Using Blogs For Recruitment: Creating Content That Jobseekers Can't Ignore

I’ve seen blogs be more successful than dedicated employer career pages.

But they do take time. The content needs to demonstrate real expertise, experience, authority and trust. This shouldn’t really be attempted with an AI written article.

And you must be patient. Whilst you can promote the content on social media platforms and LinkedIn for short and quick bursts of attraction, the long-term goal is to optimise the content for SEO. For this reason the best content is typically ‘evergreen’, so rather than writing about a one-off job you’re recruiting for, you’d instead showcase more of your company culture, values and industry expertise.

Here are a few content examples:

• Highlight company culture. Use your blog to share stories about team events, employee spotlights and other initiatives that reflect your company’s values. This helps candidates get a sense of what it’s like to work at your company.
• Employee testimonials. Feature blog posts written by current employees sharing their experiences working at your company. These can cover the work environment, projects they’re working on, career growth opportunities and overall employee experience.
• Educational content. Provide content related to your industry. This demonstrates your company’s expertise and thought leadership. This approach can attract candidates who are passionate about your industry.
• Recruitment spotlight. Beyond writing about specific job opportunities, explain your recruitment process, highlight the skills and qualities you value, and provide tips on how they can stand out in during the application process.

Once you’ve written the content:

• Include visual images. A lot of online communication is as much ‘interruption’ than it is informing. Incorporating images, infographics and possibly even videos (if you have the time and budget), can make your blog more engaging.
• Tag posts. Most blog platforms allow you to categories or tag posts so they are easy for jobseekers to find collections of content. Create a simple tag such as <careers] and apply it to all related content.
• Enable interactions. Enable comments on your blog and respond to them. This fosters engagement, allows you to provide additional information, and may spur new ideas for other blog posts. But be warned, due to ‘comment spam’ (where people try to get links in comments for link-building), always setup comments so that they are approved by you first before being shown. This additional control also allows you to control the quality and type of content shown.
• Promote on social media. This will expand the reach of your content.
• Measure engagement. Keep track of simple website traffic. The most important will be time spent on a page. This will help you understand if your content is really valuable enough.

A company I’ve seen use blogs really well in recruitment is endjin. Throughout there is lots of engaging educational content that demonstrates their expertise and thought leadership. Click on the <apprenticeship] tag and you’ll see  a great collection of excellent content written by their employees and directors. Having met the directors I get the sense they wanted to create and share this content because they’re so passionate about their business. The net benefits of more customers and jobseekers were a happy coincidence.

Because blog post for recruitment take so much time and are such a slow burner, it is near the bottom of my sources of candidates.