I had the opportunity to interview Katrina Kibben from Three Ears Media on the future of employment branding. A couple weeks back Katrina was looking to network with other employer branding professionals out there and I offered to connect over the topic. We chatted a few days later over the phone and I was really impressed by her knowledge recruitment marketing tactics. She recently launched Three Ears Media and is focused on building up her clients. She’s planning on creating a pipeline ad service focused on generating leads on Facebook using PPC strategies. She’s energetic, passionate, and definitely, an expert when it comes to employment branding. I really enjoyed my conversation and she granted me a full interview on the topic. I hope you enjoy this Q&A as much as I did!
How did you get into recruitment marketing?
I’ve always been a marketer living in a recruiter’s world and eventually the bug bit me and I just had to make the leap. I started my career in marketing as a social media ninja at VisualCV and Monster.com. That’s where I started to understand how recruiting worked and how the right marketing tactics played such a huge role in a recruiter’s success.
You recently started your own company– how’s it going so far?
It has been a really incredible experience to start Three Ears Media. Throughout my career, I’ve had a lot of different job titles – Director of Marketing, Managing Editor, Technical Copywriter, and even Social Media Ninja. In all of these roles, I felt like I wasn’t able to use all of my powers to create and drive the vision. Now, I have the chance to work on an array of projects from job descriptions to websites and marketing automation and it’s really exciting.
Briefly tell me what Three Ears Media does.
We build candidate pipelines for high-volume, low retention roles in a call center, retail, healthcare, and hospitality (restaurants and tourism) environments. Our work starts by interviewing your best people to build a psychological profile and matching that data back to market research to understand the language they use, what they value, and where they spend time online and off. We then translate that into a recruitment marketing pipeline-building strategy and targeted content.
What are most companies missing the mark on when it comes to recruitment marketing?
It boils down to one fundamental: they don’t take the time to build trust. Most companies don’t stop to think, “how can I build a relationship with the ask,” especially in recruitment marketing. We’re rushing to fill the jobs without asking that important question which leads to weak content. Content that’s all about the company – not the humans they’re trying to attract. There’s little opportunity to build trust when it’s all about you.
How can recruiters better use recruitment marketing tactics in Talent Sourcing?
Hyper-niche recruitment marketing can make your sourcing easier than ever. With an email list in hand and an idea of the profile and interests of the people you are sourcing, you can steal the attention of people you’re trying to reach. For example, spending less than $10 hyper-targeting Facebook ads to a group of people on Tuesday that you then email on Wednesday (referencing the ad, of course) can increase response rates on outreach by over 10%.
Where do you think employer branding is headed in the next 5-10 years?
Well, move to a hyper-niche model for communications. Employer branding won’t be about the company, it’ll be about the department and the people we work for. All brand, no employee version of employer branding will start to dissipate based on the demands of the next generation of candidates.
How will companies have to change to attract Gen X?
I think the most obvious change will be in the application process. More than ever, this next generation wants their application experience to mirror a buying experience and if it doesn’t, they won’t stand for it.
What other predictions do you have in the talent sourcing space?
I wasted all my good ideas above.
In all seriousness, we’re about to have a major shift in the technological know-how in the recruiting/HR/sourcing talent pool. These kids grew up with phones in their hands and laptops in their backpacks. This is going to change the market for HR technology. As this generation takes over, watch out for how legacy systems perform and evolve – because this very well could be the tipping point for those names to change. For everything to change.
Recommended Reading:
How to Automate LinkedIn Using Phantombuster
Boolean Strings to Source Female Candidates
How to Use Mail Merge to Recruit Candidates
