Listen to this article:
Blogs have been around since the birth of the internet. Initially, it was a way to digitize a personal diary. The accessibility and public nature of blogs assuredly helped guide the social network boom. And now, blogs are being used in a much bigger way: as a recruitment tool.
We’re willing to bet it’s harder to find a company without a blog these days. They are rarely used solely as a place to jot down elongated thoughts and more as a tool to drive travel. It’s relatively universal knowledge that blogs drive SEO traffic. Utilizing a company blog for recruitment, though, is much more involved.
Current Company Blog Tactics
Driving traffic to your site through SEO blog content is a great way to do just that: drive content. A lot of the time, a keyword or phrase is chosen and a blog is created around that. This is by no means a bad approach, but it’s also quite limiting in what you can talk about and potentially muddles what your blog is providing its readers.
Company blogs should reflect the company, asking relevant questions, giving answers, and providing useful content to readers. That’s high-quality SEO company blog content. This is the foundation of turning a company blog into a recruiting tool.
On the contrary, a blog that only seeks to drive traffic and writes minimal content that barely answers a question is not the right method for using a blog to recruit employees. This is a method used often today as a means to fill out a blog section. In fact, this method can drive away traffic and potential employees—the opposite of a recruitment tool.
How a Company Blog Can Recruit Applicants
With a good blog, you can give insight into your company: its culture, values, and employees (current and future). Realizing this power is the key to making a recruiting tool out of a company blog.
Company Culture
Future employees and applicants want to know what your company is like on the inside. Just like in an interview, a good applicant should inquire about company culture. If an application doesn’t fit well within the culture, then they’re most likely not a good fit for the job.
Using a company blog to publish insight into company culture gives readers the opportunity to align their personality with it. The blog humanizes your company, making it relatable and likeable (hopefully).
While readers might be driven to your blog through a Google search, they may enjoy the voice of your content and its value. This could explore your site further, reading more about the company that transforms into applying for a position.
Readers also want insight into how the company treats its employees and encourages growth. Try creating blog posts that answer these questions. The audience might be small, but those are the readers that matter most.
Employee Voice
Giving employees a digital voice through a company blog as a guest writer demonstrates your company’s honesty. Of course, the content should be proofed before published, but readers enjoy hearing from the inside. It’s a testimonial opportunity, and one that furthers the humanity of your company.
Allowing employees to share their experiences on your blog is a much safer outlet than social media rants or Glassdoor reviews (which are both notoriously negative). Readers want to know employee ups and downs and how the company helped them through it. Every employee and employer have issues, it’s the resolution that will recruit the reader.
Company Values
Every post gives insight into company values. It creates an image that sums up what the company stands for. Creating content about what a company believes in develops a personality for the company, adding value and interest. When this content aligns with candidate or reader aspirations, it’s a surefire way to turn your company blog into a recruitment tool.
This is where many company blogs falter. There may be hundreds of posts about a topic that is barely relevant to company practices, beliefs, goals, or employees. This type of content eliminates value and the potential for your blog to be a recruitment tool along with it.
Post about current events, how your company gives back to the community, and what you’re doing to improve your products. When you sound like a company that’s in business for more than just making a quick profit, you’ll attract recruits.
Use a Company Blog to Publish Job Openings Outright
There are two ways a company blog can recruit employees through job opening publications. The first is directly: publish the position. The second is indirectly: publish content that links to the position.
Direct Job Opening Posts
There are several online job boards that will surely grant your open position some well-deserved attention. But that job post is just one in a sea of endless job posts. There’s nothing that makes it stand out from the rest until it’s opened. There’s nothing that informs the reader about the company posting it. This is where a company blog can be used as a powerful recruitment tool: in-depth job opening posts.
First, if your company blog sees regular visitors, then it’s likely some of them are already interested in working for you. Give them the opportunity with a full post about the opened position where you know they’ll read it.
Second, you can go into much more detail about the job opening when using a blog. You can even do it in your own voice, adhering to your company’s blog posting standards and not those set by third-party job boards. Going into detail about the position weeds out unqualified candidates and increases the chances of finding the perfect fit.
Indirect Job Opening Posts
A great way to weed out unqualified candidates right away is by publishing a blog post about a specific topic that relates to the opened position, then linking to that position within the content.
For example, let’s say you have an opening for a WordPress engineer. You can publish a company blog post titled something like “A Peek Behind the Curtain: XYZ Company’s WordPress Backbone”. A title like this will likely only attract readers interested in WordPress who likely have some level of experience. Within the text, you can write a blurb that links out to the application for said job.
Company Blogs as a Recruitment Tool is the Future of the Platform
Blogs have seen a lot of ups and downs over the past few decades, but it seems this is the perfect niche for the platform. Using a company blog as a recruitment tool solidifies company values, gives voice to employees and attracts the readers that align best.
Start optimizing your company blog with this in mind today and see the positive change it will bring in the near future.