Unlocking the Secrets of a Successful Campaign Advertisement in Recruitment

The Recruitment Hackers Podcast

Max: Hello and welcome back to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast and the host, your host, Max Ambruster. And today, I'm pleased to welcome on the show the winners of the 2021 Global BPO Awards for The Best Advertising Campaign in Recruitment. Reed Elsevier. I have two ladies joining us from the Philippines. AJ Silva, who is Head of Branding and Corporate Communication, and Kath Lisay who is an HR Supervisor for the branding and communications team as well. AJ, Kath, welcome to the show.

AJ: Hi, Max.

Kath: Hello. Thanks for having us.

AJ: Very excited to converse with you.

Max: Thank you. Thank you, it's good to have you. And we were chatting a little bit beforehand that the corporate communication and branding team sits under HR. So, for your team, HR and recruitment, it's not a second thought. It's very front and centre, it’s what you do every day. So perhaps that doesn't surprise me so much considering that Reed Elsevier’s business is so dependent on attracting talent. But for those who don't know what Reed Elsevier does, perhaps we could start with an introduction on what the business does.

AJ: Alright, okay for Reed Elsevier Philippines we are the shared services arm of RELX. So, RELX is an information solutions provider for different sophisticated businesses, we have for Legal, Science and Medical, Exhibitions and Risk solutions as well. So, Reed Elsevier Philippines, what we do is that we support our RELX business, we have four main market segments that's for LexisNexis, Elsevier, Reed exhibitions, and Risk Solutions group. So, as you can see, we have a very diverse and sophisticated market. And given that for Reed Elsevier Philippines, the talent that we are looking for, are people who are dynamic, who are really focused on or are experts in these different fields, but at the same time, we also invest in their career development.

Max: There’s a lot to cover, it's impossible to squeeze it all that in a 10-seconds sound bite, but where there's sort of a broad spectrum of products that are information-related, research-related and events. And so, it's probably hard for job seekers and candidates to understand all of that, right, just from an ad. So how do you, from the conceptual standpoint, when you're putting together this campaign, when you have a very complex business such as yours, how do you simplify it and connect with an audience, a wide audience, so that, you know, you can grab their attention even in a place like social media, where attention spans are fleeting?

Kath: Right, so, with regard to crafting the advertisement campaign in our social media channels, we have to make sure that it is automatically understood by our target audience. So, as AJ mentioned earlier, that Reed Elsevier Philippines offers a lot of career opportunities to different professionals such as Marketing, Accountancy, Finance, technology, so to speak. So, these a wide array of opportunities, we have to make sure that Reed Elsevier Philippines steps up so that we can be known as the organizations that have these opportunities and we are one of the organizations that they have to look forward to in terms of getting hired. So, when it comes to promoting or crafting the recruitment advertisement, we want to make it as simple as possible. And then we also want it to remain detailed as well in terms of providing information in about our job, about the job description itself and as well as what are the opportunities and the business that they will be supporting to in the event that they get hired.

Max: And to put the job listings, of course, you have to put the job listing at some point. But tell me or tell us about the concept of this campaign. First of all, was it on social media mainly or did you use other media?

Kath: Yeah, yeah. So, regarding the different marketing channels that we use to broaden and amplify our recruitment, ads, we have utilized various channels like social media, we have also used on job portals, such as Job Street, Philippines, and then we have also advertised it in our website. And then we have also targeted different organizations that we think are our target markets here in the Philippines.

Max: So, targeted my profession? … IT, finance. Okay. And you can do that on social media?

AJ: Yes. What we actually notice is that there are different personas for demographics. It's like let's say for legal, or lawyers, we do hire legal editors, legal professionals for most of our businesses, and what we know what this is, that's what really works for them aside from social media, they call it referral. So, what we did also, is that we amplified our brand through the employee referral program, there are a lot of lawyers, legal professionals who would refer their friends, etc. And how can we actually back on that strength, we've used, you know, the digital platforms to further our brand. And then our employees, since we have a very big one, employee referrals, our legal professionals, our employees, they are the ones sharing our content as well. So, that helps in spreading the word and therefore inviting their network, their colleagues to join the organization. And although some of that may translate during the interview as an employer referral, but behind the scenes, actually, they knew about the company because their network share this through, let's say, Facebook or through LinkedIn. So that's another, you know, Domino effect of the social media campaigns that we're doing. Aside from legal also, we do hire, let's say, marketing, sales professionals, even for customer support, we have seen great success for customer support roles, and even for finance roles, for some of the entry level roles that we have in you know, different social media. On the other hand, though, for LinkedIn, we still target as you know, a very strong digital platform. And we have a lot of niche hires, from that platform, specifically for sales, marketing, technology, and even for a lot of leadership positions. So how can we actually make use of these platforms. It's a good thing that we are part of HR, we have that visibility in terms of, you know, the different profiles of the people that our colleagues within HR looking for. So that's how we curate the messaging, but we always go back to the core. We always go back to our value proposition that what we provide to our employees. At the end of the day, we want to let them know you know, what's in it for me by joining the organization, what are the different opportunities that I can explore?

Max: I want to ask you more about the employer value proposition. But first, you said something that I thought was very insightful was the fact that the employer referral program, it needs to be supported with a certain amount of branding to make sure that the people who get contacted already have an idea of who you are, and what Reed Elsevier does. And you said that you do that by encouraging the employees to share content. Could you expand on that? How does that work?

Kath: Well, we have two different strategies in our employee referral program. So definitely, we send our employee referral program ads through corporate communications. And then as well as we post it on our social media channels. So, what our employees do is that we thrive on organic engagement. So, they tend to share our employment ads, the tag their friends, and the invite everyone almost every one of their connections to apply here in Reed Elsevier, Philippines. And then, as well as we have to make sure that we post our culture and what's in it for them in our social media channels s...