HR & Management News South Africa

How to leverage AI to maximise your recruitment marketing strategy

There are mixed emotions and growing concerns about the potential for AI and generative technology (ChatGPT) to replace recruiters in their jobs. If anything, this emerging technology has now provided support to those recruiters who have always questioned their skills as writers and marketers. At the same time, embracing such technology can free up talent leaders to focus on creative recruitment marketing and employer branding initiatives. They now have the opportunity to demonstrate the much-needed value-add that they never had time to offer to both hiring managers and candidates.
Image source: pitinan –
Image source: pitinan – 123RF.com

Leveraging AI capabilities, recruiters can discover new ways to build outreach mailers, social media posts, employer brand-rich job adverts, and recruitment marketing mailers. These machine learning models are trained on massive amounts of text data and can generate human-like responses to various prompts or questions. Although many users are currently utilizing AI, it is crucial to keep in mind that working with machines requires teamwork. This involves utilizing the powerful functionality of AI while also preserving your creativity.

As we work more closely with machines and aim for a future where we can work together as a team, it's important to figure out how we can maximize this collaboration to achieve our goals.

Here are some tips to maximise ChatGPT to elevate your recruitment marketing and employer branding initiatives:

Ideate

Don’t expect ChatGPT to generate ideas, but rather be real and maintain your uniqueness through ideating, brainstorming and bouncing ideas off your co-pilot.

Example: When writing a social media post, draft your idea and request the tone of voice you typically use. If you are not happy, ask ChatGPT to generate additional suggestions until it aligns with your communication style.

Remain human and don’t outsource

You might very well receive generic suggestions, content or wording, which you must consider as raw material or a starting point. Do not leave it at that as you will begin to sound like everyone else. To remain unique, you need to keep prompting and challenging your co-pilot to come up with the final quality outputs.

Example: You might want to compose a job advert common to many (such as a call centre operator, software developer, business analyst). To distinguish yourself from others, highlight your company’s culture, values, value proposition and selling points unique to your organisation.

Research and Fact-Finding

When writing white papers, articles or reports, cross check your sources and validate links through various search engines to ensure dependability. Do not accept researched information from one chatbot (like Google’s Bard) but ensure that you are combining your research across several resources to ensure 100% reliability.

Example: If you are writing a white paper or article, ensure that you are cross checking your sources through various search engines without relying on generative AI to spit out information that you take at face value.

Don’t disappear in the world of sameness

In today's fast-paced digital age and cluttered social media world where everyone is competing for attention, it's easy to get lost in a world of sameness. While it is undoubtedly helpful to leverage AI to generate social media posts, automated outreach mailers or assist with email communications, it's important not to rely solely on these mechanisms. Doing so can result in a generic and impersonal approach that fails to showcase your unique culture, values, and writing style.

Example: Use automation to assist with time-consuming tasks, such as social media or email scheduling or data analysis, while you maintain the personal touch in your communications. Additionally, be intentional in your use of language and tone to ensure that your brand's messaging aligns with your company's values and culture.

Balance

By striking a balance between the convenience of AI and the human touch of personal communication, you can differentiate your brand from talent competitors and build and engage meaningful relationships with your audience. Remember, in a world of sameness, authenticity and human connection are more valuable than ever.

In conclusion, AI can provide a significant advantage for companies that have never had the time, capacity, and resources to initiate recruitment marketing and employer branding strategies. With AI, one can now build these communication strategies, to begin actively differentiating themselves from the competition, improving on how they inform, shape, nurture and build on their employer brand reputation.

However, it's important to use AI as a tool to complement human interaction, rather than a replacement for it. Through leveraging AI in recruitment marketing and branding, businesses can improve their candidate pool and increase their chances of engaging passive and attracting top talent.

As co-authors of this article, my co-pilot and I stand behind this statement.

About Celeste Sirin

Celeste Sirin is an employer branding specialist, speaker, facilitator and founder of Employer Branding Africa which aims to develop employer banding best practice in South Africa by educating South African leaders. She is a leading authority in positioning and elevating employer brands for companies, offering extensive insight into local, African and international employer branding trends.
Let's do Biz