Should recruitment marketing sit within Marketing or Talent Acquisition?
Marketing managers would rather spend Friday nights in a church basement playing Bingo than deal with applicants and candidates. On the other hand, recruitment marketing professionals are not recruiters. They’re not screening, interviewing, submitting and/or hiring candidates.
Here’s the deal. I’ve always thought that recruitment marketing should be within human resources and recruiting. But now, I’m starting to change my view and here’s why.
Look, employer brand professionals are in tough spots these days. They’re torn between recruiters wanting funny TikTok videos for campus hiring and the Communications team that want to avoid crazy TikTok videos. Truth is employment brand pros must walk a thin line between what’s trending on social media and what is acceptable in corporate marketing.
The job description of recruitment marketing and employer branding reads pretty much like a marketing role. Posting content on social media, placing Ads, writing copy, buying media and creating employer branded content, does this sound like a role that should be with recruiting?
However…
The very minute marketing must do a deep dive in job descriptions or having to deal with candidates complaining about their application experience, they want to run to the farthest corner of the building and hide.
So, where should Recruitment Marketing and Employer Brand Managers sit?
I am starting to see the benefits of this role within Marketing because they can have all the resources for social media, content creation, and storytelling that is necessary for employment branding teams to flourish. Employment brand works best when it has all the support and expertise within marketing to promote the brand in the right way.
However, HR and recruiting teams prefer to use their marketing budget in ways that benefit them. For example, placing job ads, LinkedIn sponsored campaigns or using Indeed’s pay-per-click model. This is a grey area for marketing managers because they’re not experts in the areas of job Ads nor is it something that interests them. Therefore, you could argue that recruitment marketing would be beneficial to talent acquisition when it comes to placing job ads and tracking leads and applicants.
As it stands, recruiting and marketing teams are working together to attract talent, improve their reputation and promote the company culture and benefits. Personally, I see mature recruitment marketing teams slowly being lifted and moved over to the marketing team these days. After all, they’re not recruiters anymore.
