Recruitment Leaders Are Failing Marketers

The recruitment industry doesn’t treat marketing with the respect it deserves.

Or to be more specific, recruitment leaders don’t.

It’s a well-trodden path:

Marketing professional enters the industry full of beans and gusto, excited by the prospects of working in such a ‘dynamic’ industry.

Eighteen months later, they’re gone, a dejected trail of broken promises strewn behind them.

Because despite protestations to the contrary, recruitment leaders – the founders, the directors, the bosses – don’t get marketing. And, in the main, they don’t trust marketers.

Did you know the average annual budget for the personal development of marketing professionals in recruitment is less than £500. Five hundred pounds. That’s just over £41.66 per month. How obscene is that? And we wonder why attrition rates are so high for marketers in our industry.

PEOPLE NEED PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT TO FEEL LIKE THEY ARE PROGRESSING.

It’s a fundamental human need. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that above all others, recruitment leaders would get it. Because, sadly, for too many, recruitment marketers are simply the ‘colouring in department’. Some sort of kaleidoscopic subplot to the monochromic mainstay. Doers, not thinkers; implementors, not inspirers.

The irony cannot and should not be overlooked.

Kieron Mayers, head of marketing at Paiger, points out that “if a marketer in recruitment is lucky enough to be given a budget, they’re told where to spend it.”

What’s the point in hiring a marketing professional for your team if you don’t trust them to make independent decisions?

And what’s the point in hiring a marketing professional if you don’t allow them to evolve?

Marketing and sales should be joined at the hip (personally, I think marketing should own sales). Only by working together towards the same goals can marketing truly deliver – and be rightly accountable for – every recruitment boss’s favourite phrase: R.O.I.

Is it more likely that ROI would be achieved if marketers were invested in themselves? It’s a rhetorical question, of course, but one seemingly too readily unconsidered.  

Most recruitment agencies are poor at marketing. But it’s an easy fix. By taking personal development seriously, communicating properly and encouraging collaboration, we’ll accelerate learning, fuel inspiration and – here it comes – increase bang for buck.

Stop failing our marketers and sustained success will follow.

The annual Recruitment Marketing Experience event helps recruitment marketing pros and recruitment agency owners think differently and return more on their investment. Register today.