How we discovered our blind spot
I pride myself in taking advice on board and reaching out when I need help. If my company, Zealify, was ever struggling with a problem I’d ask for advice and look for best practice. But what if we didn’t know something was wrong? What if my team and I, whilst being in the trenches trying to grow our company, had developed a blindspot that was ultimately hurting us.
We have always tried to adapt and change to different climates, problems, opportunities and trends. We like receiving mentorship and taking on feedback. We also like to ‘give back’ and provide feedback where we can; we mentor students, love working with our peers to help them improve, and are always trying to participate in the community. But we realise that sometimes there are things that can only be discovered through introspection, and others that can only be uncovered by certain people.
Last week we had the opportunity to work with a client, and mentor, on how we communicate Zealify to the outside world. As a customer of Zealify he had received the full experience, from our sales process, right through to delivery and execution. He made the observation that the gap between what we ‘sold’ him, and the value he received from Zealify was huge (in a good way). Of course, there is always a benefit in under promising and over delivering, but in our case it quickly became very clear that we simply weren’t communicating ourselves well.
Zealify
We provide an end-to-end employer branding and recruitment platform to allow companies to build an exceptional employer brand. We have a job board where we build visually engaging company profiles to help them attract and hire great candidates. We have an engaged, and growing, audience who want to find exciting companies to work for. We’re speaking with these candidates every day and they love our platform, so clearly we’re doing something right here; but as with all marketplace businesses, this is only one side of our equation.
Our issue is that whilst employer branding as a methodology is gaining traction, it is still misunderstood by many. Therefore, in communication with prospects (companies who might use Zealify), education always felt like our biggest hurdle to overcome. Often we were being pigeon holed. Are we JUST a job board?
More than just a job board
At Zealify we provide a service to help companies build an employer brand, to showcase their culture and help accelerate their growth. Although our job board is a core component of what we do, we also do all of the below:
Professional Photography
Recruitment Videos
Careers Page Content
Job Description Review
Employer Brand Review
Candidate Feedback
Ongoing employer branding support
And of course, last but not least…. the Zealify Job Board
What did we start off with?
Just one lacklustre landing page. It had very little insight into what we do, zero social proof, no testimonials or any real detail at all for that matter.
We weren't setting ourselves up with a good chance to sell because we were pointing people to a website that didn't communicate the value we could provide. We had enquiries that had completely misunderstood Zealify and missed out on prospective enquires because of confusing, unengaged messaging.
Nothing showed our insight or expertise in employer branding and recruitment marketing. Nothing we were communicating screamed I MUST work with this company.
One huge blind spot was having a detrimental effect on the fundamentals of our business.
Time to change
It’s easy to say “I’m too busy to focus on that right now”; after all, nearly ALL we were doing was talking to customers (companies) and users (candidates). We thought we were doing the right thing. Taking time away from doing this seemed like a distraction and a luxury we didn’t have. But this is an exact parallel to what we were asking our customers to do; invest time into your employer brand and it will pay off hugely in the long run. Yet, we weren’t taking our own medicine. It was time to pause, regroup and revisit our entire marketing and communications strategy.
Sitting in this meeting with our mentor (and customer) we realised how much we’d been missing; the opportunity to show what we could do, the impact we could make and why Zealify would help any growing company.
Zealify for employers
So I’m pleased today to launch our new & improved Zealify for employers. No more half-baked one-pagers for us!
It will be an ongoing effort, that we will continually look to improve and develop. We exist to help growing companies grow more efficiently by unlocking the value of their employer brand. We know we can provide, and have already provided, value to our customers and we’d love you to help us avoid any other present or future blind spots. If you see anything we’ve missed or that’s confusing about the value Zealify can provide, please get in touch. Any feedback big or small is appreciated.
If you have any questions I’m always happy to talk about employer branding (that’s not changed!). Get in touch with me at lauren@laurenhine.co
It’s so easy to be heads down, hustling, working hard. There are some great people in this community who are willing to chat and give feedback. Just one insight, from one person can change your perspective and trajectory. Don’t miss out on that because you’re “too busy”.
“Nothing works better than the brand. When you build something that’s special people are coming to you instead of you recruiting. The greatest way to recruit is to not recruit; it’s to do something that is so significant, or interesting, or curious, or challenging that people want to work for you.”
— Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia