The challenges of being a recruitment marketer with Emma Thornton

00:00.00
thinkincircles
Welcome back, everybody to the marketing ruless podcast and today I am joined by Emma Thornton for three hundred North who is the marketing manager. Um, and today's gonna be a really great episode. It's not often that we actually talk to actual actual recruitment marketing managers. Um, so. It is an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast today Emma ah, for those you aren't familiar with yourself and three hundred north maybe you can kind of give us a little bit background about yourself and your journey into recruitment and to recruitment marketing and a little bit about the the business as well.

00:31.51
Emma Thornton
Yeah, of course, thank you so much for having me on I'm delighted to be here James I really appreciate it. Um, yeah, so three hundred North is a fantastic brand. Really we're a facilities management recruitment company. Um. And we specialize in mostly hard services facilities management so that will be your um on the m and e side of the business that we do have um that will be your engineers and various other. And sort of like hvac roles and then on the facilities management side. We've got various sort of tiers of the business including our um senior appointments. Um, which are your more sort of high up roles like. Facilities managers project managers that sort of thing. Um, yeah, so that's what we do as a business and within that I am the marketing manager and I run the social media run the blogs and various other bits and bobs to keep the. Company taking over.

01:46.66
thinkincircles
Um, and how did you get into recruitment marketing. Um, and you could you could if you can you got to try and do this without saying the word I fell into it.

01:57.92
Emma Thornton
Ah, doesn't everyone. Potentially yeah, um so I started off my marketing journey in an agency as I think many sort of young marketers. Do these days. Um. But I found that sort of my true passion was in internal marketing teams and that sort of thing so I worked um within a university marketing and events role and after that ah came to three hundred north and yeah, so it became the marketing manager at three hundred north so that is truly an internal recruit sort of marketing is my where my heart is in this role and you really get to intimately know a brand shape it um and. You're able to do really creative stuff as well with with the brand so you can be quite experimented experimentally fologies and experimental with the content that you're creating and really quite creative. Um within it. Yeah, an internal team.

03:10.59
thinkincircles
And it's good to hear there because um, a lot of things that get kind of thrown up recruitment and and recruit marketing is it. Um, it maybe isn't the most exciting because recruitment generally isn't the most exciting thing. So. It's great to hear that. 1 of the reasons you kind of you kind of continually stay involved is the kind of creativity and of innovation and I guess maybe that is because because recruitment has this this stereotype. Um, you've gotten. You've you you have to push the boundaries right? You have to try and be a bit different. Um, especially when the competition is is so.

03:45.33
Emma Thornton
Yeah I completely agree I Really think that there's a lot space to expand into with recruitment marketing. Um I think that you know some people seem to think that the idea behind running a social media.

03:45.65
thinkincircles
Kind of high as well.

04:04.89
Emma Thornton
Brand in particular is to just post to job adverts and roll with that constantly because it's you know in the same way as if you're in a bakery and you want to post stuff on Instagram you're going to post pictures of bread and with recruitment. You're going to post your job ads because it's easy. But I don't think that that's the best way to get people on board and I really think that there's a lot of space to be innovative about the content we're creating and how we really entice candidates to come to us because. You know that is what this is this is about being relatable. It's about being personable. We are in a people focused business and we need to work in the best way possible to talk to people I think.

04:57.49
thinkincircles
Um, and that's great because that kind of brings us on to the kind of first thing that I thought would be good to discuss is around kind of the current challenges right? What is what is it from you know from your perspective you know a recruit marketeer working on a coalface day in day out with an a with a recruitment agency. The kind of challenges that you're experiencing that you're seeing um and maybe you can kind of share share with us some of those ah those kind of those issues for.

05:22.69
Emma Thornton
Yeah, absolutely So I mean a recruitment marketer's challenge is very much Ah, the challenges of the of the area of the business. Um, at the time and I Think. What we need to get to grips with as marketers as recruitment marketers is understanding what candidates want how to reach candidates and how to then sell our clients to them because recruitment at least for our business. It's all about that. Intimate partnership that you have with the client. It's all about how to engage with them so that we can best sell our best candidates to them. Um, and one of the main challenges with recruitment at the moment is candidates finding them headhunting them.

06:13.30
thinkincircles
And.

06:17.18
Emma Thornton
Having them in our databases and understanding what they really want. Um, we've had so much uncertainty in the last sort of 12 to twenty four months in recruitment. You know you'll see some people saying that it's been best twelve months of their career and some people saying it's been the absolute worst and they just can't find anyone and we just need to make sure that as this period of uncertainty hopefully comes to an end. We're really understanding what our candidates want. Now because there is a bit of a sort of to use a terrible phrase. New normal um, coming out of the pandemic and people really want more flexibility more transparency from their employers that really want to see different things. It's not now just about you know. Can I get more money necessarily.

