Big Raspberry Noises

“Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.”

William Pollard

Well that’s it, the marketing man (who isn’t my friend anymore) has sucked the joy out of writing my blog.  Apparently (and yes, I am using that word with a lot of teenage attitude), I now have a list of subjects to write about because my blog is part of the monthly marketing campaign and has to reflect a theme.   So, he can drive his own Nissan Micra, I’ve climbed over the barrier and I’m off the motorway.  This blog is my blog & raspberry noises to the marketing man.

Not that I don’t understand or indeed don’t agree that we need a brand and the message needs to be consistent but I do think that the brand should reflect us – no point in having marketing that portrays one message & then you meet the people who work there and question whether you wandered into the right company?  And trust me, my blogs most certainly reflect me (although I never know if that’s a good or bad thing).

The marketing man will tell me it’s because I don’t understand the importance of a brand message and I will tell him that I’ve been selling the benefits of employer brands before he could recognise a milk producing machine. I can talk branding, I can tell him that a client branded advert on a job board is a product that recruiters don’t use nearly enough & are really missing a trick.  I can wax lyrical about how a job advert is to attract a candidate by painting a picture; the candidate should start to imagine themselves working in a different environment, doing the parts of their current job that they enjoy and being rewarded with all the benefits they deserve. After all, my clients want the very best candidates to apply for their jobs (not their competitors jobs who, let’s be honest, aren’t as good as my clients) and the only way we will capture quality is to give them a reason to choose our job over the competition. I understand better than the marketing man that for a recruiter to earn a fee they need candidates to jump through multiple hoops & recruiters need to convince them it’s worth the effort, the vacancy advert is the first stage of that sell.

A client branded advert, with the employers logo emblazoned across it speaks a thousand words and immediately transports the candidate to a different place.  The PwC logo makes candidates think of a very professional environment and a great name on their CV, the Innocent logo conjures up a creative environment where the staff sit on the edge of desks and wear jeans – I don’t imagine people at PwC can wear jeans to work (do they?).  A company with a good brand is immediately trusted and stands out against a list of recruitment agency jobs. So, if recruiters can use the employer brand, they should.

And that’s what I want, I want people to see our brand and immediately know what to expect.  I want it to say we know what we are doing and we are very good at it. We’ll help you as much as we possibly can and if we can’t help we’ll find someone who can. We won’t wrap things up in fluff, we’ll tell you how it is and if that sometimes means we have to tell you you’re wrong (remember, we are experts!!!) then we’ll do it, but in a helpful way. We’ll listen to what our peers tell us to consistently evolve our offering to meet your needs. And we normally do all of it with a bit of humour because we have to sit here 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and that’s a long time to be miserable.

And my blogs already do that Mr Marketing, Know It All, Man so leave me alone! Now, put the kettle on and do something useful, I need to find a new keyboard (someone has punched this one).

Chelle