Media Relations in Action

The company

Twenty Recruitment was formed in January 2009, in the depths of the recession, by Paul Marsden and Adrian Kinnersley who were responsible for the rapid growth and sale of Astbury Marsden. The company specialises in mid to senior level appointments within the professional services, financial services and commerce & industry sectors across technology, finance and IT.

The challenge

While the company had recruited a number of senior consultants who were real experts in their field, in early 2009 Twenty as a brand was still a relatively unknown quantity in the market.  They had excellent client contacts but needed an additional differentiator from the more established brands out there.

The solution

BlueSky embarked upon a campaign of placing thought leadership articles in target heavyweight trade media which Twenty then used as examples of their expertise within their specialist sectors.  One of these pieces was an article written for Twenty covering the brain drain from investment banking into utilities within the energy trading space. When Twenty pitched to a major utilities group for a senior technology specialist within its energy trading division, they used the piece as an example of their expertise.  The client felt that this was a clear demonstration of their industry knowledge.  They won the assignment on an exclusive retained basis ahead of two well established executive search firms, placed the candidate and made a not inconsiderable fee.

What they say

“The team at BlueSky have generated an impressive amount of coverage for Twenty but it doesn’t stop there. They have a refreshing approach when it comes to PR and understand that it covers so much more than just the media. They have been instrumental in developing copy for our website; for our employer branding messages and for our social media channels. Regular visitors to the office are popular with the whole team, BlueSky is more than just a supplier; they are a key strategic advisor.” Adrian Kinnersley, Managing Director of Twenty Recruitment Group 

This edition we speak to David Press, Director at DMJ Recruitment.

Why do we use PR?

We use PR for a variety of reasons but a key motive is that it places us as experts in the market place and gives us a ‘voice’ within a crowded and competitive industry. As a prominent presence in the market place, gaining coverage in broadsheets and targeted press allows us to enhance our brand but also stay at the forefront of our existing and potential clients’ minds, especially during difficult economic times. PR is also a very useful marketing tool when trying to win new business, allowing us to demonstrate our successes and experience. One of the most important parts of our PR activity is our social media strategy. We use Twitter, Linkedin, our blog and our website to demonstrate our wider interest and knowledge in our respective markets and to engage with our candidates and clients.

How do you measure ROI?

It is often difficult to measure ROI as it takes time for the cumulative effect of the PR to filter through. However we monitor traffic through our website via Google analytics and notice an increased flow in traffic after a blog or article has been published. We also measure ROI by how our clients and candidates react to the press coverage or events they have seen and make a note of any direct response on our database.

What advice would you give…

Do not underestimate the impact of PR on your business. It is easy to dismiss it on the basis of an increased cost, but with consistently good coverage it will have an enormous impact on your brand and reputation. In a crowded marketplace you need to stand out as experts and this is actually an extremely cost effective way to do this. The access that PR has to online and print publications means that your business will start gaining recognition outside your sphere of loyal clients and candidates which is critical if you are looking to expand your business. It is also key to ensure that you use the PR to its best effect at client visits and pitches. It is an invaluable tool that will separate you from your competitors.

This edition we speak to Maggie Berry, Managing Director of Women in Technology.

Q: Why do you use PR?
A: We use PR to make female technologists aware of the opportunities available to them in the sector, as well as helping businesses to understand the importance of gender equality in the workplace. We have so much to offer the industry that one of our major goals is to ensure that every woman in technology comes into contact with us at some point during their career. This can be through a networking event, through our site, or through reading our advice in the press coverage generated through PR. Another reason is that it has a completely different effect to advertising. Anyone with the right budget can buy advertising space, but PR places you as an expert in your field within prestigious and targeted trade publications.

Q: How do you measure ROI?
A: We measure ROI by how our clients and candidates react to the press coverage they’ve seen, and we monitor increases in our web traffic following PR activity. We get a lot of feedback on articles people have read that bring to light the positive work we do. That is how we know we’re getting our message out there.
Q: What advice would you give to recruitment businesses considering PR?
A: Don’t expect advertising and instant results. PR is a completely different kettle of fish and if you’re looking to use it to promote a short-term initiative, you may want to think about your aims. For example, if you’re trying to immediately convert sales, PR may not be for you. However, PR can work wonders for longer term aims, particularly given that recruiters aren’t always the most popular of professionals. If you have a niche and want to set yourself apart from the crowd and establish yourself in key media as an industry expert, PR is definitely for you. If you’re thinking about investing in PR, it is worth noting that identifying an agency that is an expert in your field may be more beneficial than a generalist PR agency. This is certainly the case with us and BlueSky, who know the recruitment sector and can identify with the challenges we face as a business exceptionally well.

