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The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing: Emma Freivogel

by Julia Fras | Apr 21, 2023 | The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing

Being an inclusive recruiter is easy to say but much harder to prove. It’s James Whitelock’s pleasure this week to welcome Emma Freivogel founder and MD at Radical Recruit. Emma has made it her mission to get disadvantaged jobseekers back into work. Emma talks us through the ethos of Radical Recruit, some of her successes and the future of Radical Recruit.

Episode Transcript:

00:00.00

ThinkinCircles

Welcome back, everybody to the marketing rules podcast and today I’m joined by Emma from Radical Recruit. Emma is an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast I think we’ve been trying to get you on for probably something like six months but sometimes you’ve had to cancel sometimes I’ve had to cancel. But finally, we’re here, face to face sitting down and recording for everybody listening today Emma it would be great if you can tell them a little bit about kind of rat a recruit. There’s one of the reasons why I wanted you on because you’re a little bit different. Everybody else who’s kind of working out there the way your business is set up the way it works kind of who. Who you work with is quite unique and that’s what kind of I think our audience are going to find fascinating. So yes, if you could just kind of tell us a little bit about radical group first.

00:43.40

Emma Freivogel

Yeah, sure. Well thanks for having me I think probably the delay in recording this was mostly my fault well appreciate your patience, okay so to set the scene I have worked in the h and services sector for like 15 years and throughout my tenure in in the charity sector I was responsible for managing a whole load of return to work ready for work jobs brokerage type services for what I call the underdogs of society and in retrospect I now know that those were.

01:18.19

Emma Freivogel

Watered down crappy versions of what people who experience disadvantage need to get ready for and enter the labour market as well as progress in their chosen careers. before I found it. Radical. I worked for a grassroots organization who supported women and women coming from the criminal justice system as well as women who had been in the care system to , get jobs reintegrate back into the community re-establish themselves in in the roles that they had before prison and in theory does not reoffend and throughout my 2 years in that role I became acutely aware of sort of the failings of the third sector in providing those types of support.

02:12.43

Emma Freivogel

And I believe that I could do it better. So radical was born in 2019 October ironically only a couple of months before the pandemic completely halted most recruitment and at that stage, I didn’t really know a great deal about recruitment. I didn’t really have a lot of sorts of business savvy. I knew that to do this work better. We needed to operate like a commercial recruitment consultancy does normally and I guess that was sort of them.

02:50.53

Emma Freivogel

The model that that shaped radical in the beginning. So, I sort of set out to work with 3 constituencies ex-offenders care labours and homeless folk because they tend to be the same people at different points in their life journey and what I really wanted to do was sort of agitate that cycle then. The pandemic sort of happened and those who were closest to the bread line and, not represented the labour market were adversely and disproportionately impacted by the plague. Brexit happened and there were all these amazing opportunities because employers couldn’t find talent, skilled or just labour generally and of course George Floyd’s murder and the world’s sort of racial equity awakening, which caused them to think about diversity. More seriously? and turn their sort of rhetoric diversity rhetoric into meaningful action and often that was through recruiting people who were marginalized because of their difference if you like so being the typical founder. Love shiny new things. Really enjoy the opportunity to try fail iterate. Try again, sort of grabbed onto lots of different opportunities. and broadened our reach to anyone with a protector characteristic under the law, and I use that term loosely in the context of getting into the labour market because most people don’t enjoy the projections they need and those with sort of adverse usually adverse life experiences who make it tricky which make it tricky to. Get into the labour market in the first place or sort of return after a period of absence. So, I’m talking about ex-offenders care levers people who have, survived domestic violence, and abuse modern day slaves really anyone who has a barrier to work so 3 years on we have made 50,020 faces so I’m not sure what the county is this week, and we worked with some amazing brands like warner media and sage and these WPP as well as sort of small and medium enterprise. And placed radicals from lots of different backgrounds into all sorts of jobs, everything from sort of marketing managers to accountants to civil enforcement officers, you name it. We’ve probably done it as well as a recruitment piece. We’ve also done a whole load of learning over the last three years and, come to the realization that there’s loads of people who are what we call? radical, who will allow us to take them on a journey from a to be a being possibly. Not sure what they’re want wanting to do for a career or not sure what they’re good at or how their sort of skills transfer from life to work to B which is sort of radical-ready and, in a position where they can navigate through a competitive recruitment process, so that’s not so much. I think probably the hardest. Part of the work we do is with employers to get them to the point where they’re, attracting engaging with recruiting on boarding and supporting radical people to flourish so around the recruitment Piece. We’ve developed a really.

06:25.88

ThinkinCircles

Okay.

06:33.81

Emma Freivogel

If you like commercial offering to get our clients radical-ready and that might be through supporting with infrastructure like policy and process. It could be helping them to position their brand as a sort of diverse diversity employer of Choice. It could be helping them to shift their cultural dial and get buy-in from those who are doing the recruiting, it could be helping them to sort of reimagine their assessment or interview tools. So that. they’re assessing people fairly all sorts of things really to ensure that when we put a radical into an organization, they will succeed, I guess.

07:21.97

ThinkinCircles

Yeah, yeah, so to find your kind of radicals as you find it in the first place are you doing a lot of kind of outreach in in, in in in prisons and in kind of how you do kind of go out because that for me feels like the kind of difficult bit to kind of get them. in the traditional sense. The candidates to know who you are to know that a business like yours exists to help people in those situations.

07:47.75

Emma Freivogel

Yeah, sure, so we do lots of sort of engagement activities on behalf of our clients. We have a database of radicals that have gone through our employability program and are endorsed for recruitment. So, we have that database like any other recruiter would where we can’t fill a vacancy through that database, we will design a marketing campaign that talks to and really engages with the communities that the client wants to connect with that aren’t finding through their traditional search methods, we also have an amazing network of what we call inclusion partners so they’re organizations who deliver different types of services to radical people. So, for example, housing or, it might be. Employability provision. It could be drug and alcohol counselling and all sorts of things, and what we do is we take our clients vacancies to our inclusion partners and ask them to market to the radical people that they’re supporting. We have like. I mean we’ve got 800 job centres on our on our book but sort of network. We’ve got probation services prisons, we have churches, people where places where radical people congregate, and we have connections into those communities really what we do is we use our brand which is trusted amongst radical people to endorse the clients that we’re working with so that radical people feel like if they do apply their application will be taken seriously and that they will be participating in a fair and equitable process. To ensure that they sort of have the same opportunities to win the job on merit.

09:37.12

ThinkinCircles

Yeah, yeah, given the respect that they’re due I guess right? That’s what kind of, but they might have kind of missed out on through other through other means and then from the flip side, from the client side, the clients that are using you.

09:53.53

ThinkinCircles

Being cynical are they doing it because they are now this this the discussion around equity and diversity is something that they are trying to kind of participate in truly and do want to find. Some great candidates and great radicals who can work with him that they just might not be able to kind of have any interaction with previously or is there a kind of a mixture of well they’ve kind of feel that they should be doing this for kind of CSR reasons and things like that and I know that’s kind of? So yeah, you might have both I mean but you kind of Maybe you choose who you want to work with how does that kind of process work.

10:32.27

Emma Freivogel

Yeah, good question. Sorry I’m not sure whether you can hear that background noises a helicopter flying over no okay.

10:36.31

ThinkinCircles

So, it’s he’s worth.

10:44.40

Emma Freivogel

We work with any organisation who wants to turn their diversity commitment into meaningful action by recruiting radical people to work with us all our clients are sort of vetted quite thoroughly. To ensure that the motivation is pure, and they are willing to do the work that would enable them to attract engage with recruit retain radical talent often clients come to us wanting a band-aid solution. And, 3 years on, we’re able to walk away from that sort of business, most clients I think come with sort of genuine authentic commitments but perhaps don’t understand and fully empathize with the challenges. Ah, radical people face when it comes to entering the labour market so to give you an obvious example one in 7 people are neuro divergent in the community and. To sort of attract neuro divergent people and ensure a process from application interview on boarding is accessible a huge amount of work needs to be done to really understand what the barriers are for this this group of people so it could be that. someone is dyslexic for example and your usual, advertising copy your marketing copy your recruitment copy isn’t accessible because it’s on your website. It’s written in black font on a white background and there’s no accessibility plugin. There are loads of word pollution on the page so for a dyslexic person to read that job ad and then hit the apply button and complete the potentially inaccessible application form, that’s a real barrier. Without doing the work to understand exactly what the challenges are employers are really these people are self-selecting out of the process because it’s just not accessible, so we do a lot of work to look at end-to-end processes through specific lenses.

13:04.39

ThinkinCircles

Yeah.

13:13.71

Emma Freivogel

Disability being a frequent 1 We’ve got. There’s loads and loads of sort of untapped pools of talent that organizations just not thinking about you’ve got 11,000,000 people with a conviction but sorry, many organizations have that box. It says do you have a conviction. And so someone with a conviction having been discarded on the talent strap scrap heap over and over and over again is going to read that and be like I’m not going to tick that box because I know I’m not going to get a chance to apply I won’t bother so we looked at like we look at these processes through all of these different lenses and help our clients to really reimagine how they would usually , talk to these pools of talent. , attract them get them to apply for the job and interview them.

14:01.65

ThinkinCircles

So, kind of part of your kind of business and role now is that education and consultancy piece for you for your clients.

14:08.71

Emma Freivogel

It’s the biggest part of what we do honestly and the hardness part because I mean there’s a piece around sort of shifting attitudes and challenging popular perceptions of radical people I mean largely speaking. Our people are viewed through a lens of mistrust. They’re ass ed to not have the skills, or the motivation required to apply for a job and sustain employment, and for decades often centuries depending on how old the company is they’ve not been considered viable candidates. So that’s like a big piece. There’s a piece around sort of de-biasing processes. And making processes and tools accessible. There’s a bit around sort of helping organizations to understand their risk appetite. there’s a whole load of misplaced fear around litigation and various other things, when it comes to hiring people with disabilities and especially people with convictions, and then that that piece around. Okay if you hire someone who’s radical. What support do they need that might be different to your sort of Bog-Standard average mainstream candidate so thinking about sort of their longer-term requirements. So, we support post placement as well.

15:26.25

ThinkinCircles

With regards to the kind of clients are they receptive or there is a pushback, or I mean I know you said you kind of self-select some of these kinds of businesses now. But it’s interesting to kind of. the kind of people that your kind of dealing with is it kind of is it mainly the recruiters a talent acquisition In-house. Is it who are those kinds of people that your kind of now having these kinds of discussions with within these businesses.

15:54.33

Emma Freivogel

Yeah, I mean it’s I’m not sure I’ve got the answer to that question I think it’s mostly sort of at HRD level in-house.

16:03.45

ThinkinCircles

And suppose I’m trying to see well where it’s kind of driven from within these businesses that’s and that’s the kind of question. Really, I mean if it’s if it’s something that for the for the people in the in the that’s listening. the In-house recruiters and things that is that driven by Them. Should it be driven by them. Is it driven kind of high above. where in organizations because you sent you water for some big organizations and it would be kind of it’s just interesting to know where the where the drivers are for this that kind of that bring you in, I mean.

16:30.74

Emma Freivogel

Yeah, I think I mean it’s different for every client, if I’m honest, I would say for our sort of bigger corporate clients. Mostly it’s sort of hr teams who are coming to us. but we can knock on the diversity door as well or door. I think for this the work that we do for us to really add value people from all parts of the business need to be involved and I think what happens is board set diversity targets and then that responsibility is delegated to HR or diversity whoever the diversity lead is and perhaps they’re not, appropriately resourced, or qualified to do the work. Or perhaps there’s no budget to bring in sort of consultants like us to help do the work. they haven’t thought about sort of the long-term requirements around capacity building. The people who would be doing the hiring. it might be that they haven’t considered their policy position on sort of X Y and Z that would impact. Their ability to work with us so executive sponsorship and accountability is important I’m not convinced that most of our clients have that and that’s a conversation we often end up having with our clients, they know what they want to do. They don’t appreciate often the work that’s involved and the cost associated with that work and the fact that it takes time it’s a I mean it’s very cliche me saying this but it’s a journey you can’t achieve diversity without having equity of opportunity and when you’re bringing diverse people in to retain those people you must create places of work where they feel like they belong and they’re included so the recruitment piece is a tiny piece of work and there’s , there’s much bigger. Sort of structural issues that often we need to tackle with our clients as Well, but the problem is we work with Teeny tiny start-ups all the way to big matrix organizations. So back to your question I’m not entirely sure that any type of person within an organization is coming to us saying can you help it really depends on the business.