07:16.45
thinkincircles
Um, it's great to kind of hear this because it's very it's very obvious that the way you're working is you're totally totally ingrained within the rest of the business and not working within a kind of a silo at three hundred north and you know this is one of the kind of the challenges that. We often see with with recruit agencies that marketing just kind of works on its own, but the way you were kind of talking obviously in the and the way that you've kind of the way you work is that you have kind of touch points with the rest of the business. Um, and that must make it easier to do your job right.

07:51.11
Emma Thornton
And absolutely um, like we like I say and we believe that recruitment's a partnership between our business and our clients likewise it is marketing is partnership between the consultants and the marketing team. I Don't think you can run at the very least an organic brand in this day and age particularly on social media in all your sort of outside facing marketing ah without having your employees on board. As a brand as any brand and I think particularly in recruitment where we are so people focuseds Your employees are just your gold for marketing.

08:37.25
thinkincircles
Yeah, um, and again, that's great to hear and a lot the other kind of ah challenges that we hear from other from other agencies is is that the opinion of of of the recruiters sales team and the ah put kind of the that you know that marketing is. Use a horrible phrase as the coloring in department and that the sales guys are just picking up the phone shouting down down the down the phones all the time. Um, but you've obviously kind of overcome this right? and it would be great to hear kind of how you work with the kind of recruiters directly and.

09:04.70
Emma Thornton
Makes.

09:11.40
thinkincircles
Kind of work. Maybe that you're doing you don't have to go to detail. We obviously don't want to give away any too many igres but it would be great to kind of hear how you've kind of how you build that relationship with them that can note that level of. Trust.

09:19.61
Emma Thornton
Yeah, um I think one of the main things is the way that the company is sort of set up in the teamwork that we do sort of day-to-day as well as you know we have a fair amount of. Meetings together where we discuss the overall trajectory of the business and marketing and sales are just so tied in in those meetings. We're just really focused on making sure that everything that marketing puts out. In some way comes back to the team. So. It's about that and again I come back to this people focused business in that you know it's not just about focusing on pulling people in from outside. It's also focused on building the relationships within the team because you're not going to get anyone. To do anything. Yeah, if they don't like you. Ah really and so building the relationships the trust within the team so that they know that marketing can deliver for them individually for their clients and their candidates and so that they're then willing.

10:18.40
thinkincircles
Yeah.

10:36.24
Emma Thornton
To feed back into your overall marketing strategy.

10:39.37
thinkincircles
Yeah, um, and that kind of leads quite nicely on the next question which is around ah you know measuring success in the marketing because obviously you know from a sales point of view if they don't have the faith that you're kind of. There's a return on kind of and they can see the value in in marketing and the only way can do This is by measuring it.

10:54.81
Emma Thornton
Are.

10:58.66
thinkincircles
And in marketing we're always getting asked about return on investment and kpis and goals and how do we measure this and how do we measure that what we should be measuring. Um, so how do you kind of ensure and measure success with the marketing at three hundred north

11:12.23
Emma Thornton
Yeah, so our measurement comes from sort of a variety of analytics. But essentially it comes back all of it feeds back down into the lead generation. So we're looking at the general sort of marketing stats of. Engagements and impressions and that sort of thing. Um and that you know is a whole conversation in and of itself within the marketing world as to what precisely you focus on and in terms of delivering your ah aroi. But um. In terms of our team. We're looking at how we can get the most from the people who are external and interacting with us and how we can engage those people and you know. Pull them into the business. How we can make them understand our values and and that's one way that we measure success is you know, sort of how many people that are coming to us understand our values and. Understand that we will provide a service with honesty honesty integrity and enthusiasm and our and our team are just so well-informed and that's the reason that they're coming to us. It's not necessarily just because you know. Ah, desperate and they're out in the world search ingots because you know they want to work with us as a business.

12:47.29
thinkincircles
Yeah, and that seemed to be kind of driven obviously by the kind of the ah the maybe the work you're doing with the sales team and and kind of coming back to that like is that kind of do you focus on helping them become you know building their personal brands is it all them. Working off the back of the strong three hundred North brand itself. Um, is it a combination of all of them. Do you focus on one rather than the other because again, this is one of those eternal questions within within recruitment. We always kind of get personal brand over corporate brand and and and and that kind of thing. So.

13:14.56
Emma Thornton
Are.

