Before helping found Jobster in 2004, I spent several years in the Global Marketing Organization at Microsoft. My primary responsibility at the time was managing the systems and processes that enabled Microsoft marketing activities.

It did not take long working closely with Jobster customers to realize how similar recruiting and marketing were from a process perspective. Despite these similarities, I did not see many organizations who had realized the potential cross over. When you think about the "marketing funnel" you start to see how recruiting should be run in a very similar fashion.

What does this really mean for recruiting? Well, from my perspective, it means that getting to a "best in class" recruiting organization can be done by borrowing several pages from your organizations marketing handbook. It also wouldn't hurt to recruit some of your company's marketing talent onto your team. That covers the people part - from a systems and process perspective, I think there are years of learning that can be directly applied to recruiting. I will save those thoughts for another day.