19:03.47

ThinkinCircles

Yeah, and from some of the kind of previous conversations we had. There are some kind of some interesting updates at radical kind of coming in in the future I understand there’s kind of different. you, your kind of expanding slightly. Why didn’t you kind of take us through what the kind of future holds.

19:19.40

Emma Freivogel

Yeah, I’m excited because I mean I’ve known I’d needed to do this for about 2 years but typical founder your kind of like juggling millions of balls and trying to keep the doors open throughout arguably the most challenging sort of economic and political environment. Ah, but I’ve managed to convince my 2 right-hand h ans. Kirsty and Holly to co-find a second radical brand, and we will divide the existing entity into 2 and relaunch Radical Recruit as a charity. That will support businesses to pipeline for early careers and those entry levels sort of roles in several different sectors from retail to construction to catering and those sorts of opportunities. Ah, great for radicals who are furthers from the labour market who will go through a really, intensive program support to get them to the point where we feel, and they feel that they have the tools and the confidence to navigate through a competitive recruitment process and get their first job. Potentially. Or a job that would enable them to sort of return into the labour market after a period of absence, be radical the second brand will be a or is an unapologetically commercial entity and it will hopefully make loads of money. So that we can fund the charity the work of the charity. It’s 1 thing that I don’t want to continue doing is rely on grants and government funding to do this important work with super radicals. So that entity will offer all our training all our consultancy. Things like Tim away days and learning events and, recruitment services for professional people centric disciplines mostly I say that we’ve placed loads of accountants as well. I’m not sure you call them people centric disciplines. But yeah, Roles within professional services mostly in the in the corporate world. Yeah.

21:33.39

ThinkinCircles

Okay, I mean that sounds amazing, right? It sounds like there’s a lot kind of happening over kind of the rest of this year Emma it’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you today I hope everyone has kind of has been as enjoyed it as much as I’ve listening to kind of what you guys are doing over there. And we will obviously include all your details in the show notes if anybody wants to know more, they can kind of reach out and contact you directly? I’m sure once kind of in a few years’ time when things have even caught even bigger in a six. It’s even slightly said it’ this kind of huge corporate entity with all kinds of charities and things. We’ll have you back on to kind of discuss that but Emma for now. Thank you very much.

22:05.80

Emma Freivogel

I would welcome that, and thank you very much for having me, mate.

Connect with Emma here.

Support for this podcast comes from Shazamme.

Find all the latest podcast episodes here and on all other podcast platforms!

Listen to James’ episode here.

Click PLAY to listen to the podcast episode:

Watch the interview:

The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing: James Ellis

by Julia Fras | Mar 16, 2023 | The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing

Whether you’re a global brand or a start-up, getting potential employees to want to work for you is always a challenge. Enabling them to understand what you stand for and why they should work for you than a competitor has become more down to your employer branding.

Joining James Whitelock this week is an employer branding expert and soon-to-be author, James Ellis. Ellis helps us define what employer branding is and its role in a business. Does it sit in marketing, or HR, or is it completely separate? He also shares some examples of how to practically start on your employer branding journey

Episode Transcript:

00:00.29

ThinkinCircles

Welcome back everybody to the marketing rules podcast and it’s my pleasure to be Jane by James Ellis self-confessed employ branding nerd who so we’ve just kind of discussed oh you know? and apparently there is a story behind that which I am looking for here James Pleasure Podcast

00:12.51

James Ellis

Um, yeah, well I mean it’s great to be here. It’s not much of a story. It’s not filled with drama and it’s not that kind of story. Um, no I realized a couple years ago that if you googled employer Brander, I was really appearing a lot in the search results. And I’ve just kind of said. Okay I guess that must be it and it’s to the it’s to the point now where if you just typing employer brand nerd without any quotes. It will be 5, 6, or 7 of the first page results is me but if you use quotes, I own the first 7 or 8 pages. It’s just it’s just wall to wall me. So, if it’s one of those things where you know you.

00:45.15

ThinkinCircles

Ah.

00:48.71

James Ellis

You brand yourself as you are right? You don’t see you don’t say ah this guy he is clearly the most attractive employer brander. No, that’s not going to play people going to see that and saying you know, maybe not That’s not how you want to go player Brand Nerd I can see that I can see how that works So that’s you know you lean into what your strengths.

01:05.78

ThinkinCircles

Um, it sounds very much like we’re getting onto personal branding which is an entirely another different podcast.

01:06.40

James Ellis

What they’re very, they’re very not well separated. There’s not a lot of daylight between them. Yeah.

01:15.61

ThinkinCircles

No, I can I yeah, it’s way for thin between the 2 Um, but it’s great. It’s great to have you on board and um and so tell us a bit about your background James tell us how you kind of got into employ branding and then what kind of led up to that.

01:26.10

James Ellis

Yeah, so I was ah a digital strategist for lack of a better term I was I was adrift for a very long time I was always the most digital person on the marketing team or the most marketing person on the digital team. So, which boils down to I made websites I made Twitter accounts right? I did a lot of stuff, and this is way back in the. Early two thousand s mid 2000 s where I was like ooh, he made a Twitter account. That’s a full-time job and now you’re laughing because it’s what I do those with my elbows that’s easy to do pay eight bucks a law does it for me anyway, um, yeah, and we’ve already descended into a long. So, I did that for a long time I did that kind of stuff for all sorts of different companies, and I realized that the kind of marketing I did was straightforward. It’s understood who your audience is and understand what they care about understand how your product of service or whatever it is connects to that and put it in front of them and if you can repeat it a couple of times you know more power to you.

02:14.97

ThinkinCircles

02:18.93

James Ellis

And it’s ah so it’s a straightforward process. It’s not rocket science the way the more I learn about rocket science even rocket science that much about rocket science. Um, you know the more you watch Tv the more you learn I got poached by a big recruiting marketing firm T&P at the time now. And they said you know a lot about digital marketing, and I said, “Well, thank you, thank you very much.” They said, “And you are a bit of a job hoper…” I went, “Okay, that’s fair.” And, they said, “Yeah, so the fact that you’re a job popper means you’ve probably been to a lot of job. You know a lot of recruiters and you’ve been through this process.” So, what you’re saying is that job hopping is a skill.

02:54.69

James Ellis

Why has no one told me this before they had no idea that there was experience in job hopping and they said for what we do digital strategy and recruitment marketing and recruiting Glu Together. That’s what we’re looking for and that’s you I said OKAY, let’s do that and so I started. Being a digital strategist there and it was very quick that I realized that they had this weird team, and this is getting real inside baseball ah which was just at the time was just called the social media team and I went no. That’s it, you’ve got interns driving. You’ve got kids who are just straight out of school doing it. They there’s not getting a lot of leadership. They’re not getting a lot of guidance.

03:19.10

ThinkinCircles

Um.

03:29.58

James Ellis

I’ve done content marketing for years. Let me help you do that team and over the course of time you know they let me take it over we changed the offering but what it was we called it inbound marketing at the time. But what I realized in hindsight was that it was employer brand activation I was driving employer brand activation and that. Kind of penny drop moment for me was like wow okay I get what this is, and it was like all my experience of doing weird marketing for every sort of type of company and every sort of type of marketing in the world came to bear to employer branding I went. There’s so much to do here. There’s so much interesting work here and this is a place where marketing hasn’t predefined the rules. But you go to get your MBA. You’re going to get your b you say okay use the 4 P’s or you know depending on the year. Maybe it’s 5 p’s now and everybody has a baseline understanding of what marketing is and that you go to employer brand conference, and no one seems to have as it’s so scattershot now it’s. Ah, you know that sounds kind of pejorative that sounds like I’m making fun of them I’m not employer branders come from recruiting they come from university recruiting they come from coms they come from social they come from marketing. They have such different backgrounds and they’re all like I imagine it’s like a un situation where they’re all trying to talk to each other but they’re using. Different languages and different ways of referencing it’s taking forever for us to kind of move forward because there’s that lack of kind of framework and thought so I came from you know a marketing side that doesn’t make me better at this. It just makes me understand how marketing thinks and talks and work. So that’s how it is and since then I’ve done.

04:55.11

ThinkinCircles

04:58.78

James Ellis

Agency working consulting work and in-housework and all the stuff I love employer branding and that’s that that is my kind of spiel that is my shtick for employer where I came from.

05:06.39

ThinkinCircles

Um, this is why we’re goanna get on well James because I think we’ve got quite a similar background in all honesty. Um, and but this this podcast isn’t all about me sometimes I guess word in h ways as well. I’m going to share a little story with you share a little story with you about digital strategy. Um, and.

05:18.39

James Ellis

Well, it’s good to hear. Um.

05:24.41

ThinkinCircles

You know and a similar trajectory to yours. Ah, the kind of ah mid-2000s I was in the process of ah applying her new job and went and got this new job and they um and previously and my previous surprise we’d wed had some jokes around ‘what would you know’ if you had a choice. What would you call yourself. You know what the kind was of like, and it was like.

05:27.85

James Ellis

We going to step on the ground here. Scale.

05:42.99

ThinkinCircles

I Just think of something really kind of ridiculous I went ah you know and know digital strategy manager or something ridiculous like that you know anyway I got this new job, and the question was well. You know this is a new role wo the position in this company Would you want to be called um I’ll go for digital Strategy manager.

05:47.15

James Ellis

Ah, yeah.

06:00.10

ThinkinCircles

And yeah, so um I was kind of probably on a very similar you’ve to you. Yeah, James obviously I went off into the marketing route or a recruitment marketing route and you’ve gone in the employ brand route similar disciplines. Um, that occasionally kind of ah occasionally crossover um like streams from ghostbusters. Basically.

06:09.20

James Ellis

Well, yes.

06:16.50

James Ellis

Yes, well whipped it to more positive effect.

06:19.37

ThinkinCircles

Um, ah, but yeah, so I take what you yeah exactly? Um, but it’s interesting. You kind of said you know you had all these people in that in that term in that kind of group and no one could really define employer branding, right? So have we moved on from that and is there a definite definition now from employer branding is.

06:38.49

James Ellis

Um, that that would be easier wouldn’t it. No, I think I won’t say there’s an official because who exactly would bless and vet an official like there’s no pope of employer brand, I mean Richard mostly maybe Simon Bur Steer the life. So maybe he could do it, but I don’t know that there’s really ah a governing body per se.

06:38.92

ThinkinCircles

Or what it isn’t as well which may be easier to answer if.

06:56.50

James Ellis

What I’m seeing is that in general there is a centralization I used to joke that you know for years if you asked 10 employer branders. How to define employer branding. You’re going to get 12 answers now. It’s okay, it’s gotten tighter. It is this idea that it’s an individual perception of how people see your company and think of what it must be like to work there.

06:57.90

ThinkinCircles

Um, agree.

07:15.19

James Ellis

Based on all sorts of previous touch points and experiences and that seems simple and then you start unpacking and you go oh wow, there’s depths here I mean there’s this this rabbit hole goes way down. You know this idea of, and individual perception means I like Nike you hate Nike we’re both right? How is that possible. I like this company you hate this company. They have individual perceptions and so as an employer brand owner or manager or director or whatever I am I’ve got to not just say this is the brand I must influence individuals.

07:34.21

ThinkinCircles

Um.

07:46.58

James Ellis

And those individuals have very different. Not only perceptions but their perceptions come from very honest places, right? You call customer service and customer service was bad to you and you no longer like that company valid you the CEO is in the news for doing something great now you like that company valid but all that touch points impact how you perceive the company.

08:05.75

ThinkinCircles

Um.

08:06.56

James Ellis

And that includes recruiters and recruiting if you got a really spammy recruiter who just says I happened to cross your profile on LinkedIn and was really impressed by your experience or whatever that you know that spiel is you’re like okay, spam or whatever they don’t know me, but I’ve had great recruiting experiences where they seem to get what I’m doing. They understand how what I do leads to help them right? That’s ah, that’s a recruiter I want to keep in my you know in my connections and say I like what they’re doing those 2 interactions dramatically impacted my sense of that brand so that’s the definition. The question is um, what I like to argue with is that what is it for.

08:40.24

ThinkinCircles

Well, that was give you my next question James right was what’s the goal of this right? You know I mean what is it, you’re trying to do because um you know you can brand a company to influence people to you know to buy your services to buy your product with employer branding.

