Build your recruitment brand

The monthly LIVE discussion show for recruiters
How to build a strong brand for your
recruitment business
5th March 2015
#RecHangout is supported by:

Hangout Participants
Mark Stephens
TRA + Smart Recruit
Online
Alan Whitford
Recruitment Strategist
Abtech + RCEURO
Louise Triance
Community Owner
UK Recruiter
Louis Welcomme
CRM Comms Manager
Colleague Software
Russell Amerasekera
Personal Branding
Epiphany
Clair Bush
Marketing Director
Broadbean Technology
Felix Wetzel
Marketing Executive
Candarine + eiTalent
Paul Sharpe
Marketing Director
InterQuest Group PLC

“Branding is the only medium consumers
engage with and it’s what they base their
decisions on”
Clair Bush
Marketing Director

“I prefer to talk about reputation and look at
where it comes from. Brand depends on the
people in a company – they make your
brand.”
Felix Wetzel
Marketing Executive

“Before social media marketers believed that
a brand could be controlled. We now have
no control over brands, we can only
influence its perception by a wider
audience.”
Felix Wetzel
Marketing Executive

“There is a massive convergence at the moment
going on between the marketing space and the
recruitment space and I think there’s not many
organizations that I’ve spoken to that understand
the importance that marketing has got to play in
recruitment.”
Paul Sharpe
Marketing Director

Russell Amerasekera
Personal Branding
Epiphany
“I think the recruitment industry is very un-
imaginative when it comes to taking itself to
market. Very few invest in their personal brand in
an environment where it’s very difficult to
differentiate and not using the opportunity to sell
who you are as a person limits your ability to sell.”

“I think it’s really important that the agencies
themselves understand who they are so that
their brand is visible in the first instance. How
can their personality stand out? How can their
good work stand out if they don’t know internally
who they are and what they do?”
Clair Bush
Marketing Director

“The key is your business culture. Knowing
what you stand for, getting that right and then
recruiting the right people. Everything else in
terms of marketing and branding, would stem
from.”
Louis Welcomme
CRM Comms Manager
Colleague Software

“Recruitment bosses need to start letting their
consultants stand out. And if they don’t want
their personal brands and personal culture of
their employees to have a public face, they
might be recruiting the wrong people.”
Louis Welcomme
CRM Comms Manager
Colleague Software

“Three years ago we realized that the
proposition we had was quite confusing. We had
lots of different brands – there was no identity,
no meaning. For me it is about getting your
strategy right and being clear about what you’re
trying to stand for.”
Paul Sharpe
Marketing Director

Russell Amerasekera
Personal Branding
Epiphany
“It’s a bit of a misnomer to think that they have to
spend fortunes on a very expensive brand and
marketing strategy. I don’t believe you do. It’s
about going back to the essence of who you are
and what you’re about.”

Russell Amerasekera
Personal Branding
Epiphany
“One of the challenges I give to businesses is
‘What’s your story?’ I have a number of questions
I ask - the first one being, ‘What are you famous
for?’ ‘Why should I choose you?” and secondly,
“What do you stand for?” and most importantly,
“How do you want to be perceived?”

Russell Amerasekera
Personal Branding
Epiphany
“There is a wonderful quote that the chairman of
Amazon uses which describes beautifully what a
brand is, “Your personal brand is what people
say about you when you are not in the room?” If
you can’t answer that question I don’t believe
you can sell yourself.”

“You need to understand ‘Where are you
now?’ the second thing is ‘Where do you
want to go?’ the third thing is ‘How are you
different from other people?’ the fourth thing
is ‘Do I have the resources to do what I want
to do?’”
Felix Wetzel
Marketing Executive

Russell Amerasekera
Personal Branding
Epiphany
“One of the things that I see in the recruitment
industry more than any other industries is that
there is a tendency to try and mimic your client.
What a client really wants is for you to think
differently – to not think like them and to
challenge their thinking.”

Russell Amerasekera
Personal Branding
Epiphany
“Clients are saying, ‘I only want to hire people
who can challenge me – who can help me think
differently – who can add something different.’
It’s impossible to engage with clients in a
meaningful way if you’re trying to be exactly the
same as them.”

