 Once you decide to start a storytelling initiative, it’s time to rally support within your company and get people excited to participate. You’ve already got buy-in from leadership, because they understand how the right talent enables their business strategy. Now you need to get everyone else in the company onboard. This is critical, because you can’t do this without them.
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 Recruiting new talent isn’t just on the HR professional’s plate. Recruiting is on the minds of business owners and executives who are tasked with implementing business strategy because they know that their ability to meet their business goals depends in large part on their ability to attract and retain the right talent. Recruiting is more difficult than ever in our low unemployment economy and traditional methods just don’t work like they used to. Part of the answer to getting better recruiting results is to change your approach from reactive to proactive.
 If you have been involved with hiring for your company, you probably know how this scene plays out. You have a position to fill so you post the job. Applicants come in and you screen the candidates for a shortlist, and so on. You end up with a hire that may or may not be a good fit. Time will tell, and hopefully you don’t find yourself filling the same job a few months or even a year or two down the road.
 Think about the actions you take as you research and choose a product or service online. If part of your process includes reading about the experiences of other people, then you’re not alone. In the B2B world, case studies are the most effective content to convert and move prospects along on their buying journey. (Demand Gen) And in the consumer world, 88% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. (Search Engine Land) Publishing proof that you’ll do what you say you can do should be in your content strategy. To get started, learn about the difference between case studies, success stories, testimonials and reviews.
 I don’t have to tell you that it’s difficult to find the workers you need. That’s stating the obvious. A low unemployment economy, however, isn’t the only challenge that you need to overcome in order to swing that situation around. Chances are good that if you’re still doing recruiting the way you’ve always done it, that your process is broken. The time to fix it is now and here’s why.
 Imagine for a moment that you went to a lake, launched your boat, and started to fish without knowing if the body of water was an environment where fish could thrive. Your results will be hit or miss. You could be super lucky and get a bite with every cast. You could go through the whole day without a single nibble. Maybe you have a bit of success and you bring in a few fish in return for the investment of your time, your equipment and the energy you expended to plan your day and get there. What would be better, would be to learn about the kind of fish you want to catch, and go where you know you’ll find them, and be prepared to use the right fishing techniques to reel them in. So it is with Buyer Personas.
 We’re getting quite predictable, you and I. We use our consumer behaviors to shop for just about anything, be it a new dishwasher for our home, a software tool for work, or even our next job opportunity. Don’t believe me? Answer these questions. What do you do first when you need to buy a product or service? You go to the internet to research the problem that you need to solve, and you learn about the options available to solve it. When do you usually contact a company that you have put on your short list of possibilities? You probably don't want to talk to anyone until you have a pretty good idea of which direction you want to go.
Many businesses now realize that it's vital to create online interactions to guide people towards a purchase decision, but when it comes to recruiting talent and building a candidate pipeline, they’re missing the mark. Read on to learn why recruitment marketing is a growing trend not to be ignored.  If you have a line of customers ready to give you money for your products and services but you don’t have enough staff to take care of business, you have a big problem. It’s a problem that isn’t going to resolve itself any time soon. National unemployment is just under 4%, while here in Minnesota, that number is even lower, hovering at just under 3% for the last four months according to the Minnesota Employment and Economic Development bureau. How can businesses compete for the labor they need to advance their plans for growth? One tactic business owners and HR professionals are turning to is Content Marketing, and the creation of employee stories to connect with people and build relationships with them through their online interactions.
 If you ask, your clients are generally happy to put out a good word for you. They’ll refer you to their friends and colleagues. They’ll respond to your customer satisfaction surveys with high marks and a smiley face. They’ll even give you a favorable review on Facebook or Google. Unfortunately, the feedback, while good, isn’t necessarily compelling because what they have to say is flat. That is, it doesn’t take the reader up and over the dramatic arc, a necessity if you want to activate empathy – which you do.
 If you want to use case studies to differentiate your business and gain buyers’ trust, the first thing you need to do is find the stories that you need to tell. Once you know how to uncover these stories, and you get your whole company involved, you’ll discover that you have a consistent source of ideas for the best type of content that influences your buyers’ decisions. No special tools are needed to give these five tactics a try.
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