Here’s an excerpt from the article of what Sodexo does:

An example of a company that has integrated this functionality into their application process is Sodexo. When applying for a job, there are four different interest levels that prospective candidates can select: passive interest, just starting to look, actively looking, but employed, available immediately. During this brief establishment of interest, Sodexo wisely captures basic information including name, email address, and phone number. This enables the prospective candidate to communicate contact information and interest level without having to apply immediately unless they are ready. As a direct employer, this level of increased granularity is expected and provides a great example of how to capture candidate interest before forcing an application decision. Ideally, Sodexo is also segmenting the different interest levels to maintain communication with those who have expressed interested but are not yet ready to apply.

There are a few important things that I love about this example when it comes to building your Talent Network. Here they are:

1) Collecting contact information - Sodexo does a great job of collecting information from contacts on their career site. There is a great value in collecting this information and is something that all companies should do. There are great candidates that come to your career site every day that aren’t ready to apply to your jobs today but are great contacts to have for future job openings.

2) Segmentation and Targeted Messaging - I love the fact that Sodexo asks segmentation questions about a candidates level of interest in this process. Right away this tells them how they need to communicate with the different candidates coming in. Passive candidates need to be sold on the company, so any communication should focus on ‘why you should work at our company’ (benefits, work life balance, work environment, etc.). Actively looking candidates should not only be told about overall company highlights but the job specific details as well (as they are most likely to apply for the job.)

3) Open and Engaging - Sodexo not only does a wonderful job of not only segmenting different interest levels but does an even better job of making themselves available for engagement with prospective candidates. Through their collection of social media and forum outlets, they enable candidates to engage with their employer brand and make it easy to create meaningful relationships with these prospective candidates.

Sodexo does a great job of building their Talent Network. Through data collection, candidate segmentation, targeted messaging and easy employer brand engagement, they are able to interact with prospective candidates at every level of the candidate interest process.

Collect, Segment, Target, ENGAGE! That’s recruitment marketing done right!

About the Author: Chris is the Marketing Analyst for SmashFly Technologies. SmashFly is the provider of the first recruitment marketing platform called WildFire that enables companies and staffing firms to easily distribute and more importantly measure the performance of their recruiting efforts online.

The WildFire recruitment marketing platform offers every tool you need for your recruitment marketing needs all in one centralized solution including Real-Time Recruitment Metrics, Job Ad Distribution (job boards, social networks, SEM, email & SMS campaigns), Recruitment Opt-In Database, Recruitment CRM, Web Commercials / Micro-sites and Resume Sourcing services.