Are Brands failing to follow the rules of candidate engagement?

While reading Marketing Week yesterday, I came across a a very interesting article entitled, Brands Fail to Follow Rules of Engagement. And while it sits in a marketing magazine, I believe that the same applies to recruitment and candidates.

Research from Targetbase Claydon Heeley (now that's a catchy company name, if ever I heard one!) suggests that the majority of company marketers (for my analogy substitute HR Director) are confident they are engaging with their audiences (for me, prospective employees), while consumers ( the job seekers) believe the opposite.

Here is the summary of their results:

What do you think the results would have been if they had asked HR Directors similar questions?

Do you think that 41% would have selected 'Demonstrating understanding of the customer' (read job seeker)? or 44% would have selected 'Personalised and tailored communications' (with job seekers)?

While I think they may well have made a utopian selection (just to look good in a survey!), experience tells me that, in reality, they actually have no understanding of the job seeker at all!

There are some very good organisations of course - the best I have seen for a while is Deloitte's - , but they, I believe, are currently in the minority........unfortunately.

What do you think? If you substituted a recruitment slant to the title of the table above, would it look much different?

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