08:40.26

James Ellis

Like this idea that employer branding is yeah.

08:56.29

ThinkinCircles

You mean you don’t want everybody to work for your business is your business. You want You know you want the people you want to work for your business, right? Um, that that’s how I would you know that’s that would be me to kind of kind of start. But you know you know what the point is. What is the point.

09:00.50

James Ellis

Exactly it’s a game.

09:10.94

James Ellis

Um, yeah, I mean there is a I mean employer brand really works in this level of quality. Not quantity and when I say that most marketers get mad at me real fast because they think I’m suggesting that their work isn’t quality I’m like no, no, you have qualified leads, and you have you have a threshold. But if I gave you a thousand qualified leads and you converted everyone to sales. Enjoy your bonus check. Right? Enjoy the employee the month picture on the wall there if you’re a recruiter you get a thousand qualified leads and you offer them all a job, you’re getting fired That’s not how it works right? It’s just a different way of being and I and I like that I think that’s interesting because that fundamental change in how marketing thinks.

09:34.70

ThinkinCircles

Um, yeah.

09:47.90

James Ellis

Allows us to say okay, we can steal tools and ideas and thinking from marketing. But we must rethink them in this moment of quality over quantity and I think that leads to this idea that the purpose of employer brand what it’s trying to do. Is create this amazing almost alchemical. You know, alchemical kind of like magical moment of it’s an intersection between the company the job and the person that there is a perfect match that lives in that Venn diagram smack tab in the middle. And that is what employer brand is trying to make happen every single time is that possible. Of course, not is it being it striving for that. It should my bigger beef with the industry is that it treats employer brand like just drive applicants. It’s top of the funnel more. It’s classical marketing but without really embracing the differences that. Recruiting and the reason we have recruiting and so I think if you say you know and if you get a little crazy with it if you understand the employer brain is really trying to make these matches what recruiting or an employer brain is trying to do is radically invent recruiting from the ground up recruiting is still in a lot of ways thinking top of the funnel and thinking Phil them.

10:50.50

ThinkinCircles

Um.

10:53.85

James Ellis

Ats and just generate. You know, it’s bigger haystacks equal more needles which is not how needles get made I hope everyone knows that um, but that’s how they’ve been trained for fifty sixty-one hundred years so they keep maintaining it employer branding is there to say look no one likes the hiring process as it is the recruiters. don’t like it. The hiring ministers don’t like it the candidates don’t like it. Ah, hr doesn’t like it. Leal’s always un-thrilled. No one likes this process employer branding is the lever by which we say what should it be? How do we think of it. How do we stop by post and pray and spray and pray and post everything the job boards and collect applications and applicants as far as fast as we can and think. Gosh I’ve got this 1 job There’s someone out there who’s perfect for it. Not only are they perfect for it once they understand what this job is this will radically change your life in incredibly positive ways in profound ways that I can’t even predict how do I connect those dots. That’s what recruiting should be It shouldn’t be feel like a cattle call. It should feel like matchmaking.

11:44.48

ThinkinCircles

11:50.95

James Ellis

And that’s what employer branding should be leading us all towards.

11:55.57

ThinkinCircles

Um, and I mean that that is ah 1 of the kind of but best definitions I’ve heard of kind of employ branding say I say thank you for that. But I would expect nothing less. Um, and so but a lot of people listen to this podcast. They will kind of they will oversee both.

12:11.18

James Ellis

First guess.

12:12.64

ThinkinCircles

Right? So, a lot of the kind of listeners are you know they’re in recruitment agencies or in ah Hr or something you know, and they will have responsibility for actual marketing because they’re in a smaller business and employer branding so having that kind of um delineation is that you know between the marketing and employer branding is that sometimes a good thing is it.

12:20.54

James Ellis

12:32.80

ThinkinCircles

Bad thing is should there be a delineation. They are obviously I mean this is me thinking they obviously have an interaction with each other because like the examples you mentioned that if the CEO is on online or in the news and it’s good bad. You know indifferent that can reflect inflect on the on the rest of the brand.

12:39.36

James Ellis

Um, you decide to.

12:41.88

James Ellis

And.

12:50.90

ThinkinCircles

Which in turn reflects on. Do I want to work for that business in a mean so how does that kind of interactions work when it’s a smaller team. It’s just 1 or 2 people that’s managing everything. Okay.

12:50.87

James Ellis

Um, yeah and I always joke that employer branders are crazy because the job is to manage an employer brand and there’s every single piece of a company impacts. The employer brand. And yet the employer brand manager has exactly 0 power to influence and change all those things that impact the employer brand. So again, only crazy people do this job to your point. Um because it doesn’t impact every part of the company. Yeah, it should have a great relationship with marketing should it live with marketing sometimes. I think it makes perfect sense and I think that if you want to get the employer branders to all riled up. You say employer branding should always live in a certain function and that’s the best and that’s the right answer as if it’s you know the holy truth or whatever and you’re like nah look get everybody’s everybody would be mad about that. I’m a big believer that because employer brand kind of connects all the dots. It’s the connective tissue. It doesn’t have to live anywhere in particular it lives in places purely for politics and convenience. If. You’ve got a strong marketing team who loves employer brand. It should absolutely live in marketing if you’ve got a ta team who understands the value of what it’s doing. It should absolutely live in ta it should live under the person who’s willing to go to bat for it and support it and drive it beyond that because two weeks after you start that job.

14:11.11

James Ellis

You may live in marketing. But you’re going to make friends in ta and every hiring manager and every in leadership in all coms and legal and h r Andy and Dan it’s great to have a starting point where you know I’ve got someone who supports me, and I’ve got someone who can help. Kind of bang that drum with me and get people who aren’t quite bought into this idea yet to say this is a worthy endeavour. This is worth at least listening to this person talk about how they can help you hire better. How we can use the customer service team to hire better. How we can use the products we’re building as a means of tracking more talent. How do we use all this stuff. So yes, it can absolutely live in marketing. Yes, it should be very closely tied to market. It doesn’t have to live in marketing I don’t like to get into that dogmatic kind of approach.

14:52.19

ThinkinCircles

Um, and okay so let’s go. Let’s take it to that. Let’s assumed. It’s living in marketing. Can you be a marketer and an employer brander all at the same time because again lot a lot of people listen to this are you know they’re going to have to wear many hats. A lot of marketeers listen to this from smaller businesses. Um, and you know.

15:04.27

James Ellis

Yeah.

15:11.13

ThinkinCircles

Employ branding is everywhere at the minute, right? Everything is pin this there and because whatever you and they are probably you know Marketeers will be. We’ve been told by people right at the top we need to kind of have more hires you need to get involved with this. You know you need to be kind of making sure that we look great online, and it fools on their lap, right? so.

15:19.61

James Ellis

Are. Um, yeah, they can’t they absolutely can’t I think it’s like its ah it’s an It’s an interesting needle to thread because there will be times in which you absolutely have taken the marketer hat off and the employer brand hat on and have a delineation. But.

15:29.43

ThinkinCircles

Can they do can they wear both hats and.

15:42.72

James Ellis

That’s baseline thinking that gets you kind of to a foundational level of okay, what is our reason people want to work here. How are we communicating that our career side are LinkedIn our glass door our blah blah blah blah blah blah right standard marketing just set your foundation of how we are communicating to the world. The marketer should then say gosh. The reason why people buy our products and the reason why people apply here to work here. They shouldn’t be that different right? They shouldn’t be like 2 different companies who’ve never met right? They should be too strangers. They really should feel integrated and what great companies do is they understand that their employer brand and their consumer brand and honestly their investor brand their corporate brand, etc, etc. It’s just one brand and when I say that people go okay, but I’m talking to that. Yeah, I’m doing this eventually I get that think of your brand as like a lens think of as like a crystal right? and you as the marketer are seeing through that crystal through that lens to talk to consumers or prospects the employer brander is seeing through the exact same crystal to look at their prospects and candidates. Investor relations are looking for the answer to talk through institutional investors, etc, etc. It’s the same company if you do it right? Consumer marketing makes employer branding better, now there’s no one who will argue with a higher stock price increase makes it easier to hire right? That’s just ah, that’s just make that’s just grease for the machine, right? That’s super easy. At the same time when investors institutional of investors look at a company and they make their evaluations. They look at all sorts of employer branding data. They look at attrition they look at who’s leaving they look at who’s being hired. They look at glass door scores. They look at you know how.

17:14.38

James Ellis

How many jobs are open right now. How are they describing that that influences their reason do I invest in this company long-term same with consumer marketing right? If you’ve got a great product people want to be in it. Let’s be fair. Google did no employer branding for the first twenty-five years of its existence and yet they have great hires because product. Their product was a halo effect to the reason why people showed up. It can go the other way, right? There are plenty of examples happy to give them in which a company kind of hits that pr crisis mode and they say oh our CEO is a little racist got to get rid of him. What do you do? then What do you do? then? will you bring in the person who works day to day and say meet the people who work here. Not a racist bone in their body aren’t they nice aren’t they sweet. Don’t you want to buy from them so employer they all those parts of them.

17:50.18

ThinkinCircles

Ah.

18:01.30

James Ellis

But very interactive. They should support one another. it’s like it’s like going to the gym. You don’t just have that one strong muscle and the rest of you is weak. You must make your whole body strong to really make anything strong so that kind of integrated marketing and integrated brand thinking is where you want to be now to be fair. That’s not every day that’s not most companies that’s kind of like what I think of as platonic ideal like I can think of like Delta does that Spotify sort of does it and there’s plenty of companies that try to do it or are aspiring to that or leaning towards that and at the top of maturity model. But that’s really where you want to take it and if you have someone who’s doing. Marketing and employer branding. You got yourself a kind of ah a cheat code to get you there where you can say look there, I’m always thinking about this brand I’m just thinking about it from 2 different angles. It might as well stay the same brand and allow that kind of constraint to be a strength and say oh I can think about how. I can put marketing messages in my job postings or in my LinkedIn postings that are for candidates, but we all know that they are future buyers they are they are going to influence whether someone buys a product from us vice versa, right? You should put consumer messages out there that. Showcase how wonderful. The people are and how they are the ones building or managing this product. They should integrate.

19:19.55

ThinkinCircles

Well, that’s some great tips, right? And so that that brings me on to kind of my next question is again, just kind of focusing on the smaller businesses that might want to kind of consider this you know where do you start right? You know I mean there are businesses out here. Ah that are that they’re small businesses. Struggling to hire and you know one of the strings in their bow is building themselves an employer brand no matter how big they are in their industry. You know I mean they can still make an impact, right? So, they’ve decided to go on this journey where what happens now.

19:46.45

James Ellis

Yeah.

19:52.40

James Ellis

Yeah, I think the mistake is for small businesses to treat employer branding as this oh that’s kind of cool. That’s interesting and they poke at it a little bit like oh what does it do like everybody who you know the first time you heard about Chat GBT you luck and you went I’m going to ask it a question.

20:09.14

ThinkinCircles

And.

20:09.98

James Ellis

Oh wow, that’s crazy and then you walk away like you treat it very many arms like small businesses are probably positioned to make the most impact from their employer brand like imagine if you’re a 50-person company. The fifty first employee makes a lot more of a difference to the company. Then at an ah meta or Google where the one hundred and twenty-seven thousandth person who gets hired is not going to make the same kind of impact. It’s just the people you hire matter and the way we’ve been hiring has been do. Do you meet some skill sets. Great. The boss likes you come on in. Employer brand says if you’re really trying to make that match between company role in person, you’re saying not only do I see how you’re going to be successful in this role I see how you align with our values I see how you’re going to push us to be better how you are going to be someone who will who effectively. Wants the rewards we offer and thus is more likely to stick around for a long time more likely to drive us in the right direction, etc, etc, etc that there’s all sorts of benefits where you start is a tough question and the answer is just to start right? It is the same kind of. Journey any zen master would tell you just it’s the first foot take the first step I’m a big believer that any good employer branding work begets more good employer branding work. Try a pilot project try to just honestly put some headlines on your job postings.

