Employment Marketing at Sodexo: Attracting Talent through Content Marketing

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:20 — 44.3MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Spotify | Email | RSS

In a tight job market, attracting top talent through employment marketing at Sodexo – the 20th largest employer in the world and the most prominent company most people have never heard of – involves much more than just a LinkedIn presence and a blog.

Consumer marketing strategies can also be applied to employment marketing.

The shift in mindset revolves around creative content marketing strategies that promote career advancement opportunities, showcasing employee experiences, provide career tips, and offering valuable advice to candidates and employees. The best content marketing attracts top talent be focusing on what the company can offer with respect to career paths or career advancement.

Under the guidance of Arie Ball, VP of Talent Acquisition, Sodexo’s employment marketing strategy encompasses the Sodexo Jobs mobile app, the Sodexo blog, nearly a dozen managed communities tailored to specific job tasks, and branded social media accounts on every major social network.

Employment Marketing Through Mobile, Social, and Local Channels

Sodexo is leveraging content marketing and SEO, distributed through a mobile app and promoted on social media to extend the reach of their employment marketing efforts to mobile, social, and local channels. This blog post is a summary of a podcast interview with Chloe Rada, the voice of Sodexo Careers, and senior marketing manager in the talent acquisition department.

Chloe Rada, a seasoned professional with a background in advertising and extensive experience in recruitment marketing, shares insights into her journey and her contributions to the HR and staffing industry. Although she doesn’t consider herself an HR practitioner, Chloe’s affiliation as a SHERM cardholder underscores her familiarity with HR practices. With a family business rooted in advertising and employment marketing, Chloe Rada’s career path seamlessly merged employment marketing strategies with the in-house recruitment landscape, where she collaborated with employers of all sizes to attract top-tier candidates. 

She’s focused on using content marketing to distribute and promote Sodexo’s online job center and open up lines of communication between candidates and recruiters. Her mission is to help the talent acquisition department communicate what working at Sodexo is like. Her team is 100% virtual and supports hiring management positions only. Others hire hourly employees.  

Rada, who also serves as the Sodexo careers spokesperson, manages the company’s social media properties for recruitment and writes for their careers blog. She emphasizes the importance of conveying not only the services Sodexo offers, but also the employment experience they provide across various environments, such as marine bases, military, education, and corporate services.

Rada says her role supports Sodexo’s recruitment goals, where they receive approximately 20,000 applications per month. She highlighted the department’s virtual work environment, fostering innovation and collaboration, and mentioned their recent recognition as the number one recruitment department of the year. Arie stressed the significance of using social media to build relationships with candidates, providing insights into Sodexo’s culture and work environment and how this approach has helped connect with potential hires early in their career exploration process.

Engagement Through Employment Marketing

Regarding a survey conducted with recent hires regarding the usage of their mobile app, launched midway through the fiscal year, a significant majority of have been the Sodexo Careers mobile app for job searches and applications, establishing it as a crucial connection with candidates who spend less time on desktop or mobile computers.

The survey extended its inquiries beyond the mobile recruiting app, delving into the broader landscape of social media channels candidates use to find jobs. Surprisingly, 46% of all hires reported using one or more social spaces for this purpose, with the Sodexo USA careers blog emerging as a standout favorite, underscoring the effectiveness of content marketing as a recruitment tool.

Rada, who is the main contributor to the careers blog, highlights the importance of focusing on strategic content marketing and dissemination via various social channels to expand its reach, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and discipline-specific microsites, all of which have witnessed increased engagement. The survey shed light on the evolving landscape of candidate engagement and the pivotal role of that content marketing plays in the recruitment process.

Empowering Blue-Collar Dreams: Authentic Content Marketing for Trust and Engagement

It is essential when recruiting top-tier candidates to extend the reach of timely and authentic content marketing efforts through social media engagement. Responding to candidates’ inquiries promptly and fosters trust through transparency. Diversifying content marketing strategies beyond job postings by including frequently asked questions, industry news, infographics, and relevant insights serves to enrich the candidate’s experience and attract an engaged talent pool. The goal of aligning recruitment marketing strategies with consumer marketing practices is to connect with and serve potential candidates and existing employees effectively.