How to ‘WOW’ with your personal brand when it comes to recruitment

WOW Recruitment co-founder, Emily McLeod, shares her top five tips to building and protecting your brand in the digital environment

Is the recruitment and staffing industry losing its personal touch? WOW Recruitment co-founder and director Emily McLeod believes the shift in online relationships and client inboxes full of hit-and-miss (mostly miss) CVs, means that disenchantment is rising.

“It is becoming a numbers game when it has always been about people because people connect with people. They don’t just want professional, they want real,” she said.

Trust plays an enormous role in decision-making and it cannot be built unless you are being your true authentic self and allowing people to connect with the real you in all your interactions.

It is the human element used by recruiters which builds your brand and connects with people not the justification of who they are in their role.

“It is the way someone is recognised and remembered,” Emily said. “If you think about your brand as a recruiter, I want to put emphasis on the fact that it is not about how you fit into the role as a recruiter, but it is about how the role of a recruiter fits with you as an individual.

“So why is it important? As recruiters, we are working in a competitive space, and we are working in a world where social selling has become the new norm. People are looking for social proof. You need to build your brand personality so that you can build awareness and familiarity.”

Emily has shared her top five tips for recruiters looking at building and protecting their brand.

1. Define your personal brand identity. One way is to use technology specialist and personal branding guru, String Nguyen’s, formula for personal branding. The 4 Vs – value, vision, visuals and voice. “You will have a higher degree of influence and will inspire action if you have your ‘why’ or vision at the core of the content you are posting,” she said.

2. Lead with why you do what you do. “Remember what drives you to do what you do is different to the recruiter or agency next to you,” she said. “When you lead with why, you trigger the green side of the brain which is emotional as opposed to the red side which is logical.”

3. Be authentic, the way you show up online needs to be aligned with how you are offline. Emily says your brand is who you are and if you are not genuine, you will get found out.

4. Create the social proof that you stand out and differentiate as a recruiter. “Leverage trusted review platforms like Sourcr and collect testimonials to use across the company website, social platforms and any branded material or proposals,” Emily said.

5. Consistency is key and you need to play the long game. It is not a short-term activity; you need to adapt a long-term mindset. Putting yourself out there occasionally is not effective. You need to be putting out content once a week as an absolute minimum.

WOW Recruitment has been receiving 16 new job leads a month, Emily says the success is coming from following those tips and by being active.

“It is going back to the basics, marketing 101 – the higher the brand awareness, the more likely the customer is to buy and is what businesses need to keep in mind,” she said.

“Our consultants have a KPI of doing one LinkedIn post per week. Creating that noise as a team leads to us being noticed by people in the market and getting inbound leads from businesses seeking staff while keeping us fresh in the minds of existing clients.”

Even during these difficult times, the WOW founder believes the industry needs to pull together with a united stance to move forward into the future.

One key aspect to achieve that is educating the market on the value recruiters add versus competing on price. Putting more focus on the human element in systemising, and leveraging technology and automation in processes to enable consultants to utilise their strengths.

“We need to work on building the next generation of recruiters because we have a talent shortage,” she said. “The need for the person-to-person interaction and relationship building piece will never be lost in recruitment and we need to ensure the next generation are well equipped.

“A good relationship builds loyalty, and your brand allows you that opportunity. In this industry where recruiters often compete on price, that loyalty means the client is willing to turn down another offer or a better price to do business with you. A good relationship and that loyalty means customers and people should want to stay with you even when you slip up.”