21:28.20

James Ellis

And you’re like there’s no field in my Ats for a headline I’m like no, there isn’t but if you write 1 sentence that encapsulates why someone should read more about this job posting think about, you’re a candidate you’re on indeed you’re on LinkedIn. You’re on a job board or steps so whatever you’re like I type in project manager and 14000000000000 jobs pop up all these logos. You’ve never heard of and you’re like why do you pick one? How do you pick one? Well obviously, the employee brand is the answer if you like that brand you click on that one first beyond that if they start to say something interesting. You’re like oh wait. There’s a headline there. It says this is the job that will change your life or something better copywritten because I’m not a copywriter. And you click on it. The headline’s job is not to say this is why you should take this job. The headline’s job is to say this is why you should read the first paragraph and the first paragraph job is to explain what you’re getting into and make you want to read the second paragraph and the second paragraph job talk about why the team is so interesting and why you should read the third paragraph and why you should read the bulleted lists. We write job postings as if we are angry at people, we like we don’t like candidates we’re actively rejecting them and saying you do not want part of this their son. You don’t want to pay any part of this and it’s like I don’t get it and if you marketed.

22:29.50

ThinkinCircles

22:39.43

James Ellis

Cars the same way we marketed jobs it would say is car has wheels. This is the thickness of the steel like oh I’m going to buy that car like they’ their technical specs masquerading is marketing and it’s just junk if you write a headline for every single job posting that is interesting true about your company and. Makes me want to read a little bit more put it on the top of everyone your job post 6 put little html header tags around them. That’s all it takes I will header to that’s all I’m going to say google h 2 it’s all you got to do it will literally take you 3 seconds to learn how to do this thing and it will make your headline look like a headline.

23:08.51

ThinkinCircles

And.

23:17.20

James Ellis

Do that see what happens do that and see how it changes people now the problem with that is of course it’ll derive more applications and you don’t want more applications. You want better applications, but this is the start. This is the beginning of that journey and when you do it, you go? wow.

23:26.33

ThinkinCircles

23:30.53

James Ellis

Just this stupid headline thing that this bald guy suggested on a podcast that one time it worked what else does he say to do I’m low write more paragraphs about why people like working here. Ask people what they tell their friends about the company make little quotes and put them on LinkedIn when you’re on LinkedIn. Don’t think about hey how do I get people to apply for a job. Think how I get people to be interested in my company just change your mindset ever. So just a tiny little bit and it will make a huge impact like I did a huge study earlier this year where I looked at 1200, I’m sorry I was filed. But yeah, 1200 LinkedIn posts from more than 100 companies and I spoke. This is what everybody’s doing wrong, and this is the same old stuff help wanted to join us. We’re hiring so we got all these posts that just simply say we’re hiring and you’re like wait a second. That’s not a compelling reason for me because all you’re telling me is that you’re hiring I don’t know anything about you I don’t know why I’m joining you I don’t know what you’re offering me. The reason I’m applying is simply because you have an open role put that way. Do you want to hire that person. Of course, you don’t so stop writing them that way you know we’re writing we’re posting these things hey we won this award good bully for you I mean who cares. Tell me why tell me what makes you interesting tell me what makes you deserve that award. You got to? We’re a wonderful place to work which is ah you know where places we do workplace is good right? That’s name my fake award that I use because I can’t say the one that you know because I don’t want to, I don’t want to you know I don’t want to help them.

25:00.40

James Ellis

Um, you won an award but now so instead of saying we won this award. Yeah, we good instead say we won this award because we care about X and Y and Z, we reward X, Y, and Z. It’s clear that our employees agree that is why we won this award that is information that makes me go oh this is an interesting company and. I joke. So, I teach employer branding I joke that 99% of my job as an employer brander to make a complete and total stranger. Do this huh I didn’t know that huh that’s interesting ha I think I want to learn more That’s the whole job right? if I can make a stranger do that, I win I’ve done it what I’m supposed to do. I don’t have to force feed like a duck turn into foie gras. All the reasons why you should want to work for me all I want to make you do is go huh. That’s interesting because the second you find it interesting. You’re off on your own path and you’re going to figure it out on your own right? I don’t want to inject it. You I want you to want that thing I want you to want to learn about us and I’m done. I win, I am the best right? That’s you know you want to take your tiny little victory left because that’s all it is about so as a small brand do something see the value of what you’re doing and then double down do a little more everybody’s path is going to be this different. But the act of doing it leads to more thought leads to more action leads to more impact.

26:17.91

ThinkinCircles

Um, amazing brit if anybody takes anything from today then you know stop writing your job adverts like you hate your candidates I think is quote of the day. Ah, but these it’s so true.

26:28.27

James Ellis

It’s clearly very early. Yeah.

26:30.84

ThinkinCircles

But the problem is I’ve never had it described to me, but it is true right? When you say it is so transactional so functional and you’re right? It’s like it’s like a technical spec, right? Um is not a reason to.

26:33.20

James Ellis

Yeah.

26:39.60

James Ellis

Yeah, you will have this skill. You will do these things you will you? what I mean I you know you want to make an unpleasant Joke. You do it in a real German accent because that’s the most exciting way of making people feel. Love like you feel has these things you will have these skills you but you like ah why do you not like the candidates. It’s rough.

26:59.19

ThinkinCircles

Um, will all it is brilliant James I also understand that um I go leave it. You know, not. You haven’t done enough self- promotion but a little bit more self-promotion. There’s ah, you’ve got a book coming out soon in the next kind of month or so would you want to kind of talk us through that tell us little bit about that. Okay.

27:14.24

James Ellis

Absolutely, it’s cleverly titled employer branding for small business. It’s very yeah, I Really, I Dug dip I dug deep, right? I went right? No, it’s purely a look. This is this thing you know I’ve done a previous book I’ve done talent chooses you which is.

27:20.98

ThinkinCircles

I mean I mean what else you know.

27:33.54

James Ellis

Available on Amazon or you can buy it for get it for free I have it online for free all over the place. Um, this is something where I said rather than talk theoretically how do I help a small business kind of say exactly the question you ask? What’s the first step What’s the second step What’s the third step and I kind of said here are the 12 skills or the 10 skills you probably should think about. And this is the way you put them in order so that in twelve weeks you go left foot right foot left foot right foot and at the end of twelve weeks you’re activating your brand. You’re doing good work. You’re seeing your results. Your bosses are understanding why you’re spending an hour to every week kind of grinding through. Glassdoor review responses and job postings and coming up with headlines and putting the headlines on the career side and changing and adjusting ever so slightly how you’re posting things on LinkedIn right? That stuff is the super powerful stuff and walking people through how to do that because again I do believe that once you start doing it. You start to realize. All the opportunity you have in front of you, and I want people to do take those opportunities employer branding is so big that there is no such thing as a book that captures all of it. It’s not possible. But if I can get small businesses excited to realize this is an audience I don’t speak to very well. It’s not that hard to do great work it’s not expensive it all to do great work right I don’t ask anybody to spend a penny on text you know tech stacks or tools or anything like that. It’s just talk about why people should want to be there. Get them have that moment where they go huh. That’s interesting I want to learn more and that’s what it is and once you do that, you’re on the path and you’ll want it. You just want to keep doing it. So

29:06.93

James Ellis

Ah, the book will be coming up this spring I don’t have an actual date I have it’s it just finished proving getting proofed yesterday proving. It’s not a loaf of bread. It’s a book. Um, it’s just getting finished proofed um too much British baking show and. Now I must start laying it out and getting it ready so it is going to happen in the next month or 2 hopefully I shouldn’t be a problem but um, that’s really the plan for that.

29:30.30

ThinkinCircles

Ah, lets brilliant. So, for anyone listening. Um, once it’s available James will reach out to me, I will let everybody know and we’ll kind of update the kind of show notes we will also include all of James’s kind of details on the show notes. So, anybody you want to know more going to go contact with him connect with him on LinkedIn. It’s all going to be there as well. Ah, James, it’s been absolute pleasure talking to you today. It’s been fascinating I’m sure we’ll have you back again at some point in the future. But for now, thank you very much.

29:51.94

James Ellis

That would be amazing. This has been an absolute blast James that what we’ll start our own show. ‘The James and James Show’ that’ll be it, really does. I’m all mentally designing the logo as we speak.

29:57.56

ThinkinCircles

I mean, I can see it, right? You know?

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The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing: David Jenyns

by Julia Fras | Feb 7, 2023 | The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing

We have a way of working which might describe a system, but should we and how could we roll this out across our entity business?

Joining James Whitelock this week is David Jenyns, the author of Systemology. David talks me through how to build systems into your business from a macro and a micro level.

Episode Transcript:

00:01.13

ThinkinCircles

Welcome back, everybody to the marketing rules podcast and it is my pleasure to have David Jennings join me today all the way from well I mean it’s down under for me, but you know it’s all relative David it’s a pleasure to have you on the on the podcast today. For the people tuning in who may not have heard of you or of your book which will talk a little bit around. Maybe you could give us a bit about your background and your work history and a little bit around the book.

00:28.58

David Jenyns

Yeah, fantastic. So, I had a digital agency that I ran for about 13 years and probably for about ten of those years I really felt like I was stuck in the day-to-day operations I think all the prospects all the clients. All the staff. Would always come through me I very much felt like the bottleneck, and it wasn’t until we found out we were pregnant when I had that moment where I was like I’ve got to change the way I’m doing things and deep down it’s in my DNA I’ve always had systems and processes just in the way that. I see the world. My dad happened to be a systems engineer and I’ve always thought about systems for some reason when I got to that digital agency, I thought this business is different. It can’t work because. Google keeps evolving and we are a creative digital agency, and my team won’t follow systems. So, what’s the point of putting in them in place and I had all this baggage thinking that I was the guy running the digital agency and I built this business that was so heavily dependent on me and then I had that. Wakeup call and I just pretty much started from scratch started retesting a lot of the assumptions that I had and over the course of about twelve months I removed myself from a lot of the day-to-day operations and promoted a lady who was inside the business.

01:53.42

David Jenyns

To CEO as I stepped back and then I took a year off and in that break. That’s really when this whole idea of system ology was birthed which is now my passion Melissa who took over the agency and running it day-to-day when I came back, I realized I’d lost the passion for it. And she continued to run it for the next few years, and I never really had any sort of desire to sell that business because it was a nice little cash cow for me that she was running, and it wasn’t until she had to move back to the us and I thought oh wow this might just be the bookend on. That part of my story and I ended up selling that digital agency and the guy who bought it cited all our systems and processes and then I really doubled down onto this idea of system ology and that’s when I became a bit of a systems convert because I realized how powerful they are and. What a transformative effect they can have for the business owner and the team.

02:51.70

ThinkinCircles

It’s an amazing story. So, I mean why don’t we start a beginning and why don’t we go around talk about how you defining systems and what are you? What are you? What? what? it is. You’re discussing when you talk about systems within a business and how would you describe it for.

03:04.46

David Jenyns

So, I think I use the term systems and it’s a bit of a catchall because people call it systems and processes sops. How to documents workflows like there are all these terms that describe the flow. The way I think of a system and in the context that I’m talking about it here. It’s just a step-by-step series of effectively like steps that are followed that produce a consistent outcome. So, it’s what are the steps. Do you follow? and. I like that because it works on a very micro level, but it works on a macro level as Well. It could be Step-by-step How do you edit an image in Canva What are the Step-by-step that’s on the micro level, but it also works on a macro level when you’re thinking in terms of. Well, how might a project manager look at this. What are the key Milestones and steps in completing this project for a client or something like that. So, I when I talk about systems I’m just talking about the step-by-step. Processes that you go through to get this particular outcome.

04:13.82

ThinkinCircles

Okay, so um, I’m and I know you discuss this in the book lot. You know where we start off as business owners and and for the for the listeners out there. Where do we start right? with us with our business to let’s say systemize you know the business and get things in and get her a house in order.

04:31.48

David Jenyns

Yeah, well, the big thing is when you go from a business that has no systems to some systems you have to think about what are the most important you apply the eighty twenty rule and when I think about business I think the purpose here is it’s a. Commercial enterprise so you’re selling a product or service and ideally you want to make sure that that product or service can be delivered without key person dependency. So, no matter who is there on the team you can sell the widget or do the service and get paid. So that’s generally where I’ll start with a client. We’ll think about. Well, what are the key steps that you go through to deliver that product and service and it’s all the way from grabbing your prospect’s attention to selling them to taking the money to onboarding them to doing the work to then getting them come back. You. Visually map that out. We have a process. We call the critical client flow to capture that and that’s really the best place to start of the infinite things that you could systemize if you focused on just what you’re currently doing not what you would like to be doing and you focus on how you deliver your core product or service. And you turn everything else off and just because you don’t systemize something doesn’t mean it’s going to magically stop happening in your business systemizing and optimizing those ones is just about improving the performance of the delivery of that that central thing that makes you money in the business.

