Recruitment Is a Form of Marketing!

 

During my discussions with a number of executives, many of whom I am mentoring in one way or another, the topic of how they have been treated by various organizations during the recruitment process has come up a lot. One of the biggest gripes that I hear over and over again is the lack of respect that they receive when they interview for a position and don’t receive an offer. Typically, when you make it to the step of getting an actual interview for an executive level position, you are one of only  a handful of candidates being considered. As such, one would expect that when they are not chosen, they would receive some form of personal communication regarding the decision and maybe, if the company is really on the ball, some feedback on what they liked and what they felt the candidate could have improved on. What I am hearing is that many times, all the candidate receives is the same basic form email that every other candidate receives that wasn’t even selected for an interview. “We regret to inform that we will not be moving forward with your candidacy…blah, blah, blah.” Sometimes, it is just automatically generated through Indeed or whatever platform that they posted the job on, which makes it even worse. Keep in mind, that we are only talking about the candidates that were interviewed which is typically a very small number and to whom it shouldn’t be difficult to provide personalized messaging.

What you need to understand as someone who is responsible for recruitment for your organization, especially at the executive level, is that how you treat your candidates can strongly impact how that candidate views your organization, positively or negatively.

Recruitment as Marketing

As executives, many of us have to make decisions on vendor relationships. That could be whether we want to start doing or continue to do business with a particular company. Now, think about this. You are an executive of Company A who once went through the recruitment and interview process with Company B and felt that it was impersonal and disrespectful. Company B now is lobbying heavily to do business with Company A and you are a major influencer of whether that happens. How likely are you to let that negative experience impact your decision to do business with Company B? I would say the probability of that is very high. Some might say that allowing personal experiences to impact a business decision is slightly unethical. I would argue against that by saying that your experience gave you insight into how Company B operates. If Company B is disrespectful to high-level job candidates and fails to show empathy and personal interaction for something as simple as communicating that they didn’t get the position, what makes you think that the treatment that you would get as a customer would be any better? When you are exposed to the recruitment process of an organization, you get a sneak peek into their culture. In a lot of ways, Human Resources is one of the main gatekeepers and advocates of the company’s culture. So, if your experience with HR during an advanced stage of recruitment for a high-level position is cold and impersonal, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that approach probably permeates a lot of the culture of the company. Thus, this is where HR unwittingly becomes part of the marketing process. That negative impression that you leave with a candidate may be what prevents your company from making a sale. In some cases, depending on the organizations involved, that sale could be substantial. What HR did during that interaction completely overrode anything that the Sales and Marketing departments did to get the sale.

Going Beyond Recruitment

Now, in this blog post, I kind of picked on HR and how many HR departments are handling their recruitment processes (this is not completely anecdotal as I have experienced it myself in past job searches), however, we all need to realize that no matter our role, we are ambassadors of our organizations and not just our current organization. Many of us remember names. If we had a bad interaction with someone, we tend to remember that. That memory tends to stay with us regardless of which organization that person is currently with. Our interactions with each other matter and can build or destroy credibility. I know that these days, it is common for many to have a short-term outlook on things. Many people aren’t planning on being tied to any one organization for the long-term and don’t think that the impressions that they make during their tenure with their current organizations can have long-term impacts on them. What this short-term thinking totally misses is that most of us have long-term memories and those memories tend to follow specific people as well as organizations. So, the impression or impact you make today can have long-term ramifications. Always be aware of the impressions and perceptions that you leave. When you interact with others, you are a brand ambassador for not only your current organization, but any organization that you work for in the future.

Conclusion

HR has a lot more brand and marketing influence than I think many HR professionals realize. How often does HR’s impact on the organization’s brand perception enter the thoughts of CHROs and recruiters? I would love to hear feedback from HR professionals on this and not just the negative. If you are doing something really forward thinking and progressive to represent your organization as an HR professional, I would love to have you share that here.

Additionally, we need to realize that all of us, in our interactions with others, can impact the brand perception of our organizations – past, present, and future!