13:22.32
thinkincircles
What's your view on that and how do you kind of manage that at three hundred north

13:24.30
Emma Thornton
Yeah, so at the moment and I've been I've been in post for sort of coming up to a year now so we are building things new things all the time as I said earlier, we're sort of innovating. We believe that the space can be massively um, improved upon um. And so what? what we are focusing on at the moment is building that company brand ensuring that people know you know what? what they're getting from three hundred north and that is where partly this employee gold comes in in the the employees are really. Sorry focused on and engaging with our social media engaging with our internal marketing that we're doing as well. So you know little things that we're sending out to and clients to. Sort of let them know who we are a bit more um, and yeah, so mostly we are focusing on that company overall corporate brand but the professional profiles and all of that sort of thing personal profiles is something that. But looking to work on in the future. Um, but you've got it's also a give and take isn't it because recruiters have full-time jobs they're recruiters. They're selling and marketing is a full-time job running a company profiles a full-time job and you know setting up. Ah, personal profile to run like that just is not going to be possible for basically anyone unless you've got a marketer per recruit to to sort of push out you know daily um content that is meaningful.

15:03.67
thinkincircles
So yeah.

15:13.13
Emma Thornton
And that is of value to their followers because you know there are there are people out there and you know who work within big recruitment agencies who are pushing out a fair amount of sort of content. Um daily. But. Whether it's just job posts or whether it's really adding value to their audiences. You know the question that needs to be asked and I think 1 thing that we've really focused on is not putting out content just for the sake of content. You know, not creating anything. That's. Meaningless um, or just following an awareness day because it's an awareness day and it's there to be followed. Um, that sort of thing.

15:55.73
thinkincircles
I Yeah yeah, yeah, no, no I'm I'm very much of this the same thought that that the kind of Bandwaagon kind of marketing doesn't really ah, doesn't really help anybody um and as a marketer we're now working in in a much more kind of tech- focused Environment. So. Where does kind of kind of marketing tech kind of sit with with you I mean how? ah you know how much you use. Are you kind of experimenting we using kind of marketing automation to make your life a little bit Easier. You know is it making you it doesn't make your life easier as ah as a marketeer. Do you'd think I Mean. It be good to kind of get your viewpoint on on on that as well.

16:34.33
Emma Thornton
Yeah, so we do work with tech. Um, we do we use sort of and particularly things to analyze the social media. Um, so. People will have heard of you know, sort of your hootsuets your hubspots that sort of thing. That's the kind of thing that we use to you know schedule our post and and do the analytics and stuff like that and I don't think that'll be sort of news to any marketers. Um, and certainly. In the sort of email space. That's another great way to use technology to really help Um, automate some of those recruitment processes I think that is something that can be a real challenge in recruitment agencies and particularly in growing Businesses. You really. Need help from automation to manage the volume.

17:31.61
thinkincircles
Yeah, yeah, I always kind of I Always like the kind of automation. The fact that it can. You can keep a standard and consistency with your brand which if um, you know sometimes it can if you let the your consultants kind of loose with that kind of thing it kind of suddenly become.

17:47.00
Emma Thornton
Um.

17:51.58
thinkincircles
Ah, off brand very very quickly and that's one of the things I quite like is is that is you can kind of keep that consistent. Um, yeah.

17:58.51
Emma Thornton
Yeah I think I think that there's a bit of give and take again on this in terms of you want your consultants to have their own personal brand. You want them to have their own sort of tone of voice within the constraints of the sort of home marketing. Um tone You also they know the best way to engage with their candidates. And certainly in our business.. There's just a massive level of trust there they like they really do know their business. Um, whether it's emini whether it's construction whether it's facilities management. They really do know what's best and how to reach out to their clients and candidates and so there has to be. Some variance of tone in some of the emails that are going out because you'd be spreading yourself too thin to attempt to control all of it. Um, Ah, but yeah, they they they do have to work within the constraints of.

19:01.95
thinkincircles
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

19:09.49
Emma Thornton
Yeah, you can't have people just send in Half-buil emails or all caps or whatever it might you know whatever it might be but at the same time you know the the same email is not going to reach out to you know your handy person as is going to reach out. To your asset managers you you know you your big sort of um salary roles really.

19:37.23
thinkincircles
Um, and that nicely leads on to the kind of kind of last point I think we could discuss which is around kind of thought leadership and the kind of content that really engages with with your different audiences and thought leadership is one of these kind of terms that's kind of banded around. But I'm never really sure if people. Really understand what they're talking about when they're talking about thought leadership or if ah if it all gets kind of um, convoluted with lots of other types of kind of things that people and content that people are putting out there. Um, and you've you put it up a couple of times so it would be good to kind of understand how you achieve that thought leadership within recruitment marketing that. Um, you've been able to to kind of ah build it throughout of north.