06:02.76

ThinkinCircles

Um, so, give us some examples maybe from a a smaller business perspective of what a small business owner knows where they need to start what they need to do to what other where you would start with this, you know.

06:03.63

David Jenyns

Do this.

06:13.40

David Jenyns

Um, yeah, yeah, so you go through that thinking oftentimes. It’s a 1-page exercise that I’ll get someone to start off with where I will literally flow chart out not put more than.

06:17.56

ThinkinCircles

Is it macro micro how would you go about it first.

06:30.42

David Jenyns

A word or 2 in each box and you would start off and you go. How would you grab the attention of your target audience again focusing in on what you’re currently doing not what you would like to be doing so you might say well I’m running Amazon ads or I’m running. Google ads or I do networking, or I speak or I’m on podcasts or whatever it might be think about the ways that you currently generate leads, and you would just in a few words describe each one of those at the top of the page then you work your way down the page. You think. When that lead comes in and someone says I’m interested in your product or service. What do they do? do they fill out a form on your website. Do they pick up the phone and call you do they do both is there another way. Maybe they engage with you through Facebook messenger and okay, great. We handle the incoming lead. Then the next one comes down. Okay, when it comes to selling what happens? Do we hop on the phone. Do. We have some sort of qualifying process, or do we hop on a zoom with them and what is it that we ask them on that Zoom. Okay, then what happens next? Well then, we consider preparing a proposal. Okay, so and. Generally, when you go through this process, I always think about um who is the dream client that primary target audience and what is a single primary product to focus on just focus on one product to start with and capture what is most likely to happen.

07:58.82

David Jenyns

Because there’s always variations a prospect will come in and they’ll say oh can I get your blue widget, but can I have this variation that variation and can I make this change and when you start to try and capture all these variations. It makes the systems creation very challenging. The real purpose here is to Capture. What is most likely to happen and the reason we do that is because new team members when they come on board or other team Members. We get them to handle the easiest scenarios. The easiest leads the most probable scenarios and it’s only the exceptions that usually get. Escalated to the more senior team member. So, the way that we structure this and set it up is to capture that most probable and as we work our way down the page, and we’ve thought about how we prepare the proposal then the next thing is we think Well, how we take the money. And maybe it’s a deposit. Maybe someone fills out a shopping cart. Maybe whatever it might be in your business then we move down and we think right? How do we onboard them into the business is there a questionnaire they fill out. Is there something that happens in the back end. Do you add them into your project management platform and again. This initial exercise. It’s quite high level. Not more than a few words in each box to describe it. We’re not going into detail at this level and then we go right to deliver the core product or service. What do we need to do and then finally to hand over once the work is done.

09:33.91

David Jenyns

What is that? final stage. Do we meet with them for a final meeting. What are the points that we do in the final handover if you map that out and then as a business owner you ask? where in that little map is the pain oftentimes business owners or small teams will. Intuitively know they’ll say oh we don’t have enough leads, or I don’t want to sell another client because I’m already at capacity and if I sell another client, I’m going to have to do the work and then I’m already overworked, and I don’t have enough time in the day. So, then they start to subconsciously push. Prospects back because they don’t really want to do the work right now because they’re full if you dig into it somewhere in that map generally is an area of pain and that’s a great place to start to think about Well what am I doing here? What are those steps look like.

10:23.81

ThinkinCircles

Yeah.

10:29.48

David Jenyns

And can I capture the vanilla process which then enables me to get another team member to help me out or to get a virtual assistant to lighten that load.

10:38.84

ThinkinCircles

So yeah, so you’ve got this let’s call it up it’s like a playbook right is all captured. Um I assume this is literally a document basically that you’re a step-by-step flow. Ah.

10:43.32

David Jenyns

Yeah, um.

10:52.20

ThinkinCircles

As you know as someone who’s run an agency who’s in the creative industries like me and some of the people listening where does that leave an any leeway for creativity in that process. You know I mean or is that considered as well or. Is it incredibly does it have to be rigid for it to have it to work perfectly.

11:15.00

David Jenyns

This is one of those misconceptions that systems and processes remove creativity and it’s quite commonly held I used to have it until I owned. it was like a sister company to the digital agency was a video production company. And I’m not a video guy I don’t know how to shoot or edit or do any of that, but we had a lot of questions through our digital agency can you help us create content, so we ended up setting up this brand and I remember going out on a shoot one day with one of the videographers and I spent the entire car ride with him. And we had a discussion around. Did you bring the spare battery. Did you email the client to let them know not to wear checked shirts because it looks bad on camera have, we got a second copy of the script. Um, oh did we bring that extension cable what lenses did I select like is a 45-minute drive and we’re talking about. Most stuff that just should have been handled at the end of that shoot I remember I said to him look next time we’re going to create a shoot checklist when you’re at the studio before you leave, I want you to pack the kit and let’s talk about first what you would need to have in that kit, so we did that and then. About nine months later I go out on another shoot with the same videographer, and I remember the discussion in the car ride for that one was worlds apart to the first ride that I had in the second one we were having discussions around um the script and the emotion that he wanted to get and what.

12:42.55

David Jenyns

How we wanted to frame up the shots and what was important messages that he wanted to get across in the video and that for me was the ah-ha moment when I realised there’s certain things in business that just need to happen and happen a certain way. And if we can get those handled it creates space for the creative stuff. So, no matter what level of creativity you’re doing. You know you probably must make sure you get Paid. There’s probably a process for onboarding. There’s probably a process for the way that you know we used to ingest footage after a shoot. And it didn’t matter how creative we were in that we took the Sd cards we plugged them in here. We Let them go overnight. We Let the video encode and like all this stuff that just needed to happen a certain Way. So, I think you’ll find that assumption when you test it you still create space like there are. Certain things that especially in a creative space that you want to give the space, but you also must give bookends for it because my videographers used to the work that they would do in editing and stuff would expand to whatever space they would give it oftentimes and.

13:51.47

ThinkinCircles

Yeah, yeah.

13:54.17

David Jenyns

And sometimes we did need to put some ends on that because we were also running a commercial enterprise.

14:00.25

ThinkinCircles

Yeah, I mean again, it all makes complete sense. Um, who’s the best people to to work on this within the business, right? is it is it is it led from the top is it the md the CEO is it going of middle management.

14:06.48

David Jenyns

Yet.

14:14.92

ThinkinCircles

Is it the people at the coalface are almost delivering this stuff everybody where does this where this is. Where’s the where’s the driver for this.

14:16.16

David Jenyns

Um, yes.

14:22.31

David Jenyns

Yeah, so there’s definitely a few key stakeholders. The first one is the business owner the business owner needs to go all in on this idea and it’s not that they’re going to do the documentation. But they need to support the initiative and basically lead this is how we do things here so firstly; the business owner must get it then oftentimes we talk about finding a systems champion and a systems champion is someone who naturally is an organizer. And oftentimes that person might already exist in the business who is someone who creates checklists and likes to have things, colour, coded and likes things a certain way and maybe is already creating process. Naturally, they might be a great person. Potentially elevate into this idea of a systems champion someone who can drive it and support the team and oversee it and can take it under its wing and then we often also pair the systems champion with what we call a knowledgeable worker, and a knowledgeable worker is the person who knows how to do the thing. So oftentimes if we’re wanting to know well, what does our sales process look like well the systems champion meets with the knowledge of a worker and watches the knowledgeable worker or records them doing the thing. Maybe they record a phone call or assume that that knowledgeable worker has and then goes. Ah.

15:49.15

David Jenyns

Great. Can we pull the process from this recording so and over time as you get this like there’s a few other little stakeholders that you might introduce but they’re the ones you start with you’ve got the business owner the systems champion and a knowledgeable worker.

16:07.12

ThinkinCircles

So okay, um, we’ve talked a little bit around some of the meets around this already around the stifling Creativity. What are the other myths that people have around this that usually are preconceptions that may stop them going down.

16:25.32

David Jenyns

Um, oftentimes. They’ll think that they’re going to need hundreds of systems and if again we apply the 8020 and we realize that if we don’t systemize it. It’s not going to magically stop happening your business still is functioning and things will continue to function the way they are. Oftentimes you can have quite an impact with as little as 15 to 20 well selected systems. They can really start to transform your business other things that people believe is that the team won’t follow the process Anyway. So, what’s the point and a lot of that has to do with changing culture and.

16:53.65

ThinkinCircles

Certainly.

17:00.21

David Jenyns

Now’s a great time with everything that’s happened with covid people are a lot more accepting of change. So, we’re finding that the introduction of systems is more easily accepted now but a lot of it also has to do with the way that you recruit and onboard. Because all the resistance to this new change happens upfront with your existing team members. But if you get a new team member on board and you share with them some systems and processes and you just say this is how we do things here. There’s no resistance because that’s just the way that they’ve always experienced it. So that’s what makes that challenge upfront so hard and that hump you must get over because all that pushback comes at the start and there are other things like people thinking that you know when I ask people think of a systemized business. What comes to mind and oftentimes people think of things like McDonald’s or Amazon or Google and these big. Multinational corporations their brain jumps to you know? McDonald’s has been doing this for 60 years and people jump to thinking. That’s what a systemized business looks like but obviously. They’ve really refined and tuned and done this year after year and they’re doing a hamburger business and they’re recruiting fifteen-year-old kids to flip hamburgers whereas there’s a good chance. The listeners here are running a different type of business. It’s not a hamburger business and they’re recruiting intelligent people who already know how to do things.

18:22.32

David Jenyns

And we don’t need to tell them how to suck eggs I don’t need to tell them here’s how to send an email on Gmail like some things they’re going to naturally know so some things will require more detail. Some things might require less date detail and its um, thinking about it like. A real person and thinking about it in the real world and not necessarily overcomplicating.

18:47.77

ThinkinCircles

Yeah, um, and you mentioned something again. referring to people that have been doing there or businesses that’ve been doing this for such a long time. Um is that refining. Okay that is there I guess you’re not going to get this right first time, right? There’s got to be. Tweaks and it’s good. It’s in a constantly evolving, process. Um, and is that how we should think about these the systems that we’re putting in place. So

19:13.93

David Jenyns

Once you get on the train. It is a way of doing things. You can’t really get off the train as in having a systems culture and this is how we do things here and constant and never-ending improvement is a way of doing business. The business owner and the team will start to see changes within as little as ninety days generally though I say for you know, significant change. It’s committing to this for at least twelve months and really leaning into it and then once you do that you start to get over the hump but then beyond that what ends up happening is. In business initially, it’s a little bit like a game of whack-a-mole and sometimes business owners feel like they’re solving the same problem repeatedly and, it’s basically the same problem a different client or it’s the same problem and it’s a different staff member system is about how do we solve this once and for all. And then what ends up happening is the business owner then starts to work on higher and higher quality problems. This is just about codifying solutions to problems and the way that the business owner and knowledgeable team members have figured out how to do things and how do we teach that. So that that knowledgeable worker can be freed up to do only the things that they can do like there’s probably a lot of work that a knowledgeable worker does the business owner and other team members that really, they’re not adding much value and if it was codified and put into a system.

20:45.13

David Jenyns

Then they would only have to handle the unique variations which means they can increase their capacity significantly.

20:53.41

ThinkinCircles

Yeah, um before I let you go David tell us a bit about the book. the title where we can buy, I assume it’s available on all good online or online no retailers those watching on a video I think David’s about the service the show as show as the book. For those for those for those listening tells us to you know, give us the title and um and where we can get it.

21:12.39

David Jenyns

Yeah, yes, so the book’s available over on Amazon if you’re listening to this though head over to audible. There’s the audio version and I read the audio version the book’s called system ology create time reduce errors and scale your profits with proven business systems. And the idea is it’s just a 7-step framework to go from I don’t really have any systems in place to now I have at least a baseline and I go through how we identify them. We touched on some of that today that’s called the defined stage. Then it’s the assign stage that stage number 2 where in the business does this knowledge exist then step number 3 is the extract phase. How do we get it out of the brains of those team members. Then there is the organised phase which is basically where is this knowledge going to be stored. Then we have the integrate phase which is how are we going to get the team on board. How do we encourage them and let them know that this is a benefit to them then there’s the scale stage which is what other systems are required to grow your business things like HR. Recruitment onboarding and finance and then the final stage is optimize so whipped through very quickly. They’re the 7 stages and we focused on the first couple as we discussed today.

