Corporate Recruitment Blogging

Bull Doza's survey summarized.

A blog is a great networking tool. You can reach a lot of people on a regular basis without leaving your desk.

They are especially useful to recruiters because they allow them to establish regular contact with a large number of active and passive candidates in their field.

The key ingredient is content that your target audience wants to read. And, in recruiter blogging, this content has three main themes.

1. Job Hunting and Career Information

Main Topic: How to get a job at our firm. Recruiters explain the hiring process and offer advice that will make their readers better candidates.

Specific posts focus on the do's and don'ts of interviewing, how to write a resume and yadda, yadda, yadda.

Recruiters can also discuss career management issues in their specific field and what their firm offers in the way of professional challenges, skills development and career advancement.

2. Recruiter Image Making

Recruiter bloggers tell stories that create attractive impressions of themselves and the groups they recruit for.

Typical Topic: A Day in the life of Recruiter X.

I'm recruiting on campus today. Gotta watch my drinking this time and stay away from those cute guys!!!...

We had our annual poker tournament yesterday and it was busted by the cops. Rumour has it that old Joe, the head of our great software team, doesn't like gambling.

3. Promoting the Company

Recruiters can promote their firm by explaining its role in its industry. They can also correct any common misconceptions.

If, for instance, ignorant rumours claim that your CEO used political influence to buy a large parcel of government land to expand her personal golf course, a blog can be used to remind the public that this could not be proven in court and, therefore, is not true.

Microsoft

Actually, just dishing out lots of free job hunting information can transform your company's image from that of an impenetrable stone wall to a big fuzzy teddy bear. This is especially true if you hire cheerful and friendly girls to blog for a bunch of young, techie guys.

That's the story of The Microsoft Jobsblog. Founded by Microchicks Gretchen and Zoe many moons ago it is, perhaps, the mother of all corporate recruiting blogs.

The Jobsblog formula was so successful that The Microchicks became communication consultants and now set up recruiting blogs for other firms via their own company, JobSyntax.

Multimedia

The Chicks believe that multimedia presentations, like podcasts and webcasts, are a key issue in blogging today. So you need a blogging platform that can handle them well.

They recommend CommunityServer.Org at $250 per year. They also use Wetjello, a firm which specializes in creating high quality recruiting videos that actually manage to be witty and fun.

Legal Issues and Career Sites

I was under the impression that Microsoft didn't host its recruiting blogs on its company career site in order to establish them as separate entities in case Recruiter X says something that triggers a law suit against her.

But Bull Doza argues that this is a mistake. Blogs get high rankings in the search engines and can bring a lot of traffic to an otherwise lonely career site so, according to him, it would be an egregious error to separate the two.

The Quality of the Content

So, we're back to the issue of content. Some people believe that to attract readers you've got to offer real meat.

Most the corporate blogs I’ve read are nothing more than periodic press releases and the ROI analysis on those should be pretty simple. People don’t waste their time reading corporate schlock.
Speaking Freely

But, others might advise us to forget the passive candidates who aren't looking for work and just want a good read. Focus instead on the semi-passives who aren't actively looking but like to know what is being offered. For these guys, they would argue, all you need on the blog is a little pablum.

This might suit management best because not every company can handle a good writer. They might see her as a loose cannon and find the blog too scary.

Want to read more? Find it at Six Degrees. Note also: Dave Mendoza is leading a series of audio conferences on corporate recruitment blogging.

See also: A Kick-butt Recruiting Portal and Career Sites of the Future.

Comments

[jenn storms]

Trovix, a job search engine based out of Silicon Valley launched the first Branded Entertainment episode of the
web series "Full-Time Dreams", about a funny group of guys who dream big and live small. I'm the filmmaker behind the webseries
and thought you might be interesting in linking to the YouTube video or webpage (with video) from your career Blog.

Here are the links. Please check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bN0oVUCnsQ

http://fulltimedreams.com/

Thanks!

Jenn