“From my perspective customers want
reassurance that we are able to connect and
engage with specialist talent – people who are
hard to find, difficult to get hold of in the market
who aren’t always on LinkedIn.”
Paul Sharpe
Marketing Director

“People don’t want to be sold to now. I hear
more and more of people turning off their
LinkedIn profiles because of recruiters. What
clients want to see is how you are engaging with
people. How are you representing yourself out in
the market place? How you are adding value?”
Paul Sharpe
Marketing Director

“What companies want to see and hear is how
you are engaging with people. How are you
representing yourself out in the market place?
How you are adding value to them as an
individual. How you are sharing information?”
Paul Sharpe
Marketing Director

“I like to look at what is happening outside of
recruitment, especially in inbound marketing.
Bringing such approaches and tools into the
recruitment space will revolutionise the way small
agencies work –they’ll be the ones that get to the
candidates faster and make the big wins.”
Clair Bush
Marketing Director

“When we’re talking to clients we try to suggest to
them that rather than trying to win minds during the
recruitment process they will be better to
concentrate on the candidates and give them a
better experience during the application process so
that they build a reputation up that they are a
Company that cares.”
Mark Stephens
TRA + Smart Recruit
Online

“The great thing about modern marketing methods
is that small businesses, especially niche
recruiters, can make a big impact. Speak to the
people in your niche, speak to bloggers, speak to
the content creators, speak to your candidates and
clients and ask them to create content for you.”
Louis Welcomme
CRM Comms Manager
Colleague Software

“You don’t need to write it all yourself - speak to
specialists and your employees – ask them to
write white-papers, ask them to come onto
webinar shows, ask them to write for your blog.
And then start to push the content out through
all your social networks and email.”
Louis Welcomme
CRM Comms Manager
Colleague Software

“Start to build relationships around the content
you’re creating and around what you, your
clients and your candidates, are interested in.
Rather than selling all the time start
conversations, online and at events, around
your content and expertise.”
Louis Welcomme
CRM Comms Manager
Colleague Software

“There are ghost writers out there who can help you
put articles together or you can do what Louis does
and pinch everybody else’s ideas. So it needn’t be
expensive is my message to everybody it’s about
understanding what you can do, it’s about using
content and it’s about building on it slowly.”
Paul Sharpe
Marketing Director

Russell Amerasekera
Personal Branding
Epiphany
“If you’re really going to make yourself stand
out it’s critical to have a point of view. Otherwise
you’re trying to put yourself in the same place
as the bigger companies you’ll just simply
loose. What is it you really want to say? What is
your point of view? And how do you stand out?”

“I think the marketing plan doesn’t need to be
complicated, it doesn’t need to be War & Peace,
and it could literally be “I’ve got an idea for getting
out there with a webinar but where else could I
take it?” Mind-map everything that you can do with
one bit of content and then once you’ve repeated
that a couple of times it becomes second nature.”
Clair Bush
Marketing Director

“You fall into a routine of ‘I must blog about this’ or
‘Tweet about that,’ ‘I’m going to follow some more
people today’ and then your network grows – so it
becomes by virtue a cycle that continues, no day is
the same. It means that I’m constantly learning but
also working on what I’ve done yesterday and
moving that forward as well.”
Clair Bush
Marketing Director

“From some of the research that I’ve seen the vast
majority of consultants interest in that candidate is
minimal. Candidates are saying, ‘Why are you
contacting me?’ Because no one has contacted me
in the last two or three years and you only ever ring
me or contact me when you want something!’”
Paul Sharpe
Marketing Director

“With recruitment we are dealing with a luxury
product. If I'm an employer with a small
business and I’m paying someone £30,000 -
that’s a luxury item. If you bought a new car at
£30,000 you would be treated completely
differently.”
Felix Wetzel
Marketing Executive

Russell Amerasekera
Personal Branding
Epiphany
“Whilst most businesses both small and large
seem to be comfortable about selling their
propositions, selling their products, selling what
they do for customers – there is a real culture of
reluctance – particularly in this country around
selling ourselves.”

“There are still millions of adverts out there coming
from a client perspective. The few agencies doing it
the other way around are not just doing it through
the job-boards – they are doing it through social
media, they have their own websites and they’re
positioning themselves in front of
candidates.”
Clair Bush
Marketing Director

“It’s less about the representation, for me it comes
back to how you use content to engage with
people. I think if you do that from a candidate
perspective people will perceive that you are
adding value, they’ll see that you’re credible and
you’re trustworthy. Then they are more likely to do
business with you.”
Paul Sharpe
Marketing Director

Russell Amerasekera
Personal Branding
Epiphany
“We’ve got to make everything sexy these days
because that’s the currency we are dealing with.
I think to make recruitment sexy it’s all about
tone of voice. I’m amazed we can talk about
people in a way that seems so utterly
impersonal.”

