Talent Marketing as a profession and a career path [podcast #35]

Susanna Rantanen talent marketing as a profession and a career path

Have you ever thought about talent marketing as a profession and an actual career path for you? Instead of doing some random bits of talent marketing here and there, what if you could spend all of your work days focusing on recruitment marketing or development of employer image or actual employer branding?

Would that inspire you? It inspires me and my colleagues, and many of our customers a lot!

Why talent marketing needs to step up the game?

Frankly, I don’t see any other type of marketing communication with a stronger growth potential than talent marketing. It has been evident for years due to the drastic changes we have experienced and seen taking over the work life.

It is no news anymore that the digital talent has a strong voice. Much stronger than most employers today. Information is no longer hidden in the hands of the employers. Work can be done from any corner of the world with an internet connection expanding the competition for the same talent.

The digital talent is a warrior who doesn’t need an employer. It’s the business who needs them.

The digital talent is a warrior. They are able to pick and choose who they want to work with. They have skills, competencies, capabilities and the right attitude to succeed in a rapidly changing environment. And the younger they are, the more they also place their decisions on values.

They expect transparency, authenticity, a purpose they believe in and excellent leadership from the workplace they eventually choose. Just like customers who often make their purchase decisions way before the sales person contacts them, job seekers do the same.

Your business needs to step up your over all employer brand -game in order to be even noticed, much else considered. And for this, professional talent marketers are needed.

Learn more about what makes a company a Talent Magnet >>

What is talent marketing as a profession?

Let’s think of “talent marketing” as an umbrella term for all marketing and communication activities targeted towards talents as audiences.

A talent is a common term used for an individual when we think of that person as a current employee, former employee, job seeker, job candidate, an applicant or for example a graduate. “Talent” in this refers to an individuals role as opposed to the communicator or marketer, who represents the party offering jobs and career opportunities.

When we want to approach a talent audience with our messages, we use some or a vast array of marketing and communications tactics and tools in order to get our message across. However, most of this work still today is done part time or irregularly without much of consistency, a plan, not to mention a strategy.

A professional talent marketer has a plan to follow, goals and objectives to reach, resources to do a good job and makes a consistent effort to deliver the expected results.

What kinds of tasks are involved in this work?

The most common form of marketing directed to the talent audiences is recruitment process related marketing, advertising and communication.

A typical task in a recruitment process is to formulate the hiring need and offer into a job post, and then market and advertise that job post to the target audiences.

Over the past couple of years employer branding has started to take up more and more space in the talks of HR, recruiting and some marketing professionals. Here, we can see company career pages becoming more and more professional and content-heavy.

Another common example is event marketing. HR & recruiters have for years attended various types of fairs and events in order to connect with talent audiences.

However, talent marketing today is much more expansive than writing and promoting job posts or attending recruitment fairs. The online environment is expanding in front of our eyes with a multitude of opportunities to select and use in order to find, connect, engage with and build a relationship with talents as an audience.

What is professional talent marketing?

While it is simple, easy and very straight forward to set up a business account on a social media and start posting content, that is hardly ever a professional way to do talent marketing.

Even though the tools are the same, many of the media are the same, professional talent marketing has a purpose, goals, measurable objectives and an intent to get a return on the time spent and possible money invested in doing the work. This, in my opinion is an area where there is the most to learn and the most need to develop skills and competencies.

A talent marketing professional understands the 4 P’s. They understand the difference between PR, communication, marketing and advertising. And they recognize where their own strengths and motivations are when it comes to professional talent marketing.

What makes talent marketing as a career path so inspiring is that it really is a huge landscape to embark into, to develop one’s knowledge, skills and learn which avenue exactly is the one where your own super powers lie.

In this episode of Building a Modern Employer Brand -podcast, we talk about talent marketing as a profession and a potential career path for you. I share how I got into talent marketing nearly 20 years ago and what I recommend as a great starting point for your career in talent marketing.

Episode-length: 27:26 min

WHERE TO FIND THIS PODCAST:

SOUNDCLOUD | SPOTIFY | APPLE | STITCHER APP

At Emine, we have started to build a new business venture to teach professional talent marketing for all aspiring talent marketing professionals. This will be an online school hosting an array of courses in professional talent marketing.

To be in the front line, you are welcome to join the @talentmarketingpro on Instagram, where you can follow and engage with me in the process of building this educational platform and learning more about what professional talent marketing is.

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