What Do You Do As An Employer Branding And Recruitment Marketer?
"Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have been in my current role for over a year now. Six months ago, if you had asked me, what someone working in Recruitment Marketing does, I would not be sure what to tell you. As you would probably guess, I didn't know so much when I started. But what I did know was it involved authentically connecting talents with opportunities especially job seekers through storytelling.
Many job seekers can tell you how challenging it can be navigating the job market.
I can still vividly recall applying to a significant number of jobs and facing rejections at different stages during the recruitment process. Having gone through such an experience myself, I wanted to better understand how the recruitment process works, and how I could contribute to making it better for someone else. And although I wasn’t certain about how to go about it, I knew this was an area I wanted to explore at some point in my professional journey. So when the opportunity presented itself amid a global pandemic in 2021, I decided it was the right time to do so.
The decision to become a recruitment marketer was another one of my many career experiments. I said to myself, if I was going to experiment again at any point in my life, why not at the stage where I had little to lose?
A Journey with a Purpose
"The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder - a walf, a nothing, a no man." - Thomas Carlyle
Before taking up a role in Talent Acquisition, my professional background had been in Corporate Communications, Digital Marketing and Social Media Management. But it happened that during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Social Media became a strong focus for Talent Acquisition across several organisations struggling to meet their recruitment needs. The pandemic significantly impacted physically-oriented recruitment events and activities, leading many organizations to leverage digital marketing and social media to reach out to talents.
It only didnt just make sense for companies to adopt an online strategy to reach much-needed talents, but became necessary. And social media increasingly became the key driver for their recruitment marketing.
And because I had experience in these areas, I knew I could easily transfer my expertise to support Employer Branding and Recruitment Marketing activities. So a couple of weeks after I decided it was time for a new challenge, I came across an opportunity for an interim position in Employer Branding and Recruitment Marketing. I eventually took up the challenge.
"Whether You Think You Can, or Think You Can't ... You're Right." - Henry Ford
With any new role, you are by no means going to be an expert. And as this was an area that had not been indepthly explored, there was always room to experiment with new ideas. I learned a lot by doing: You try something and figure out what worked and what didn't. Then repeat. I also took a lot of training courses and leadership workshops, dived deeper into the field (https://www.employerbrandingcollege.com/), read articles and books and got support from colleagues who shared their wisdom and networked with me.
Today, as I reflect on the journey, what surprises me the most is how much I have learned about Recruitment Marketing and how it drives talent attraction, retention, and engagement. And just over a year after taking up the challenge, I am happy I decided to pursue my passion, experiment again, and take the risk to step out of my comfort zone to do something different.