3 FREE Tools: Recruit like a Marketer by Training Like a Marketer

Holland Dombeck McCue Driving Productivity, Good HR, Holland Dombeck, HR, HR & Marketing, HR Tech, Innovation, Learning, Learning and Development, Recruiting

If you’ve read it in a blog post once, you’ve seen it re-tweeted, re-shared and re-posted 1000x. Recruiting=marketing. Or to some degree, recruiters should adopt elements of marketing into their strategy for continued success.

One of the biggest differences between marketers and recruiters is the content we consume. In the recruiting space, we tend to get our knowledge about applying contemporary marketing principles to our recruitment process from recruitment pundits (like the crew here at FOT) vs. going to the source and figuring out what is applicable ourselves.

Since we don’t want you to stop reading our blog (we need to pay the bills here at FOT), we’ve pulled together a list of FREE marketing training courses for you to cut your teeth on:

Inbound Certification from Hubspot

  • What it is: The Inbound Certification is a free online marketing course that is open to anyone and everyone. From college students to entrepreneurs to marketing professionals, the Inbound Certification helps you stay on top of the latest trends in the inbound world.
  • Why it matters to recruiters: About 70% of jobseekers find your company through a Google search, but very few of them actually convert. Not because they aren’t interested in what you’re selling (jobs), but they just may not be ready to buy (apply). If your goal is to grow your candidate pipeline(s), then it is a must to have lead generation landing pages established so that prospective candidates can learn more about your company. Hubspot’s Inbound Certification will train you on the basic landing pages, the conversion funnel (image below) and supplemental inbound principles, so that you are able to capture interested candidates and nurture them until they are ready to convert.
  • How to get started: Simply visit http://academy.hubspot.com/inbound-certification to sign up. The course is online, self-paced and 100% free. Upon completion, you’ll receive a badge (who doesn’t love gamification?!) that you can add to your LinkedIn profile, email signature, or print and decorate your desk.

inbound hubspot

Blueprint from Facebook

  • What it is: Blueprint is a new education program that trains agencies, partners and marketers on how to use Facebook so they can create better campaigns that drive business results. So whatever your business goals, you can get the most from Facebook, build your best campaigns and see your best results.
  • Why it matters to recruiters: Facebook is a deeply layered marketing channel who changes both their algorithm and ad platform quite frequently. If you read a blog post on Facebook recruiting in 2013 and feel like you’re good, or, if you still think that posting an update to your company’s timeline is going to get you even an ounce of traction, then this course is for you! Facebook is pay-to-play, folks, and there’s a lot of different ways to play for your specific need. Blueprint offers training on everything from campaign optimization and how to use video on Facebook to effective ad measurement solutions.

Blueprint also has a specific module for Facebook-owned Instagram. Instagram has been deemed the most important social network to next-gen talent pools, making this module one you don’t want to miss!

  • How to get started: Blueprint is available to anyone with a Facebook account. Simply visit https://facebook.exceedlms.com/student/catalog to sign up for Facebook’s ~40 learning paths/modules from your desktop or mobile device. You enroll in the courses you want to take and then complete them at your leisure.

Making Sense of Data from Google

  • What it is: Google has launched its own Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to teach the general public how to understand surveys, research, and data. This self-paced, online course is intended for anyone who wants to learn more about how to structure, visualize, and manipulate data.
  • Why it matters to recruiters: Big data is a buzzword that isn’t going away anytime soon in both the marketing or recruiting space, and understanding how to make sense of it will be critical to a company’s success. With the influx of HR technology on the market, there is certainly no shortage of analytics and applicant data for recruiters and hiring leaders to review. However, merely collecting data is only once piece of the big-data puzzle—knowing how to interpret and understand the importance (or lack thereof of) of each data set drives the real value around data-backed business decisions.
  • How to get started: Much like the other courses in this post, Google’s offering is self-paced and can be accessed online. Google account holders can simply visit https://datasense.withgoogle.com/course and complete the modules from a desktop/laptop at their own pace.

Bonus! The ROI Calculator from Pardot

  • While this isn’t a full-fledged online course, it’s still a pretty awesome set of interactive tools from the marketing automation pros at Pardot. Marketing automation has the ability to transform your marketing and sales recruiting processes. To help you see the value of automation, Pardot has developed interactive calculators to help you quantify the ROI of your investment to achieve sales leads (or in your case, candidates). Simply visit http://www.pardot.com/roi-calculator/ to plug in your own numbers today.

Recruiters by nature aren’t marketers—they’re recruiters. Dig into the tools listed in this post, but remember to eat the elephant one bite at a time!