22:38.46

ThinkinCircles

Brilliant, that is amazing. We’ll obviously include all your details and a link to the to the Amazon listing in the show notes. David it’s been absolute pleasure, thank you very much.

22:48.55

David Jenyns

Thank you.

Connect with David here.

Support for this podcast comes from Shazamme, and Liquid Palladium.

Find all the latest podcast episodes here and on all other podcast platforms!

Listen to Rick & Nicole’s episode here.

Click PLAY to listen to the podcast episode:

Watch the interview:

The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing: Rick Maré & Nicole Clarke

by Julia Fras | Jan 18, 2023 | The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing

How to get the most from your new website is always a discussion point. Whether its SEO, advertising or content to drive ROI. But should we first take a step back and ask what the data is telling us?

Joining James Whitelock this week are Rick and Nicole the founders of Shazamme.

Rick and Nicole discuss how recruiters should be making data-driven decisions and how much money is wasted on marketing that doesn’t work.

Episode Transcript:

00:00.85

ThinkinCircles

So welcome back everybody to the marketing rules podcast and it’s my pleasure to be joined by the team from Shazamme. How we doing we got Nico and we got we got Rick, who are joining me from the other side of the globe on my morning there afternoon. How are you guys doing?

00:17.37

Nicole

Fantastic James, how are you?

00:20.66

ThinkinCircles

Or good or good. It is a pleasure to have you on board. So, I tell you what for those who aren’t familiar with Shazamme give us an introduction into Shazamme first and then we can dive a bit into your both your background So who wants to who wants to take lead on telling me about Shazamme.

00:37.25

Nicole

I will take the lead on telling you about Shazamme so very quickly. Both Rick and I have been in recruitment website technology now for over 12 years and really had an opportunity to start with a blank sheet of paper and. Figure out. How could we solve all the problems we’ve seen with recruitment website technology across the globe while working with start-ups through to some of the world’s largest brands and everyone in between so we took it back to nothing and scoped it all out and created everything that we knew could fix. Things that we know were broken. It needed to be easy enough to edit and update and create job boards and everything you want. So, I could do it and that’s saying something. So, it’s all drag and drop and Canva really was the inspiration around. Well, why can’t recruitment websites be like Canva drag and drop and. Then we just solved all the support issues by installing chat support and so we’re lucky enough now to have over 280 clients across the globe multilingual capabilities and people are loving it. So, it’s a breath of fresh air and exciting.

01:45.87

ThinkinCircles

Good stuff. Amazing! As you were taking a lead, Nicole, tell us a bit about your background in recruitment and how you, how you came to chime me in the first place.

01:56.37

Nicole

Yeah, that’s good. So, wow I’ve recruited for myself in multiple businesses. But I’ve never actually been a recruiter However I have been working with recruiters in a marketing as. Perspective and website perspective and advertising perspective for over twelve years which gave me a real passion for recruitment marketing and as you know James, we’ve spoken about this before. Yeah, if you can get these pieces, right? It makes a big difference to a company’s success online and I’m passionate about helping. Recruiters be more successful by using their brand.

02:34.96

ThinkinCircles

So ah, brilliant, good stuff. Amazing! Rick, give us your potted history if that’s possible. Okay.

02:41.31

Rick

Great. Yeah, it is possible. It is a checker history. So, I’ve done a bit of everything in in my career I ran a chocolate biscuit factory ran a housing company ran a tech company a fintech company before it was known as fintech. But where the journey started was in around 2006, I started a start-up called job x it was a job board to compete with one of the largest successful job boards in the world called seek and they own lots of other job boards around the world. And both Nicole and I were pretty much starting the same time. Nicole was for a company called ‘Jobs Jobs Jobs’ and I was running job x and y, we were going head and hence we’ve known each other for a long time, and that was a bit of fun. It was. But then the global financial crisis hits in 2008 and recruiters just disappeared. They didn’t want to spend assent on advertising because you know there was no jobs.

03:47.59

Rick

So, we used the technology back then to start what was really the first version of what we’ve got today which was you know a recruitment website platform and we evolved that over the years into you know the First. first responsive platform then first mobile app platform. And we had you know a lot of success, but technology was always you know fallen behind the rest of the industries out there. You know, not hr tech but you know e-commerce sites and other sites. So yeah, it certainly was very frustrating. That I could never do anything that I can do today and that’s again supporting what Nicole said our mission here was that Nicole and I not techies we should be able to do exactly what we want to do if we were running a recruitment business and that’s essentially what we’ve achieved.

04:39.13

ThinkinCircles

Ah, cheers. Thank you for that Rick is that I didn’t realise you’d run a biscuit factory at some point in the past.

04:48.30

Rick

Lots of fun chocolate biscuits.

04:49.65

Nicole

04:51.19

ThinkinCircles

We’re going to talk a little bit today around data-driven marketing and how to make the most of that. So, you guys obviously have built a platform that that can support this so why don’t you give me big. Bit of a set the scene for me around how marketed should be using data and to make to make decisions when it comes to their website. Their marketing. You know what? what tools they should be considering what the data points they should be considering. Maybe Nicole this is a question for you.

05:26.96

Nicole

Yeah, so I’ll do the intro and I’ll pass over to Rick to talk about the, the opportunities from a tech perspective so like anything as we know in this world. A lot of people are spending money on a lot of different types of advertising and marketing and job boards and. Paid advertising and unfortunately you know most times people don’t know what’s working for their brand. They’re just throwing money at these things hoping that it sticks and guessing that maybe they’re getting something from it. But as we know. wasting money is not a great thing to be doing and you want to make sure that your brand is appearing in the places that are going to get your quality applications. So really, the ability to track to understand where your job seekers are that are applying for jobs. Coming from and reinvesting the money in the places that aren’t working for you and that can be. We’ve got a few clients that are very sophisticated in how they’re tracking all their data points and they know now what job boards are returning the best application and quality rate. Over the ones that aren’t and then they can decide to choose to funnel money where it’s working, and you know is it PPC or pay-per-click advertising on Google or YouTube or Facebook what works for your brand and as we know James different.

06:54.75

Nicole

Platforms work differently for different agencies and different industry sectors. You know TikTok. For instance, you know you need to try to analyse and try everything to see what’s giving you quality results. So, I’ll hand over to Rick You can talk about you know the setting up and the structuring and the opportunities to track.

07:13.58

Rick

Yeah, so thanks to God it’s great I just wanted to add something to it, and this is probably fundamental to the platform that we’ve developed. We’ve obviously as you know we’ve been doing this for 12 years.

07:14.29

Nicole

Managed data.

07:29.93

Rick

The biggest issue in the past was that recruiters or marketers could not move fast enough with their technology and their platform to do campaigns and to really you know, get things up and running very quickly. So, what we’ve seen now, and this is not because we’re driving it is because our clients are driving it. They’re becoming a lot more innovative in what they do So we probably don’t know half the things or probably 70% of things that our clients now do because they’re all doing it themselves because it’s so easy, so you’ll hop on a client side and suddenly, you’ll see after they’ve created all these campaigns for their clients, and they’ve thrown video. They’ve thrown. Pop-ups. They’ve thrown quizzes on there. They’ve done things that we could never have imagined that our clients would come up with and that’s probably part of this this whole discussion around data and content and analytics because. They can now do things. They’ve never been able to do before so they can use that to then market their brand socially to a degree that done outside the recruitment industry well. But in the recruitment industry has never really been able to be done because of the complexities and the and the. Antiquated technology. So, we’re seeing some amazing things happening and on top of that We we’ve sort of perfected the tracking of those campaigns. So, for those who don’t know about UTM codes, UTM are the tracking codes.

09:03.27

Rick

When you do campaigns and there’s 5 different codes so you can really slice and di based on different campaigns different sources different banners, pages, etc and we track all of that all the way from the first click right? to the last click. Of that session so that you can really become innovative in how you attract people you don’t no longer need to attract them to an actual job because you’re tracking them where they come to a landing page or a pop-up or a quiz or a poll you can still track. All the way through to an application and that’s obviously key in measuring what works and what doesn’t work so we feel like we’ve put a bit of fun into marketers to explore their brand which they’ve never been able to do before.

09:55.10

ThinkinCircles

Yeah, mean that that all makes sense, right? and, it’s stuff that marketers should have been doing for a long time I got a couple of questions around that one is, how. How would you encourage marketers and maybe businesses without the Marketed and encourage them to continue measuring stuff because what tends to happen is a business gets very enthusiastic about all this right at the start about what they can and can’t measure. And then over time they just lose the impetus to continue looking at these stats and then, they realise they haven’t looked them in in it in a year and they go, and you go to them. Oh how? well’s your website doing I don’t know I haven’t looked it in in the in any year. So how do you keep that moment going.

10:48.89

Rick

You’ll go for that 1 looks like there’s a bit of so look what we what we absolutely encourage is the concept of the marketing dashboard now. everything should flow automatically into. An analytics marketing dashboard. So that one you automatically get a report sent to you every week so that you don’t ignore the stats in it that you don’t rely on someone to collate manually. So, one of the things that we have seen people that invest in. Creating a marketing dashboard much more informed as to what’s working and what’s not and they don’t need to put a great deal of effort into it because it’s all happening in the background all their social is coming together all the Google analytics is coming together all the paid and socialism all coming together to one dashboard. So that is what we certainly encourage people to do and the companies that we see doing that well are reaping the rewards because they don’t need to have someone collating you know data every week for hours and hours and hours and knowing that it possibly won’t get looked at.

12:00.97

Nicole

I was also going to add to that? you know it’s baby steps like this and I think this is the thing that people need to come back to and remember your brand online now is all you have really in a digital space that reflects who you are and what you do. So, it is worth investing whether it’s an hour a week an hour a fortnight just to jump in and look at that data and a good example was sitting with a client the other day. a small client but highly competitive in their space and they’re wondering why you know they’ve been with another web. Site provider for a very long time. They’re not ranking very much at all for anything that they should be ranking for, and they were quite shocked when I sat down and took them through an SEO report and just showed them what they were appearing for and what their competitors were appearing for and gave them some strategies and some tips and tricks on. How they could really hijack some of that traffic for themselves and it was really you know just by looking at that data and having a look a look at your competitors. What you can pick up that’s going to help your brand be more successful so people should dedicate. At least an hour of fortnight to look at look after their brand.

13:18.54

ThinkinCircles

Ah, yeah, That’s a great tip. The next one is the one I suppose you might get asked for the time and I know we do is you know what you should be measuring from your perspective around the you know about your platform. You know what are the data points that. Make sense What are data points that you know that are that are keys to return an investment that are keys to engagement. What? What would you suggest that people be looking at what are these data points for.

13:44.74

Nicole

So, I’ll start and then let Rick add his piece. So, for me, the fundamentals are for starters from an SEO perspective. Are you showing up for the keywords you want to be found for like that’s important and if you’re not, you need to create content. That is going to help people find you if that’s what you do because they’re looking for you and the search engines want to send them there if it makes sense to do so. But if you haven’t got it set up right in the beginning, you’re missing that opportunity. You know, understanding what you want to be found for is so important and a lot of people miss that the other is of course if you’re spending a lot of money on job boards or other advertising methods. You need to be tracking. What’s returning giving you an ROI because so many people are wasting so much money and even you know and people talk about you know, recruitment marketing as you know James, you know if you don’t understand recruitment. You can’t possibly be a good. SEO optimizer or marketer for a recruitment agency because you just don’t get the opportunities. You know that there’s potentially 3 silos you’ve got your job seeker silo your employer silo and potentially you’re trying to recruit internally as well. So, you need to measure who’s coming to what.

15:13.61

Nicole

Pages on your website and they are finding you for what you want so where are your applications coming from. Are they converting or are they bouncing off the site and use that to sort of analyse well you know. Is it worth spending money on this job board because everybody comes here and then they leave the site straight away and there’s no applications coming through or this one that we’re spending a lot of money on is you know we might only get 12 clicks and, but we get 12 applications a month and it’s highly relevant. So, I think it’s just understanding your business and what’s converting and where people are coming from is very important and all the traditional Google analytics are people bouncing off pages. What can you do to fix that?