20:19.76
Emma Thornton
And yeah, so I think I think people as you say sort of confuse What thought leadership is I think that I think it can be really powerful but I don't think it needs to come necessarily from leaders. Um, you know so it doesn't necessarily have to. Be at the c-suite it. You know you are a leader in your own role and your own experience. There is no one better and in terms of what you're doing to explain what you're doing in a way I think that. It really does good thought leaders really do need to be good at explaining what they do and how they do it Well and I think that's the sort of content that really does get shared quite widely. Yeah I think the way that we've sort of done. It is. As you sort of said before I've really immersed myself in the company and the culture and in both facilities facilities, management and recruitment so that I know what's going on or at least I try to? um. And that really helps to make things that are quite in-depth quite knowledgeable. People can trust what we're saying and it comes back again to these and the employees are your gold idea in terms of that. No one knows the business better than they do. I might be the best at writing it down but they're going to tell you what's going On. They're going to tell you what their clients are saying to them what their clients need from them. What their candidates need from the clients and we can put that you know into a blog piece that really helps to inform. People on what candidates are looking for in the current market and that sort of thing. So.

22:15.66
thinkincircles
Yeah, um, and you've you've touched on a kind of blog and kind of copywritten with regards to kind of ah the thought leadership that you do without again giving away too many of your secrets. Um, but. Is is is there a preferred way that you like to kind of to to create those that kind of content is there something you'd like to try is there something that you're kind of more interested In. You know it's It's kind of obviously you know we work in a multimedia kind of environment Now. Um. Or maybe you do see that that for your audience that um, the kind of blogs and copywriting and copywritten kind of type content is is the best and you didn't need to kind of explore anywhere else.

22:56.79
Emma Thornton
Um, yeah I think um in terms of my creation of blogs I'm ah I'm a little researcher at Heart I Love doing a bit of research I think that's something particularly copywriters but a lot of marketers can um. Sort of associate with I Really love doing a big deep dive into something and um, yeah, really understand it so and the thing about facilities management is. It's always changing. So. There's always a bit more on like the sustainability side of things or the diversity and inclusion and in some ways despite having been around for a long time. It feels like quite a young market in terms of the content you can write for it. It's it's quite.. It's sometimes quite difficult to find. Um, good research on topics that seem quite inherent to the business sector. So That's something that we'd like to really encourage. That's why we share like articles from other people on our social media., But it's also. I Really like writing my own to try and bring some of that thought leadership that's already out there together and create things that other people can find value In. Um.

24:16.30
thinkincircles
Yeah, um I mean have you ever gone down the route of kind of looking at other kind of Mediums because obviously ah, we're always being told that we need to kind of start creating videos and podcasts fun enough as we ah as we sit here recording a podcast. Um, but you know is there ever been kind of that.

24:30.30
Emma Thornton
Um.

24:36.18
thinkincircles
That that need really to kind of explore those other formats.

24:38.40
Emma Thornton
Yeah I think um, but certainly for myself. It's not my technical specialty if no one has yet noticed. Um Matt yeah podcasting and video is not light is not is certainly something I've considered. And it's not something that we've thrown away. Definitely not because it is just so important. Um is definitely something that social media values and and you know you see all these stats about how. People will only listen to a video for like 10 seconds 30 seconds whatever it might be and but they'll watch it and then they won't listen to it most people listen to videos on social media with the audio off and so it's. Quite interesting in that way that like for example, on social media subtitles have just had a massive is it a resurgence were they ever there and but certainly because of social media people are reading things.

25:37.28
thinkincircles
It.

25:47.55
Emma Thornton
A lot more but it's on a video rather than in a blog post and so yeah, it's definitely something that I think needs to come under our and sort of content wing a lot more in the future. Um, but again, it's the technical expertise. It's.

25:49.94
thinkincircles
Yeah.

26:06.90
Emma Thornton
Knowing when to partner with like agencies and stuff like yourselves and having that sort of idea of how to go about it and doing it in the right way.

26:20.38
thinkincircles
Yeah, yeah, um, well I'm sure you get ah, you're obviously doing something right? as I know you got you guys Ah, very successful and I've got a great brand hence why you're on the show today because ah, you know, but. Emma it's been an absolute pleasure talking Today. It's been great to get an insight on how to run a modern recruiter kind of marketing department within an agency. We will obviously include all of your details in the show notes if anybody wants to reach out and want to know more about you or the all three hundred north then they can but for now thank you very much.

26:50.73
Emma Thornton
Thank you very much James it's been an absolute pleasure.