I can’t even begin to count the number of times I have found a good resume, called the candidate, and spent the next fifteen minutes explaining my company and what we do simply to get the candidate interested in listening to what I had to say. This step is pretty crucial in the recruiting process, whether you’re working for a big name company, or for a less well-known company. I have worked for both, and in my experience it doesn’t really matter for what company I am recruiting – they all have their attributes. But it does matter if the person to whom I’m speaking has heard of the company.

All chocolate wafer cookies are not Oreos
I learned this from my dad at a young age. When I was in high school we bought a Jacuzzi (I grew up in Maine and this was a necessity). My dad was quick to inform me, however, that we didn’t buy a Jacuzzi we bought a hot tub. Being a teenager, I put my thinking cap on and started to debate the difference between a hot tub and a Jacuzzi. He shot me down real quick, as he informed me that Jacuzzi was just a brand name and that we didn’t buy that brand. We just bought a hot tub. So what’s the morale to this story? I didn’t care if we bought a Jacuzzi, a hot tub, or a bath tub with an outboard engine. It was still hot bubbling water in the cold of Maine.

But seriously as in marketing and branding, as a recruiter you must do the same for your company that Jacuzzi did for the hot tub business. If you don’t, then it will take you longer and you’ll have to work harder to get those great candidates.

So how do you go about this (and no, you don’t have to have a huge budget to accomplish it)? As we speak I bet that you have already branded your company with job postings online, a corporate website, newspaper classifieds and the like.

Getting your message out
Here are a few more ways to get your message out. However, before you go running to implement these make sure your message is strong. I can’t count the number of job postings I have created read and responded to. However, I can count the number of them that I found interesting and enticing. Every company has that one thing – that one golden nugget, that one word, phrase or appealing piece of information – that a candidate wants. If you don’t include that in your pitch, then you are missing out. During my agency days, one recruiter used to call these “hot buttons.” What are your candidate’s hot buttons? Is it location, technology, dress code, childcare. Anyone of these could spark your candidate’s interest. But because you don’t know which one is the spark, make sure that you have all of your hot buttons in your descriptions.

Leverage technology for recruitment marketing
Here are a couple of things that you could be doing to get the word out about your business, and get your name out in front of passive and active candidates.

1. RSS Feed: I haven’t seen a lot of ATS systems that have this option, so if you haven’t bought an ATS yet make sure you ask them if they have this capability. If you have an ATS that doesn’t have it, you should ask for it. As a customer, pressuring your ATS provider to add this capability can actually work. (By the way, if you have RSS you can post jobs for free on our site with it

2. Viral Marketing is all the rage as it’s cheap and easy to get the word out. Viral marketing is anything from creating a recruiting video and putting it on You Tube to creating a recruiting cartoon piece and putting it out to the Internet. It could also mean inventing a web-based game or an email systemfor you and your friends.

3. Job Distribution is an easy way to make sure you are getting a lot of traffic to your job postings. You can get your jobs out to such engines as simplyhired.com, Indeed, and others as long as you either subscribe to them or you request them to take your feed.

4. PPC or Pay-Per-Click Marketing is a quick and easy way for you to get your job description’s keywords inserted into search engines for a fee. This will not only get you branding and exposure but you might capture some candidates along the way. Start small and dabble in it as it can be very costly. If you want to do a full blown campaign, then hire a professional and let the experts handle this for you, as it’s a lot of work and will consume your life.

Jason S. Gorham has served as CEO for CareerMetaSearch.com, a first-of-its-kind online job board, since he founded the company in 2003. Gorham, a staffing industry veteran, brings both extensive experience and a renowned vision to the organization, having served in the field for more than 10-years. Gorham also currently serves as both CEO and Managing Director for Sharkstrike, a recruitment process outsource company whose unique services include, among others, name sourcing, resume database mining and recruitment consulting. Achievements throughout his career include the design development of the patent pending Push Postings™ technology, a keyword extraction technology that turns passive job seekers throughout the Web into interested, highly qualified candidates for relevant postings on the CareerMetaSearch.com job board. Gorham is also the creator of Rez-X™, an online resume exchange solution that allows recruiters to share a central resume amongst themselves.