3 Overlooked Parallels Between HR and Marketing

To succeed in today’s tight labor market, HR professionals borrow ideas like candidate personas and branding strategies from the marketing playbook. But there are other connections across the HR and marketing departments, including some that are easy to forget. Let’s explore three often overlooked challenges and priorities that both marketers and HR professionals share:

1. Contending with Third-party Opinions and Reviews

Marketers and HR professionals must contend with third-party review sites. The mission is to give employees and consumers plenty of reasons to deliver glowing reviews and no cause to fire off a zero-star rant or complaint. After skimming just a few bad reviews on Glassdoor or Amazon, candidates and consumers have no problem turning their attention elsewhere. If your employer brand, which is really your company’s reputation, is tainted with negative feedback, potential candidates will be wary of engaging. But companies do have an outlet to generate positive and authentic third-party feedback. Retail brands use influencer marketing. This involves sponsored tastemakers speaking authentically about their experiences with certain products. Consumers know there’s a bias here, but place a high value on these trusted influencers’ opinions. Harvard Business Review has suggested that hiring managers embrace influencer marketing in their recruiting efforts. This can be as simple as using employee-generated content to attract and impress new candidates.

2. Aligning Company Values with Consumer/Candidate Values

Today’s candidates and consumers are well aware of the positive or negative impact that business activities have on the environment and society. When given the chance, they are more likely to partner with companies who form decisions based on values that match up with their own. A 2019 Deloitte report found that “societal impact and ethics are the most common reasons why millennials change their relationships with businesses.” Gen Z and millennial consumers are inclined to initiate or deepen a relationship with a company after witnessing:

• Products or services that positively impact society or the environment (42%).
• The company’s ethical behavior (36%).
• An advertising campaign that highlights ethical or socially responsible practices (28%).
• Positive behaviors or comments from a single company leader (21%).

In a moment when candidates are consumers and jobs are commodities, these attitudes are held by Gen Z and millennial applicants and employees as well. Those who observe corporate social responsibility (CSR) in action, through recruitment marketing initiatives and HR messaging, may be more inclined to enter and sustain an employee-employer relationship.

3. Remaining Human While Relying on Automation Tools

Savvy HR and marketing specialists embrace automation tools to facilitate consumer/candidate profiles and communications. Similar to how marketers use customer relationship management (CRM) software and marketing automation tools, HR professionals have applicant tracking systems. An ATS can help users rapidly filter through hundreds of applications and fire off automated emails to schedule interviews and encourage candidate engagement. However, HR and marketing must remember the importance of maintaining a human touch in this automated environment. candidates and consumers like to be treated as people (not data points) by humans (not robots). Marketers and HR professionals can embrace storytelling, video content, personalized communications and even a touch of levity to keep communications real. From the get-go, this helps establish a positive candidate experience that can evolve into a positive employee experience.

Takeaways

Keeping recruitment marketing best practices in mind, hiring managers and HR professionals and marketers share similar challenges. Both must balance:

• Third-party reviews and user-generated opinions.
• Company and consumer/candidate value systems.
• Automation and human authenticity.

Request a free demo of JazzHR to see how our platform enables HR teams to redirect their attention to these top priorities.