16:03.50

Rick

Ah, look you Toby agrees with what you’re saying and on top of that I guess it depends on what type of business you are and what you’re looking for so depending on the stage. So, if you’re a start-up you may not care so much about certain things but so depending on what industry what stage of your business are you may. What more clients versus candidates versus people working for you if you’re in a growth phase. So, I guess understanding the stage of business is at and what matters to you is important as well because there’s no use if you’re getting let’s a thousand candidates and you don’t have the staff to. Then place them so it’s a bit a bit of juggling to figure out the most important parts for your business and then investing in in those areas. I think, the best thing to do is to. Put a strategy in place to go. What do you want out of your digital strategy is it client candidates or people working for you and then focus on dissecting those opportunities and the channels that you can use and then measure through Google analytics and other tools to see what’s working and what’s not because for some people YouTube might be better than LinkedIn for other people. TikTok may be better than linking so you really need to test all those segments based on you know what? you think gets you your best return and then measure us.

17:31.85

ThinkinCircles

Yeah, yeah, again, some great advice. You’ve mentioned SEO a couple of times.

17:44.56

ThinkinCircles

Where do we sit with SEO on this day. How important is it how much relevant should we put towards it is it the that the dark art it used to be, can we just can we can we hack it? What are the changes that Google is making that we can you know you know make it more relevant to us. You know. What’s the state of play with SEO and websites today.

18:09.95

Nicole

Wow. There’s a lot. the first the first thing is if you want to be found for something. You don’t have content on your website for that specific thing you’re never going to be found I think SEO is very important I don’t know about you, but we get a lot of leads. Organically. That are finding us because people that we know from a recruitment perspective. People are googling for a job just like they say plumber in London you know to try to find someone to fix a broken pipe or whatever. The biggest mistake that I see recruiters make is if you’re an engineering recruiter and you just have a sector called engineering on your website you go are you an engineering company. Are you going to build me a structure. You know there’s silos that you need to create the biggest most important SEO engineering jobs is what you do, and engineering recruitment is what you do, and you need to break those down for the sectors that you want to be found so that is important but it’s about. As you know it’s about user experience. You want somebody to type that specific thing in click it come to land on that page and go oh my gosh. This is exactly what this company does and there’s the people the recruiters who specialize in that there’s the jobs for that industry.

19:36.33

Nicole

There’s a form I can fill in and it’s all in 1 place and it converts which Google loves seeing form submissions and things like that SEO still companies out there that websites aren’t secure. you know, like if your website isn’t secure. No one’s going to want to send anyone there because they can have their data. Stolen, the next one important for SEO the biggest which is the heart of what recruiters do is the jobs if your jobs are sitting on a separate domain or they’re framed in or they’re not pulling through all the relevant data with jobs schemas and all the things that. You know, quite sophisticated behind the platform you’re missing an opportunity where each job should almost be like a little blog article being pushed out every single time It’s posted to tell people that you’re relevant for those sorts of jobs. That one’s important we are finding conversational language now. Is apparently something that Google’s looking for. we recommend and the trick I’ve sort of given people when they’re trying to write a blog or some content and just fill in the blanks or refresh some stuff is you know, read what or speak. What you want to put on your website into a Google doc and it will voice type it for you and you’re going to get great natural language that you can then you know tweak and then put onto your website is a good one. if a q and a is on the websites were.

21:12.50

Nicole

We’ve got a lot of voice search going on now. So ideally, you want to make sure you get yourself onto the maps. That when people are looking for a sales recruiter in London and that’s what you do you want? you know one of the voice-prompted Alexa or series who probably all going to pipe up now. To read out that company’s name and then the other one obviously important Google my business if you’re not if you’re not updating Google my business, you’re listing which is free regularly and posting content to that. Just like you do.

21:49.73

Nicole

Social platform, you’re missing huge opportunities there because Google owns Google so there are a few. There are few of mine anyway.

21:57.49

ThinkinCircles

Some great tips stuff I didn’t even know to be honest I didn’t know the stuff around the for that natural language.so that’s some’s some great tips. So, a follow-on question from that. Really and then I and then I will let you go is, is again you mentioned job Boards. Surely, the goal is if you’ve got your website doing what it’s meant to be doing you got your se doing what you? what? it’s meant to be doing. You know how much reliable how much reliability should be putting on to sticking our stuff on the job board because we really want to attract direct traffic. So where do we? What’s the situation.

22:33.97

ThinkinCircles

Do we do you know? do we really want to as recruiters want our websites to be taking over that branded traffic away from the job boards in time if we’re doing it properly is that is that that is that the goal.

22:48.44

Nicole

Ideally, I mean I think there’s always going to be a place for commercial job boards. But I think it’s finding which ones are working for you as a brand. Ideally yeah, you do increase the traffic that comes through to your website because that’s your brand. And at the end of the day if you ever want to sell or get someone to invest or whatever else. That’s your storefront. You know that’s you. So, from a perspective of investment. You know, creating a campaign page and maybe. Doing some advertising pay-per-click advertising that drives traffic back to a high converting landing page can be very beneficial for a brand and people should give that sort of thing a go because it can create good uses. But yeah, all traffic should be driven back to your website. Each recruiter should be sharing jobs onto their social media platforms from the job ad itself. So that click results in people coming back to that job on the website where hopefully then you can engage them with lots of other great things. I think it’s a bit of a necessary evil people have been trying to move away from paying for job boards that keep putting their prices up all the time. But if it works for you and it makes sense, and the conversion rate makes sense. Why not you know? But your brand is the most important.

24:05.57

ThinkinCircles

You sure I couldn’t agree more? It’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you this morning your afternoon. Hopefully we’ll have you back in the future. But for now.to say? Thank you very much if anybody wants to know any more about Shazamme or you guys will include all your details in the show notes. But Nicole Rick thank you very much.

24:28.74

Nicole

Thanks so much James.

24:29.75

Rick

Thank you, have a great day.

Connect with Nicole here.

Connect with Rick here.

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Listen to Peter’s episode here.

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The Marketing Rules Podcast In Writing: Peter Shafer

by Julia Fras | Dec 1, 2022 | The Marketing Rules Podcast in Writing

In recruitment marketing, we have data at our fingers tips but making sense of it and using it effectively is the tricky part.

Joining James Whitelock this week is Peter Shafer, VP at Prosper Group. Peter has years of experience data crunching marketing out put and takes us through what to measure, how to collect it and some real-world examples.

Podcast Transcript:

00:02.34

ThinkinCircles

Welcome back everybody to The Marketing Rules Podcast. It is my pleasure to be joined by Peter Shafer. Peter, I asked you before we’ve started recording to how I would describe you and I think you know I think we settled on data strategists Data Collection Strategist Marketing data strategists. Something to do with data marketing and strategy it all seems to fit in in in your in your background and your expertise, but could you maybe describe your bill you’re about your background and yourself to our audience.

00:32.90

Peter Shafer

Absolutely and James it’s great to be with you. Thank you for the invitation. my expertise really focuses in on 3 areas 1 is using data to make decisions whether they’re strategic or practical tactical decisions during you know day-to-day work. , the second is how to use data in a more public way I worked with the Gallup poll and the Harris poll where that data went into news stories and went into promotions and different things like that and then the third is really to ah to help people understand how to. Capture and really begin to harness that data. You know as it comes in because there’s so many new data sources that come out or that there’s new data that you’re exposed to and you’re trying to figure out how to piece it into what you’re already doing so I work with a lot of clients around that and helping them understand the implications of those ah of those data and what.

01:24.23

ThinkinCircles

And so, I mean this must be a golden age for someone in in your line of work. You know since the yeah since the advent of big data with the air quotes if anyone’s you know you know and everybody’s more focused now on data-driven decisions on.

01:24.23

Peter Shafer

It means to use those data.

01:33.82

Peter Shafer

Yes.

01:41.80

ThinkinCircles

I Know we’re going to talk a little around marketing and data-drain marketing. But you know this must be just you must be in your element write them in it because we got so much data at our fingertips.

01:50.33

Peter Shafer

You’re right, and I think it’s both. I Think the golden age is a way a very good way to describe it. one thing that that does surprise me is just the continued you know accumulation of more and more and more data and I Think. In many ways while that’s exciting. It’s also very much overwhelming to somebody in marketing right now because there’s so many different data sources that they can pull on and the question becomes what’s the highest quality. What’s the best indicator for us to follow because even in so even just using 1 software Package. You could get multiple reads of data on the same topic and sometimes it’s vole metrics. Sometimes it’s you know qualitative data but it I think that the big challenge is just really getting comfortable with the idea that there is.

02:38.62

ThinkinCircles

Well, this is going to be amazing I mean is there such a thing as too much data, right? because we were swamp by on a daily basis, right? and I think it’s just I think and again we can touch on this is one of the things that I think a lot of you know, general businesses find and marketers find is that.

02:39.35

Peter Shafer

So much data. Oh, absolutely.

02:55.45

ThinkinCircles

You know we just don’t know where to start. There’s just so much data and then you know that’s one point and then the second point is well. What do I do with all that data. How do I put that into form that makes sense that from a marketeer’s perspective that generates return on investment that proves return on investment just to do something with it.

03:01.24

Peter Shafer

Right.

03:12.34

ThinkinCircles

So, I mean maybe that’s a good place to start is just you know you’ve got all this. There’s all this data out there. Where do we start? What? what? What? yeah.

03:19.34

Peter Shafer

Yeah, and its ah it’s an excellent question James and I think, you know a good starting point is just to really accept the premise that I have all this data at my disposal whether it’s data within my organization or data within another part of the organization that I can access to, but you really need to start with. Okay, what do I want to find out from the data. What is it that I that I need to either understand or, use that data to make a decision on and I think one of the things that I talk about a lot with clients is that. They expect when they get a data report or they get the data that there’s this big shiny bright yellow answer right in front of them and it doesn’t exist sometimes they have to piece it together and, you know so it becomes a puzzle that they work with and ah you know could be a Rubik’s cube. It could be a thousand-piece puzzle. But. It’s not as simple as here’s a data point. Go do what you must do.

04:16.30

ThinkinCircles

It and is done and is that is there a reason then that should businesses start looking at, you know, either is you know, bringing on someone like yourself or having someone in internally that can just manage this data or understands data because I think that’s the problem. 1 of the problems as well, right? you just.

04:27.98

Peter Shafer

Yeah, yeah, I think you’re absolutely, right? And that’s one of the recommendations that we make is that at least there is somebody in the organization that is the champion of the data that understands not only where it comes from and what’s available. But then also how to use it and they don’t necessarily have to be a quote unquote data scientist. They just must understand how these different pieces of data can work together and sometimes that’s a CEO type person but oftentimes you know in in organizations that, it’s just somebody who is keeping and taking care of the flows of data so that I can understand it. Or that we can understand it, but I think you’re right if 1 of the best practices that I’ve seen is that you appoint a champion who sits and that’s one of their jobs is to really focus in and home in on that data.

05:18.30

ThinkinCircles

What’s the job description look for like for some of that because again as a marketed my interest would be what can I I’m not that interested in I want to see how it could be creatively used right? What can I tease out that and instead of just looking at it as a set of numbers and saying.

05:31.31

Peter Shafer

Yep.

05:34.80

ThinkinCircles

Right? The numbers mean this this and this like ah like an accountant but creative with that. You know So how you know what that person looks like that.

05:36.70

Peter Shafer

It’s an excellent question James, and one of the things this is this is ah something that hasn’t really caught up yet and that is our own individual education around how to use the numbers is so far behind the vole of. Data that we get so when you ask that question about what type of person you know, even some of the people that coming out of MBA School have only been exposed to it probably about that much. It’s not you know so it’s still developing what I would say is you want to look for 3 personality types. One would be. Somebody who is what I call a data detective who likes to be able to work with the different information piece it together and come up with it and that might be somebody who’s got great ideation skills. It might be somebody who’s able to pick out but that detective ideas are one that that seems to resonate with people. The second is that the person should have at least some analytical backgrounds and be comfortable with speaking and writing and talking about what the numbers mean and you know I see this a lot. You know there’s a group of people that are you know in banking and in other industries where they have you know, just. Incredible amounts of data that know how to handle and that and they can be that those skills can be transferred over into other organizations somewhat easily so that analytical analyst type person. The third is somebody who is just hyper organized on things simply because they need to be able to prioritize and.