Russell Amerasekera
Personal Branding
Epiphany
“Recruitment deals in human emotions. It deals
in the ability to communicate who we are and
what we’re about. And yet so often you guys
reduce it to transactional language. It almost de-
humanises the process.”

Russell Amerasekera
Personal Branding
Epiphany
“If you want to make recruitment sexy it’s about
really connecting on a basic human level and
talking about people, talking about emotions,
talking about stories and really brining what you
do to life in a much more empathetic way.”

Russell Amerasekera
Personal Branding
Epiphany
“Whenever I talk to people who work for
corporates they say the same thing to me – “I’m
not a number” “I want to be treated like I’m a
human being” And until the recruitment industry
adjusts its tone of voice to reflect that I think
again its missing a huge opportunity.”

Russell Amerasekera
Personal Branding
Epiphany
“If you really want to stand out, if you want to
build your business in a different way, simple
language - human emotions - is a very good
place to start, the ability to be able to talk as
normal people talk, as customers talk.”

“I think we’ve got it wrong for now. I think we are
still going through a transition in terms of what is
happening outside the industry. I think unfortunately
we are all quite guilty of reverting back to type.
When it comes to Monday morning it’s about
getting the deals and getting the cheque in the till.”
Paul Sharpe
Marketing Director

“Over the last 3 years we have gone from one to
five people in the marketing team – so we have a
great team who is absolutely brilliant at what they
do. They work very closely with the business - they
advise people how to not only represent
themselves but also to represent the brand, and
what people can do to connect with talent.”
Paul Sharpe
Marketing Director

Russell Amerasekera
Personal Branding
Epiphany
“A really clever brand strategy really needs to be
constantly evolving. You’ve got to recognise that
brands evolve as we evolve as human beings
and therefore you may have looked at your
brand a year ago but a year later the world can
look very different.”

@media2knight
Best of the #RecHangout Twitter Buzz
Encourage your engaged EEs and new
hires to review your business on
@Glassdoor!
Encourage your brand ambassadors to
share their story on social media...very
cost effective marketing strategy!
To get in front of passive talent, recruiters
must be marketers!
Culture is KEY for employment branding!
Do you really know yours? Start there.
Can #Rec be sexy? We SHOULD
have amazing hats, bt let's focus
on the message, language & be
personal, its a 'people' industry
It truly is integral to focus on your
audience, stay focused, stay
genuine and be true #RecHangout
@Aida_Walsh

@louisetriance
Spot on with the #RecHangout
How do we make recruitment
sexy? Ditch the transactional
language and dehumanisation of
the process.
On the #rechangout
@EpiphanyRussell says to
promote yourself or your small
business brand you need a point of
view
@SarahHGordon1
Clair Bush hits the nail on the head
- candidate experience is how
people touch/judge your brand
Hasn't it always been said in
recruitment "people buy people"?
#rechangout says: Agencies need
to know what they stand for and
recruit people that match that -
then let their personal brands stand
out...

@vaidoshia
So true: your personal #brand is
what people say about you when
you are not in the room
#rechangout
The #businessstrategy must come
before the #brand - Who are you?
What makes you better than the
competition?
'the brand is not what you say
about yourself, its what your
audience says about you'
#RecHangout
@InterQuestGroup

Next #Rechangout
How are recruitment businesses attracting,
engaging and retaining their talent? Best Companies Special
2nd April – 1pm BST
Graeme Hubert – Co-founder of Consol Partners
Kieran Behan – Managing Director of Phaidon International
Adam Metherell – Commercial Director at ChapmanBlack
SIGN UP TO WATCH HERE

The Recruiters Hangout is a monthly, free discussion show, where special guests,
business owners and industry experts join our regular panel to share their top tips,
insights and advice with a live online audience.
The #RecHangout is hosted by Alan Whitford (RCEuro / Abtech
Partnership), Louis Welcomme (Colleague Software), Mark Stephens (The
Recruitment Alliance / Smart Recruit Online) and Louise Triance (UK Recruiter).
Want to take part? Call Louis on:
01603 735 932 - louis.welcomme@colleaguesoftware.com

Build your recruitment brand

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