This is a guest post from our Blog Award sponsors Hireserve with a great list of 5 things your recruitment blog can’t do without (as I quickly run off to check our own blog…)
Last year we wrote about how a careers blog can be an effective tool to engage with candidates.
But without some solid work behind the scenes, your blog might stumble at the first hurdle. Here are the 5 things your blog really needs to succeed.
A content plan
If you’ve decided to start a careers blog, you must have a purpose behind it. It’s likely your objectives might be to encourage more applicants, engage potential candidates and/or enhance your employer brand. To achieve these outcomes, you’ll need a plan in place.
You probably have a range of ‘stories’ to tell and different messages that you want to communicate to candidates. Start by grouping all of these aspects together into content topics. For example, you might want to promote that you’re a flexible employer, encourage candidates to explore your apprenticeship scheme and share some fun content based around your office dog. Plan relevant blog posts across the month to ensure you have a mix of different topics and that each post supports a particular role, recruitment campaign or business objective.
A content plan also helps ensure your blog posts get written! We’re all busy, and something that is not viewed as business critical can easily fall of the list. Clearly mark when each post needs to be published (if you’re starting out, perhaps try for one a month) and note down who is responsible for writing it.
A story behind your images
There are lots of stats out there about how our brains process visuals much quicker than words, so it’s important to include engaging and relevant images with each of your blog posts.
However, as Nahid Burke, Engagement & Marketing Lead at GDS and part of the team behind the award-winning Digital People blog, tells us, it goes deeper than just capturing candidates’ attention:
“A major emphasis for the [Digital People] blog is to ensure the visuals tell stories just as much as the words do.
Each visual across the blog is a window into the workplace. We use them to get messages across to our audience beyond a specific topic or story. For Digital People, it’s about busting outdated myths on working in government; altering perceptions and inviting the readers in to see what it’s like for themselves.”
Nahid and her team only use photos of ‘real’ team members, and the messages associated with each image – such as diversity, gender equality, career progression and an open work space – are considered carefully.
If you can, try to avoid using cheesy stock photos on your own recruitment blog; those gleaming white smiles are fooling nobody! Think too about what impact the images you use will have on candidates and whether they reflect your values and working culture.
A diverse range of voices
If you want to attract a diverse pool of candidates to apply for roles with you, it’s important you promote different voices on your blog.
If not everyone in your team has up to scratch writing skills, consider other ways to feature your people. Maybe you can share Q&As or interviews, or what about video content? ‘A day in the life of…’ video can offer candidates an illuminating insight into the day-to-day elements of particular roles and help manage their expectations of your workplace.
Using your content plan can help you build in time to schedule interviews with or guest blogs from your team members.
Accessible links/alt image text/font sizes/options
We should all know the importance of an accessible and inclusive recruitment process. Your recruitment blog should also be accessible to all potential candidates reading it.
There’s actually a very useful blog post about ensuring your content is accessible on the GDS Digital Engagement blog, which goes into a lot of detail.
A distribution channel
So you’ve got a sterling content plan (possibly colour co-ordinated), and a clear idea of what you want to communicate through your blog post imagery. You’ve also got a number of eager team members ready to contribute to your blog and the knowledge and tools to deliver accessible posts.
There’s just one, small thing. Who’s going to read your posts?
It’s likely your recruitment blog will sit within your careers pages, so potential candidates may stumble upon it. But why not use it as a candidate attraction tool too? Share your blog posts across your social media channels to pique interest and compel followers to have a read.
Think about where else you could share your blog posts to encourage more people to read them. Perhaps your existing team members can share to their personal networks if there’s a story that is particularly relevant to them. Or how about including some of your blog posts in an external company newsletter?
Blogs can show the human side of organisations
And they can offer a personable, multi-faceted view that you simply can’t get from careers pages or corporate websites.
As long as your blog is supported by these behind-the-scenes plans, processes and channels, it should be a really valuable asset to aid your candidate attraction and engagement.
Hireserve creates applicant tracking recruitment software with a human touch and is passionate about helping organisations enhance their candidate experience and engagement. Hireserve sponsored the ‘Recruitment Department/In-house Recruitment Blogger’ category at the UK Recruitment Blog of the Year Awards 2016.
