary to make their recruiting function as vibrant as their marketing area. Those that do make the investment will reap the rewards – a more talented, more engaged workforce that creates and supports a winning culture.
HR is fairly good when it comes to outbound marketing. We post on job boards (although not always the right ones) and we source online (and offline) to find job seekers and bring them in. But when it comes to inbound recruiting, Human Resources is far behind. People are talking about this concept, although not using the term inbound recruiting, but it’s clear where the leaders of HR are pushing the industry. Kevin Wheeler talks about strategic actions HR can take in a recession. Just look at point #5 in Kevin’s list — Building Relationships — I could copy the whole thing in here, but I won’t…
HR = Marketing
It becomes more and more clear every day that HR has to evolve into a marketing arm of the enterprise. HR has to become about outreach (both outbound and inbound marketing), and focus on building employer brand, corporate presence and accessibility. HR has to become more strategic.
I would not propose that HR stop marketing in an outbound way – job boards can work, sourcing can work, 3rd party recruiters can work – but HR is missing out on inbound opportunities: creating a strong recruiting presence, optimizing it, testing it and creating community, accessibility and affinity.
Inbound marketing for HR. What do you think?
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