07:08.46

Peter Shafer

Be able to put these pieces together in ah in a more structured way I worked with a person several years ago in ah in one of the polling firms that I was with, and they were super diligent about being able to say okay this data goes here and this data goes here and that organization. Really helped our organization then use the data effectively both in terms of day to-day decisions but also in strategic direction this is where we think the market is headed. So, you know again, ah 1 of the things that that you know this is a fourth one I guess would be somebody that is. At least comfortable with uncertainty because at the outset of many of these projects even you know, even if you’re doing something that is a rigorous and structured project. is that there is some uncertainty and you’ve got to be okay with that and not to jump to a conclusion before.

08:02.94

ThinkinCircles

I will it just occurred to me that obviously the majority audiences we’re talking to today are in the ah you’re all in the hr and recruitment space and, there are some nuances around data usage within that space obviously personal data. We’ve got.

08:03.15

Peter Shafer

We get to the before we get to the data itself.

08:20.93

Peter Shafer

Yes.

08:22.98

ThinkinCircles

Hang-ups from the from EU legislation GDPR as we call it over here. How does that affect your usage of data. Do we? How careful do we need to be, and I know this is more legal aspects but that must influence the datasets. You can use. You know if you can’t if you’re going to use so much of it.

08:27.28

Peter Shafer

Yep.

08:42.21

Peter Shafer

Yeah, it’s a brilliant question and I think it’s a struggle that is people have defaulted more to being overly cautious than to being you know, maybe riskier with the data. You know first is that I and this is a finding that I find interesting but not.

08:42.31

ThinkinCircles

It must affect the outcome right.

09:00.61

Peter Shafer

Surprising and that is that most people understand, and most employees understand as well that there is a numeric value that they can put on their data and that they are aware of their own rights privacy rights in this? The first thing you do when you’re working with this. Type of hr data is strip out and anonymize as much of the personal information as you can and that is you know, step one and it’s the biggest step that helps legally and I think you know at least here in the United States any of these quantifications become discoverable if there is an hr action down the road or if there’s some other you know issue that pops up. , the second is that in those groupings. , after stripping out that personal information. If. There’s anything in there that could be sensitive or ah, a data point that might be, leading down the path and I’ll yeah, I’ll use this example, if you have age as still a variable in that set once you’ve stripped out everything age could be. I mean that that could be a problem area, so you want to make sure that some of those hot button areas like age and gender and things like some of those demographics. You know you protect for as much as possible, and the third is.

10:19.87

Peter Shafer

If you do get into an area where it is a sensitive topic you limit the number of people who can access the data and you limit the number of people who can manipulate and work with the data and oftentimes that’s the simplest step because you can say okay, this is this is what we need to find out. You know, let’s say we’re trying to find out new. A salary range for a new position that we’re hiring. You know that the fewer the people that have access to that that data the better and usually it’s said OKAY, 1 person can go over here and do that, but you lock it down as much as possible. Those are the 3 areas that I’ve seen have been successful. But you’re right I mean you know more and more people are aware of how valuable and how much say they have and how their data is used.

11:07.69

ThinkinCircles

I’m just thinking of those of questions to want to ask you Peter as we as we go on online. So, I’ve got I’ve got I’ve got another one for you and again I’m trying to refer this back to some of the questions that we’ve been asked with some of our clients, and I know ah the audience will probably have these around quality of data and cleansing of data and. And how you? How you tackle that right? because, you know if you’re pulling data from multiple sources. How do your sanity check that you know you know how you know? does it need to be peer reviewed data does it need to come from multiple sources that equate together I don’t know you know how do we.

11:34.20

Peter Shafer

Yes.

11:43.45

ThinkinCircles

And do we do that.

11:44.30

Peter Shafer

Yeah, it’s ah it’s a good question and data hygiene is a big issue right now throughout almost every industry category I know specifically in the market research area. It. It is but, you just said something that that struck me and that is that. I am an advocate for, a casual peer review just to make sure that that what we’re asking and what we’re thinking about and how we’re asking or what we’re using the data for is at least tested or seen by somebody who is not involved directly in the project and that that.

12:18.47

Peter Shafer

Checkpoint that simple you know; hey this does meet the litmus test. Yeah, I’ve this might be observable in the public is usually a good step and I think people breeze by that or they go to the person who’s the closest to the project and ask the same thing but, you know it. The 1 thing I would say is this and the peer review part of it there. There is actually and I know that you all know this in academia a very rigorous process for that. and that’s not we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about just hey it on its surface does this. Appear what you do 1 thing and you mentioned it a second ago as well is that if you are looking to answer a bigger question. You may come. It may not necessarily reflect what is going on in the world right? this minute so you need to just account for that. There could be a surprise answer there or, there could be something that you see that is not necessarily in what would be in the normal course of business. For example, if you’re a staffing firm and you post a particular position and you see an overabundance of people applying for that and you start looking through the demographics and it becomes clear that. More women than men do are applying for this or there’s something along those lines is that that may you know that may trigger a different way to go or different decision-making process. So, you know if possible don’t start jumping to conclusions until you’ve had a chance to sort through some of the data. you know I see this happen quite frequently and yeah and I know you do James too is that here’s my hypothesis. Let me go out and find the data to support it versus here’s the data and let me build the hypothesis from what I see so.

14:02.78

ThinkinCircles

Yeah, yeah, exactly? Yeah, exactly a great point. Let let’s talk around what we were going to talk around which is around marketing data. Sorry I got a guy got completely taken away by ins you.

14:11.43

Peter Shafer

Ah, yes, no.

14:16.24

ThinkinCircles

So, year’s shedding light onto the how to effectively use data when building marketing campaigns and marketing strategies and I guess the first thing is you know again, come back to where we start but more around marketing data what you know what? what should we be? What should have been what. Data should we be looking for in the first place you know so.

14:33.66

Peter Shafer

Yeah, the great thing about all these new platforms and software packages James is many of them already have pre-built-in analytics packages with them so that you can look through and you know even just transactionally look through what is happening. So, the first step is just to make sure that you understand what those analytics are saying or what they’re providing you. You know? and I’ll use this example because it’s a simple one. you know, click through rates where you do a post, and you click through and then there’s the next action and you look. You know that that is a helpful way to see from end to end. How. Ah, process might work and oftentimes you know, even though that might be a microcosm It gives you an idea of how the process is going to flow and almost all the marketing and data analytics packages have some type of ah you know rudimentary metrics like that which are helpful. It’s just a matter of tapping into them. The second though and this is a little bit more is that becoming familiar and okay with some of the terminology that use. So, for example, clickthrough rate which is always you know car those numbers sometimes are often surprisingly small but I you know. The more important part of that analytic is okay is there is there something that’s going once that clickthrough happens is there a next level action and I think that that so oftentimes we get focused on the number and not the next progression into that number. So, I would say for anybody that’s starting this out or really beginning to dive deeper into it.

16:08.44

Peter Shafer

Don’t be too surprised if you see smaller numbers. It’s okay, what you want to do is to be able to discern the difference between what that action is and what the next level behaviour is and that oftentimes is you know you just need to follow the data through the through the pipeline.

16:25.22

ThinkinCircles

And a lot of times in marketing. We have what I think I describe but I think a lot of people describe as vanity metrics as well, right? The things around you know the number of views you might be getting the number of clicks on something I know this is specific to social media, which is very, so you know very nice to what we’re discussing. But.

16:31.42

Peter Shafer

Yes.

16:42.86

ThinkinCircles

You know, do they do are they vanity metrics. Can they be useful you know because there’s not much. We can consistently glean from that or maybe there is maybe you can shed a bit of light and.

16:54.80

Peter Shafer

I you know it’s ah it’s ah it’s a good question and there there’s no correct answer to it number 1 is they’re always going to be vanity metrics simply because we must for job preservation if nothing else.

17:08.93

Peter Shafer

But in in marketing I Do think that some of the vanity metrics need to be refreshed on a regular basis because if you’re for example, if you’re using Net Promoter Score which is you know everybody in the you know seems to flock to that Score you know. That that oftentimes needs to be relooked at and refreshed and whatever the second is that you from my standpoint at least is that ah you just need to make certain that whatever vanity metric you have or whatever those metrics are is that they are clearly. Clearly explained and supported by the data because that is if you’re going to get in trouble. That’s where it’s going to wind up you know because you’re going to be out there with a number that just doesn’t seem right or you’re going to be. You know, too self-promoting with the number like you know 4 out of 5 X Do this.

17:49.73

ThinkinCircles

Yeah, yeah.

17:59.33

ThinkinCircles

So, yeah.

18:02.70

Peter Shafer

You know you just want to make sure that you’re really standing on thick ice with those numbers.

18:06.84

ThinkinCircles

That So that’s interesting. You bring up, net promoter scores but and then that’s ah, a formula That’s not that’s only now starting to be used a bit more within staffing and recruitment space and then I got the sense that maybe you weren’t.

18:17.88

Peter Shafer

Yep.

18:20.78

ThinkinCircles

Necessarily a fan maybe or it’s too. You know it’s too Broad doesn’t really give you much data. So yeah, so.

18:24.40

Peter Shafer

It’s yeah and that’s the that’s the real downside James is that is that it’s so broad and it’s so, ah, easily misinterpreted I guess for a lack of better way to put it or there’s a lot of weight that’s put on the Naps Score there’s some other questions that usually go into, ask you know that roll into that number. But you know again, when I work at Gallup, we came up with what was called the q 12 and everybody would always question well is it is it just 12 is it. You know and.

18:43.27

ThinkinCircles

Yeah.

18:55.49

Peter Shafer

And I think sometimes when you get into those s you know you can vanity metrics or those hyper you know, like 1 one off metrics. You run the danger of not having, a true score of where you are, and I could see.

19:01.20

ThinkinCircles

Yeah.

19:11.52

Peter Shafer

You know that that number if that becomes the Holy Grail or becomes the it that you know it. It does have an implication for the way you market the way you position yourself the way you brand yourself all those different types of things and so you know I’m not a big fan of it only because there’s so many more.

19:17.88

ThinkinCircles

Now.

19:30.70

ThinkinCircles

Yeah.

19:31.16

Peter Shafer

Elements to just that you know to the branding and marketing and positioning than just that 1 question.

19:37.49

ThinkinCircles

So, follow-up question then for anyone out there who is using Net Promoter Score looking to use a net promoter Score You know what? what we could do different. How could we you know how we could do this better than how could we get more from it. You know.

19:52.51

Peter Shafer

Yeah, I think 2 things number 1 is that when you see the score check it monthly or check it on a quarterly basis 1 but look at the numbers behind it that make that up. , and usually those are easily accessible. , and so you want to make sure that that you know you’re just seeing what’s behind the curtain versus just what’s in front of the curtain. , the second is that I would say probably once every six months run a counter question to that Net Promoter Score to see if there is an app you know Ah, ah, something that. Might be moving in a different direction that the net promoter score is not picking up. you know for example because the basis of the net promoter score is likelihood to recommend in in some businesses. It’s very difficult for, let’s say in the staffing group.

20:34.80

ThinkinCircles

Yeah.

20:46.11

Peter Shafer

In that consideration set for a particular position. So how could I recommend you go here, or you know so I think in 1 regard that you know it’s at least a baseline to work from but don’t make it the absolute and look at the numbers behind it and you know and work with it from there.

21:01.78

ThinkinCircles

Yeah, it seems to be you know like I said I think it so it seems to be very broad, and a catchall and I think it can be, misinterpreted to try and as ah as a complete representation of your business or even grandly down to a certain person when you.

21:18.80

Peter Shafer

Exactly.

21:18.98

ThinkinCircles

1 question is never going to be enough in those situations. Yeah, you know ah Peter I do you know what we’re going to have you back at some point because we can because we can. We could talk about this all day we haven’t really touched the side of what I wanted to what we were Guingona talk about but we you know what? well make it much more structured next time and we’ll come up with you know, but.

21:24.40

Peter Shafer

Oh, awesome.

21:35.50

Peter Shafer

Excellent, okay.

21:38.83

ThinkinCircles

But in in all honesty I think that you got ah you know a huge knowledge around this space, and I think a lot of a lot of ah ideas there that you know the audience will really tune into, so we’ll figure out another day for you to come back and we’ll ah we’ll tackle. We might see if we can specifically look at the more around a recruitment and staffing space.

21:47.99

Peter Shafer

Awesome.

21:58.20

ThinkinCircles

We will obviously include all your details in the show notes. So, if anybody wants to reach out and get in content, they can, but for now, Peter Shafer, thank you very much.

22:03.93

Peter Shafer

Terrific, James. Thank you very much, great to see you.

Connect with Peter here.

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