Why should recruiters blog?

As a recruiter, blogging is a great tool to organically grow your network and win trust for your employer brand. Blogs are like show-cases for your organization's core values, culture, people stories, job opportunities, achievements, ambitions and whatnot.

And of course, not every recruiter is doing it which means you have an edge!

The benefits of blogging in the recruiting world

1) Amplifies the reach of your employer brand - Through blogs you can share real stories of the culture your company stands for, the values your leaders believe in, the vision your employees strive towards and everything else that will strike a chord with your prospective candidates. It’s a simple and honest way to share details about your organization and attract the people who are cut out for jobs with you.
 

2) Make way for passive candidates to find you - If your content is interesting and enriching, people will naturally like and share it over different platforms getting the most unlikely people to see it - your passive candidates! Unlike job ads, well-written blogs are evergreen, any one may stumble on it though a search on Google anytime and be piqued to find out more about you and who knows maybe even apply to one of your jobs.
 

3) Disciplines you to read, research and catch up on trends in the industry - In the process of writing, you will do your homework on the latest fads and trends in the recruiting industry every now and then. This gives you a chance to ride the wave every once in a while and stay updates with the latest tech and tools.
 

4) Organically builds a reliable network of candidates or professionals - Over  time, you will build a thriving network of professionals who value your content and hence your brand. When the time is right, and opportunities are ripe, you can invite them to pursue a career with you.

5) Serves as a platform to bring out the work life or leadership stories buried in your organization - You don’t have to be the only one or only team writing. Every great  organization has thousands of stories woven into their everyday life - what their engineer achieved, how one of their leaders champions their culture, how someone saved the day for a customer and so on. Lean in. Listen. Get your people to write about them.

Setting up your first recruitment blog in 4 steps

Define the goal
Like they say, a well-defined goal is half achieved. You can have one or more goals - these should be your core motivators for recruitment blogging. Here are some examples:

  • To build awareness for your employer brand
  • To gain visibility for your vacant job positions
  • To build a professional network and drive referrals

Define your audience 

Who are you going to write for? - This question will help you answer the next 100 questions that would arise while setting up your recruitment blog. For example, What’s their current role? What does their day look like? What would their reading interests be? What should be your choice of tone while writing? What do their professional goals look like? What social platforms do they use? 

Define a content strategy
The content strategy is everything you do between what you're going to write and how you are going to get your audience to read it.

  • What are subjects you are going to talk about?
  • What does your content creation process look like?
  • How often do you plan to publish?
  • What would be your distribution channels? 
  • Are you going to use curated content or only original content?

Define what you will track

What would you define as the success of your blogs? Likes? comments? Shares? Job Applications? Blog subscribers? What's that success indicator for you? Once you know it, decide how you are going to track it - tools and setup.

You can analyse your blogs based on topic categories, authors, time of publishing and so many other criteria. Over a period of time, you can adapt what works in your favor as your best practices.