In the past, brand marketers were unkindly considered to be the team responsible for putting the company emblem on golf balls and making sure the toast at the breakfast briefing was wholemeal.

I remember a shout around the office from my manager once,

“Everyone listen, I’ve just had a call from ‘logocop’ saying we need to make sure the font we’re using for letters is Calibri Light and not Calibri,”

which of course triggered quips and sniggers.

Highly successful American businessman John Wanamaker once said,

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”

On a positive note, half his money was delivering ROI.. Regardless, money spent on advertising, brand and marketing in the past was difficult to measure.

NOW HOWEVER, EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED AND MARKETING RUNS THE PIPELINE.

The consumer journey has changed

The way we consume information has completely changed and now, we are more likely to undertake 80% of our research for a new house, new car or a holiday online and perhaps only speak to a salesperson once we’ve made our decision.

The same is happening in recruitment. When I started in recruitment in 1999, candidates needed to talk to me to go all the way through the journey.

Today, they can find out about an opportunity through a job alert or LinkedIn post. They can educate themselves about an employer on the careers site and they can more deeply consider at Glassdoor, on YouTube and even on the hiring manager’s Facebook page.

In short, candidates don’t need to talk to recruiters until they have made up their mind.

How this affects recruitment marketing

So, if they are going to self-direct that means that ironically, even though we can find people online more readily than ever, they are much less likely to respond to our messages because they simply don’t need us until they are stuck with a question they can’t find out the answer to online.

Today, how we can respond to the transformation of the candidate journey is to ensure they are engaged with our company throughout their career.

For those not in the market, we can share brilliant content that is going to help them get ahead in their careers. I know from the data within Candidate.ID that people not interested in your employer brand or job descriptions will still want to consume skills and industry insights; especially if they are coming from a hiring manager.

For those tentatively interested in new opportunities, we can give them brilliant career stories, videos and infographics. We can introduce them to our company vision, mission, values, attitude towards the environment.

For those looking at job descriptions, we can additionally and automatically share with them hiring manager videos, peer colleague success stories and more.

We can automate this talent nurture and we can personalise each person’s journey, even at scale.

All of this is marketing. Recruitment marketing. You need a marketing and branding skill set to be able to truly adapt to the transformed candidate journey and generate competitive advantage.

And for recruitment marketers and employer branding professionals, the best thing about all of this is, today we have talent pipeline software which allows you to measure the impact of every single action, every piece of content, every channel.

Recruitment marketing and employer brand today should own your talent pipeline and be made responsible for driving demand.

Written by Adam Gordon, CEO & Co-founder of Candidate.ID