Your Recruitment Brand is Undermining Your Consumer Brand

Your sales and marketing department is working overtime to reach a diverse target market: They're creating advertising in different languages, making sure a wide variety of cultures and lifestyles are reflected in your marketing initiatives, and doing their best to make sure your consumer brand is appealing to a diverse community.

So how come your recruitment efforts aren't reflecting the same commitment to diversity?

These days, the average consumer is more sophisticated than ever. When they see that your company wants to sell them something, but doesn't want to hire them, they notice.

Consumers like to buy brands with which they have relationships. Relationships are created when consumers feel that a brand is speaking to or connecting with them as an individual - it's not unusual for consumers to say they like a brand because it "understands" them. That's why marketing departments work so hard to create communications which speak to different diverse populations.

When your recruitment brand continues to focus solely on the 'mainstream' market, it undermines your consumer brand - and both end up suffering as a result.

The best way to get the most out of your marketing and recruitment dollars? Synchronize your efforts. Schedule a meeting with your sales and marketing team, and put your heads together:

• What diverse populations are most crucial for your business right now?
  
• How can you leverage consumer and candidate data to reach both groups?
  
• What channels can you use to communicate to both customers and candidates?
  
• What messages are most important to different diversity groups?
  

Remember, the more consistent your brand across all target groups and media, the better - and more cost-effective - the results for both recruiting and marketing.