In our sixth Talent Matters webinar we were joined by Global Head of Marketing at Austin Fraser and Austin Vita, Richard Williams. Richard shared a huge amount of insight into the vital role of marketing in recruitment and why he and his team pushed through with their marketing activity when the recruitment industry slowed down.
As Global Head of Marketing for tech recruiters Austin Fraser and their life science arm Austin Vita, Richard is responsible for the marketing function and brand building across the recruitment consultancy’s nine offices in the UK, Germany and the USA. He may have to think on a global scale when it comes to marketing strategies but firmly believes that the core functions can be applied to recruitment agencies of any size.
Key takeaways
- Find your ‘why’. Recruitment is a highly saturated market and to be able to stand out you must pinpoint what makes your agency unique, why clients and candidates should come to you above all your competitors. “Marketingoffers the differentiation, the story.” Publicise that, push it out, ensure everyone across the company is on board with it and then work to deliver it. Communicate your core values and live by them.
- ‘Do the right thing’ by your candidates and clients. Helping candidates and clients alike wherever possible should be part of an agency’s DNA but is even more crucial during a crisis. Not only is this the right thing to do, it will ultimately have positive ramifications for your brand. The simple act of offering to chat with no agenda – a crisis is not a time to sell – will be remembered long after the pandemic is over. Both clients and candidates will return to those recruiters that went the extra mile for them at a time when many agencies battened down the hatches.
- Nurture candidate relationships. As well as getting closer to clients and understanding their business, it is important to build a micro-community of specialist candidates. That way, you can ensure you have access to talent that you know don’t simply tick a few boxes but will be a true asset to the client in a specific role. Know your candidates inside out and you will be able to make the right match every time.
- Enable your consultants to stand out. Recruiters are some of the best marketers out there – they build communities, push content, spend years building personal brands, and are able to communicate online and offline; the very essence of marketing. What they sometimes lack is the tools to turn that into effective marketing. The role of marketing therefore is to enable recruitment consultants to market themselves by providing them with a tool kit – templates in which to drop content, editable assets, ideas for content creation, and so on. Give your recruiters a way to increase exposure and they will use it.
- Don’t neglect internal communication. To ensure that everyone within the company is aligned, it is essential that marketing strategies are distributed throughout. That doesn’t just mean letting the entire team know what external marketing you are doing but that they know what their roles are and that they feel supported in doing their job.
“Recruitment agencies that take it further than the transactional nature of the job are the ones that will fly” – Richard Williams.
With plenty of actionable takeaways, helpful advice, and an enormous amount of insight into how marketing will help your recruitment agency now and in the future, this is not to be missed. If you didn’t catch it live or want to re-watch it, listen to the podcast or watch the YouTube video.