For some recruitment businesses, the decision to undertake PR can be a hard one. Recruitment is hugely results driven and ROI is easily measurable. PR is different, and it can take some time to see results. With this in mind, we thought we’d feature a Q&A in each newsletter with a recruiter who uses PR, and why they do so. This edition we speak to David Leyshon, MD of specialist technical and engineering recruiter, CBSbutler.

Q: Why do you use PR?

A: We use PR as a key element to achieving our ultimate business goals: namely to promote the company as an employer of choice, build the brand amongst target communities and, in all cases, to create positive messages for the market place.

Q: How do you measure ROI?

A: ROI within PR can be somewhat qualitative. While loose financial returns can be applied to media insertions, we largely base it around feedback from stakeholders. And in the case of candidates, the number of applicants who refer to key PR events, such as awards.

Q:What advice would you give to recruitment businesses considering PR?

A: Be clear about your priorities and business objectives, define your strategy and agree a set of expectations via measurable service levels e.g. the number of media articles per quarter. Once you’ve decided on your goals, hold regular reviews to discuss performance and fine tune the approach and tactics used. Be prepared to enter into a two-way partnership; the quality of work delivered by PR professionals is highly dependent on the material your team offers up – they cannot perform miracles!

Campaign: The Global Snapshot

Client: Antal International

Budget: £25,000 annual budget

Antal International, a management recruitment specialist, operating in 30 countries worldwide, appointed BlueSky PR to look at the marketing challenges generated by its global reach. Whilst the 75 individual offices were well known within their domestic markets, its overall global brand awareness amongst potential candidates and clients needed improving. Antal asked BlueSky to come up with a campaign.

Objectives:

• To raise awareness of the Antal brand on a global basis
• To keep the costs of the project down. Previous quotes from a major international PR firm had come in at £350,000 annually.

Strategy and plan: 

In order to keep the cost of the project down without sacrificing quality, the PR team came up with the idea of a simple quarterly survey which would monitor hiring and firing levels of managers and professionals in key markets around the world. The PR team knew this would appeal to both specialist and generalist media because employment trends are often are a reliable indicator of wider economic ones.

The survey, limited to four basic questions – are you hiring now, do you plan to hire in the next three months, are you firing now, are you planning to hire in the next three months, was carried out by Antal’s own consultants. The PR team reasoned that by including the consultants in the research would not only keep costs down, but also provide a valuable business development opportunity giving them a reason to contact potential clients.

With the research completed, the PR team turned it into a written report and then produced press releases tailored to each country.  The report was used for marketing purposes and the press releases were distributed on a global basis.  The PR team produced a ‘guide to dealing with the media’ so individual offices could distribute the releases to the local media without incurring large fees to use a news wire service.

Measurement and evaluation

The campaign generated hundreds of pieces of coverage in diverse media such as the Financial Times, CNN, Spain’s El Mundo, The Times of China, the Gulf’s Arabian Business, as well as TV interviews on stations such as CNBC.  All this has resulted in brand recognition and credibility on a global basis.

Results

As a direct result of the survey, Antal secured several new clients on a global basis. This included companies in the UK, Netherlands, China, Poland, India and the Middle East. During the 2 months following the release of the survey, the Antal website also experienced a 20% increase in unique users.

Q: Why do you use PR?

 A: We use PR to reach our three main audiences – clients, candidates and potential employees, Without having a PR strategy in place we simply wouldn’t get ourselves in front of the right people in the right way. PR has been instrumental to our success not only in winning new business, but also in reaching specialist candidates because the coverage we have gained has positioned us as real experts in our field.

Q: How do you measure a ROI?

A:  The biggest ROI we have seen is winning a new client by ensuring that we use our press coverage as an inherent part of our pitch. We took a piece of coverage to a client meeting which featured us talking about the energy trading space in a commodities publication. That really differentiated us from our competitors and won us the assignment. We also monitor our website traffic following blog posts, and the increase in Twitter followers over each quarter.

Q: What advice would you give to recruitment businesses considering PR?

A:  Remember that the effect of your PR efforts may take some time to show, and it needs a sustained approach.  It might take a couple of months before the phone starts ringing following an article you have written, but be patient and remember to use the coverage gained in your own marketing to clients.

In my job search experience I have come across some great consultants – they have listened and understood exactly what I want, then fixed me up with a good interview. However, the majority I have encountered, in both small and large agencies have been terrible. Without naming names, I have found some consultants to be rude and pushy.  They haven’t read my CV properly and they don’t listen which results in them contacting me about jobs that are of absolutely no interest to me and completely unsuitable. Here are just a few examples:

• ‘The salary is £10k less than your current wage – I think you should go for it anyway.’
• ‘The job is in Norwich – I think you’d be great for it – would you relocate from Aylesbury?’
• ‘The job is for a finance officer, I know you have a degree in marketing and pr, but I’d like to put you forward for it.’

