Marketing your job

I've gotten a few links from marketers who are struggling to find amazing people and working to do it with outbound videos.

This is part of a larger trend, which is realizing that an amazing hire is worth far more than a mediocre one, or even a very good one.

My take?

There's a difference between being noticed and succeeding.

Sometimes you need to be noticed far and wide in order to succeed. That's why some TV ads for low-involvement products are noisy or funny or over the top.

Often though, especially for something like a job, I think that sacrificing your message in order to get noticed is a mistake. Making a video that tries to be funny in order to spread doesn't necessarily get you the right applicants.

Here's what's missing from the hiring equation: organizations try to treat jobs like commodities and as a result, often end up treating themselves as commodities. All jobs are the same, our job is a little closer and we pay a little better, call us. Sure, companies all brag about the work environment and benefits and such, but when they come right down to it, they're not so different.

But what if you were different?

Just as a great product becomes remarkable--not because of the marketing claims, but because it really is worth talking about--a great job can be the same sort of thing. I'd use the video in a different way. Instead of trying to be funny viral, I'd try to be honest viral. Let me really understand who the boss is going to be, what the office is like, what the work is like. Sell the job, not the job opening.

Of course, this isn't an easy thing to do, but neither is marketing anything else.