8 Leaders Share Their Insights: How to Leverage Content Marketing In the Battle for Tech Talent

I was honored to share my perspective in The Martec's article on leveraging content marketing to attract tech talent.

Here's a snippet of my insight:

What advice do you have for creating quality content and measuring its effectiveness for attracting talent? 

Creating quality content is about answering the questions your audience is having. Website data, online analysis, and evaluating your current strategy are great places to start identifying where there are gaps or unanswered questions. By doing this, you’re able to draw candidates through your funnel with confidence. 

You also want to ensure you are staying competitive, so regular analysis of the industry is important. The Facebook Ads Library is a great place to see other employment ads companies are running, allowing insight into what they are promoting as their value proposition. 

To really “wow” candidates, you have to think outside the box. What types of interesting events or activations can you host? These give people the chance to experience your brand on a physical level, building a stronger bond organically. 

To measure the effectiveness, traditional metrics and user behavior flows can be applied to understand the role content pieces play in the application process. If you don’t have the data capabilities to properly track the content your candidates are consuming, surveys are a great way to find what worked (or didn’t). Including a question in your new-hire survey such as “What stories did you see on our website or social media that influenced your decision to join our team?” can provide some insight.

Give us an example of the kinds of messages, benefits or philosophies you'd be able to showcase with content marketing.

No matter what your message is, there are foundational parts of content marketing that need to be applied to your strategy. Content marketing is identifying audiences, formats and distribution channels that align with your goals, which in talent acquisition typically focus on employer branding and recruitment marketing to drive awareness of opportunities to qualified talent. 

You need to know what your message is, the audience receiving it, how and where to reach them, and how to measure your efforts. One incredible example that comes to mind is how Perficient showed its commitment to being a values-driven company that gives back. 

Giving back to the communities in which we live and work at Perficient is important, and we used a kindness campaign called “Make a December Difference” to empower each of our almost 5,000 colleagues around the world to create a moment of kindness by giving them the equivalent of $100 to simply do something kind for someone. 

The stories our colleagues submitted were more powerful than anyone ever could’ve imagined! They ranged from shining the light on hundreds of different non-profits, to getting creative by challenging each other to match donations, to several of our Indian colleagues even pooling money together and donating a dialysis machine to people in need! This campaign allowed each person to personalize the way they gave back and allowed Perficient to create a ripple of kindness throughout the world. Once we collected these stories, we were able to format them for the channels we were promoting them through, transforming them into content such as video interviews, company blogs, or social media posts. 

These days, what do you think it takes for a company to stand out for tech talent, and what doesn't cut it anymore?

Standing out is promoting the potential to maximise qualities the candidate sees, or would like to see, in themself. Standing out is subjective to the viewer and with the varying complexities within each of us, there are few chances to create a story that identifies with everyone, nor is that concept realistic. What is realistic is promoting the ways your company can actually improve the candidate’s quality of life and align the candidate with others who share the same values. 

By showcasing what is authentic to your company, you allow candidates to identify if they are a good fit – or not. Storytelling helps emotionally convey feelings like trust, curiosity, and comradery, which produces more connection with a candidate than words on a page ever will. Tactically, stories from long-term employees stand out. 

There will always be something flashy to grab one’s attention, but it’s how companies leverage those tools for their own employees and not just potential candidates that make you stand out. It’s important to remember that just as much as content can bring people to your company, it can also help repel them – in a good way! Not every company is meant for everybody. There are different flavours of culture and philosophies and, thankfully, enough to go around. 

Showing exactly who you are as a company and who you want to be (and how that candidate can help achieve that vision) allows people to self-select in or out, bringing better-qualified talent through your marketing efforts. 

Our society is also demanding a shifting of perspective. We are more collective, global, and connected. In my own case, I’m not thinking about how I can make Perficient stand out – I’m thinking of how I can help people see themselves here and thriving. From the candidate’s perspective, it’s about where you can see yourself doing the best work.