Since leaving university, I’ve never been without a job and I’ve never been desperate enough to take any old position. So  the number of inappropriate opportunities I’ve received along the way has got me quite used to saying ‘no’, which I have found out is not a word accepted by all recruiters. One wanted to put me forward for an interview, ‘an opportunity I’d regret if missed’. The role wasn’t for me so I said no… several times. After speaking to a pushy consultant I was passed onto an even more relentless manager who informed me that if I didn’t go they wouldn’t help me in my search any more. I’ve never spoken to them since!

And it’s not just me – a colleague of mine relayed the sorry tale of a consultant asking her to change her CV so that her skills would fit a position they were trying to fill! The consultant guaranteed the interview, but the fact that my colleague didn’t have the required skills and wouldn’t be able to do the job didn’t even cross their mind!

This is why I get wound up with some recruiters; do they really realise what they are doing or how they are coming across to candidates and clients? In my experience, I can only think of 1 or 2 consultants out of about 10 who were professional and really had my interests at heart.

If I’ve had a bad experience with a recruiter then I will tell others not to use them. I’m sure that goes for a lot of people, including clients. Word of mouth is a very powerful tool, and now with social media you can reach millions!

I know you shouldn’t tar all recruiters with the same brush, and I know there are some good recruiters out there; this is just the view I have gained from my experience over the years.  And having got stuck into reading various recruitment blogs since I have started at BlueSky, it seems I am not on my own.  Andy Headworth in his recent blog post advises recruiters to:  ‘Look back at yourself through the eyes of your candidates’

Wise words indeed!

Twitter – it’s like Marmite. It seems that you either love it or you hate it; or maybe more accurately you either use and benefit from it or you’re confused / uninterested / sceptical (perhaps all three.) I have certainly come across people from both camps, however the majority of recruitment professionals that I meet and talk to about Twitter give me that ‘look’ as if to say “I’m not convinced by your ‘Gen Y’ ways”. They just can’t see the value in using a tool made famous by Stephen Fry and Lily Allen in a viable way for business.  I was probably one of these sceptics, as recent as a year ago, because I didn’t really know what Twitter could do. But earlier this year I bit the bullet and started tweeting, and am seeing the real benefits unfold.

Now I realise that to an extent I am preaching to the converted here, as a lot of readers are fellow tweeters, but I thought I would share a few success stories that we’ve had – both for ourselves and for our clients – thanks to the power of Twitter.

• New clients: Through tweeting interesting and sector specific links, and re-tweeting other industry experts, we’ve had meetings with potential clients – an example being Greg Savage, who we met in the “Twittosphere” despite him being on the other side of the world!
• New candidates: Whilst looking through the followers of one client that we tweet for, we noticed a follower who had tweeted about struggling to find a job *alarm bells!* All it took was a friendly message suggesting they talk to the nearby office of the recruiter and voila, she’s now a candidate.
• New exposure: Through engaging with people on Twitter, we have secured high profile guest blogs for two clients in just two months. We’ve also gained new journalist contacts leading to a number of articles and press coverage. With over 600 followers between us, Tracey and I have also boosted our reputation in the industry even further.
• New contacts: OK so this doesn’t directly equate to new business but it could in the future. Twitter has been a great way to talk to journalists, recruiters and other people who provide useful information and who could be useful contacts in the future. And then there’s other people who probably won’t…but who are entertaining!

The truth is that no-one knows if Twitter is a one-minute wonder, or if it’s going to last the duration. But what is clear is that at the moment it’s huge and it shows no signs of going away. If you meet any Twitter-doubters, share this link with them and they may just change their mind! Do you have any Twitter success stories to add? Please share!

I look at loads of recruitment websites – and loads of recruitment brochures. And most of them are deadly dull. Now I know, as someone who has a lot of involvement in producing content for such things, that’s a pretty controversial statement. But it’s true.  And it’s mainly because a lot of recruiters all say the same thing. Leaders in our field, passionate about client service, yadda yadda yadda.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong but recruitment is and always has been a people business. And we all know that people buy from people, and, to coin yet another over used phrase,  that people are your greatest asset. But because of the paranoia surrounding staff poaching, recruitment websites rarely talk about the people who work there.  And then I saw Aquent’s website. What a breath of fresh air – at last a recruiter who bases their own image around their own people.

It may not be to everyone’s taste – but it’s different and fresh and innovative – and no – I haven’t had anything to do with it (more’s the pity).

And what of brochures? I’ve written copy for many over the years but have they had their day? I’d love some feedback here. Do you use them? Do your clients read them? And what’s the most important thing about them? Is an on line pdf enough or do clients want something they can touch and feel. Comments please!!