Like Mike: How To Become A Talent Marketing Superstar

• Using beautiful images and infographics that attract the eye of job seekers
• Providing professionally designed freemium content like eBooks or white papers
• Highlighting the great work of your engineering or technical team (like this post from ZocDoc)
• Using the right Twitter hashtags to ensure job postings are seen by the right audience

Unfortunately, these employer branding best practices are rarely implemented because there just aren’t enough hours in the day.  So “talent marketing” ends up meaning “re-posting jobs to social networks” – and not much more that that. But don’t give up on talent marketing just yet.  I’m going to let you in on a little secret.

Got Five On It: The True Cost of Talent Marketing

Let’s imagine that time was no object and you actually had hours to spend crafting resources for your candidates. Not only that, but let’s also imagine that you magically learned how to code, produce compelling videos, and design awesome graphics.

With your (now) unlimited time and these new skills under your belt…you’d be a talent marketing superstar.

You’d be able to easily and rapidly create all sorts of really useful talent marketing resources, like:

• A slick new WordPress theme for your personal or professional blog
• A new Careers page that highlights all of the cool stuff your company is working on
• A whiteboard animation about what it’s like to work at your company for posting on YouTube or on Vine
• A great infographic about recruiting trends
• An eBook about something your candidates care about
• A devastating crossover dribble (just kidding)

The best part? It only costs $5 (or 3.72 euro, or 2.97 pounds, or 512.95 JPY) to become a talent marketing superstar.  And you’ll do it by using something called Fiverr.

Fiverr is a marketplace where you can access low-cost creative, administrative, and technical services. Their marketplace consists of ‘gigs’ – in essence, short freelance jobs – all of which have a starting price of $5!

Here’s a great description of the power of Fiverr from one of my team members:

“I’m not a graphic designer, but I create compelling imagery. I’m not a developer, but I can modify CSS and HTML. I don’t have time to listen to audio and carefully write it out, but now I can quickly transcribe it. Through Fiverr, I hire people for all of these jobs, and for less than the price of a coffee.”

Talent Marketing: The Seven Step Program

I’m assuming by now you’ve grabbed a few $5 bills from your wallet and you’re itching to get going. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Come up with a strategy. Think about what kinds of resources would be most useful to the kinds of candidates you’re typically recruiting.What resources could you build with some help from the people on Fiverr? Let your imagination run a little bit wild. Then pick one you’re really excited about.
2. Visit Fiverr and browse through their services to bring your idea to life. Make sure your seller has high ratings from other buyers. Send them any questions you might have to see if they’re a good fit for your project.
3. Do whatever prep work your Fiverr gig might require before buying so your seller can get right to work. If you’re going to hire someone to format your eBook, you might want to write it first. Pro tip: Here’s an example where Scott Britton had a ghostwriter turn a bunch of emails into a full manuscript.
4. Buy the gig. Sit back. Relax. And be confident you’ll have something awesome to share with your candidates soon.
5. When the seller comes back with a completed product, let them know about any changes it may need. If you don’t give them a 5 star rating, they’ll almost always ask you how they can revise your order to make it better.
6. Incorporate the work from Fiverr into your final product. For example, if you had the Fiverr seller create you an awesome image for your Careers page, you’d need to put that image up on the page.
7. Wait for a pat on the back from your boss. Not many recruiters are able to switch from recruiting to talent marketing in the blink of an eye. Well, except you!

Don’t stop there!  With the army of sellers from Fiverr at your disposal you’ll be able to move faster with almost any project you’re working on – personal or professional. Now you’re a recruiter AND a talent marketer.  And you didn’t sacrifice your hiring goals in the process because you’re using the army of folks on Fiverr to help you get stuff done.

So if you wanna be like Mike and transform yourself into a talent marketing superstar, three words: Just Do It.

Read more on the Hire Nurture blog.

About the Author: John Gannon is CEO and co-founder of HireNurture, a SaaS platform that automates talent marketing and relationship management.

He interviews startup leaders at StartupCareerAdvice.com, wrote the Amazon 5 star rated book Road to a Venture Capital Career, and is a guest author on leading careers website The Daily Muse.

His latest book, Finding Startup Jobs, will be published next year by FGPress.

Follow John on Twitter @JohnMGannon or connect with him on LinkedIn.