The Marketer Fighting Recruitment Absurdities Around The World

The beginning of a year is normally a busy month for people in the job market wanting to achieve at least one of their New Year's resolutions.

Companies, too, usually embark on recruitment plans and despite the dire economic environment, including a hike in employers National Insurance contributions, this year has been no different according to Cliona Hayes Indeed's senior director of global brand and advertising.

This is why Indeed has chosen to release an international ad campaign that promotes the brand platform “There’s gotta be a better way” as the company continues its mission to improve hiring processes.

Hayes' own career path has seen her spend more than seven years at Indeed (where she is also ,the co-chair of Women @ Indeed and proactively aims to break down inequality in the workplace). She moved into the recruitment sector having worked in marketing across other verticals. These include travel with Ryanair, alcohol with Pernod Ricard and Irish Distillers, soft drinks at Britvic and media/tech at Communicorp.

Despite the varying sectors, she sees one common thread throughout – human truth, and the need to tap into that as the route to success for any brand campaign.

She cites her interest in people as being the leading force that drew her to work in the marketing profession, while her love for travel was sated by taking on international roles where she could experience new and different cultures while constantly learning.

“Humans are changing all the time, the tools are changing all the time. It is a highly energetic rollercoaster and I'm a highly energetic person, so I love constant learning and having to adapt and be flexible, she says. "Media landscapes are changing. No day is the same, so I enjoy that backdrop, especially the creative development part of understanding and everything that goes into making the sausage.”

Despite (or maybe because of) that, Hayes says marketing is not a profession for the faint-hearted. She adds that partners such as agencies and local market teams can help navigate economic challenges and onboard the constantly evolving new tools for marketers to understand..

Encouraging the evolution of Indeed

Hayes joined Indeed in 2017, a period of constant growth for the platform, which hosts millions of jobs at any one time and now claims to be the world’s top job site with over 580 million job seeker profiles.

Operating across 60 countries and with 3.5 million employers registered, it also offers advice on employment, CVs, salaries and company reviews, having expanded to become a content platform and guide as well as a recruitment aid.

She says when she started it made around $1.1 billion in revenue and now makes $7.1 billion, showing its astronomic growth in recent years, despite uncertain economic conditions around the world.

At the start, she found the marketing to be “very reactive” but over the years the business has become more data-driven through partnerships and the adoption of martech tools. These have allowed it to become “very intentional” and “sharper” in how it models its spend in different markets.

She says: “So even though our budgets have gone down, we are maintaining our business and brand metrics, because we're more sophisticated in terms of how we're spending and deploying our money across various channels." This has also meant Indeed has become more purpose-driven as it maintains its mission to help people get jobs.

The COVID pandemic helped solidify that purpose, leading Indeed to introduce its “timeless” platform 'The World Can Work Better’ two years ago, and reinforce this with “timely” campaigns.

“The first campaign showcased to the world that better is out there and then the second one is 'what we mean by that', or 'how do we help you get there?'. So, showcasing our products, and the products are really at the at the core of this. It's doubling down on what better is, and then how to get it,” she explains of the brand campaigns released since 2023.

And as the campaign has evolved, so has the tone. This has shifted from a more serious message that responded to ‘The Great Resignation’ as people looked to improve their employment and living circumstances, to a more humorous one that highlights the common absurdities of job seeking.

Hayes admits that there was careful consideration around adding humour to its latest campaign and that adjustments will be made depending on the platform to account for sensibilities.

“Whereas we make light in an advertising campaign, there are parts of this discussion that are extremely serious, and so we would definitely adjust our tone depending on the topic, depending on the channel, and depending on the medium,” she explains.

And as a business that gathers vast amounts of data through its platform, it uses those insights to help inform and validate its agency 72&Sunny’s ideas while channelling first-party consumer insights.

To support that, Hayes describes the adoption of artificial intelligence tools as “a game changer” when it comes to brand management.

“Simplification is key,” she continues. “And that is always what makes good marketing - drilling it down to a simple and effective insight.”

Here are some further insights from Hayes on her experience as a marketing leader.

Creative Salon: What frustrates you most as a marketer?

Cliona Hayes: People can be extremely subjective and simplify marketing and look at one potential output, like a TV ad or a social post and jump to conclusions. But I think marketing in today's age is extremely nuanced.

So if you're looking at consumer insights, B2B, B2C (which we have both) your business needs, new product development and understanding all your RTBs (reasons to believe), the backdrop of an economic situation, ever-changing media landscape, ever-changing media fragmentation while consumer behaviours change all the time.

So what frustrates me is when people think: ‘Oh, you do the pictures or the ads,’ or not understanding the complexity of marketing in today's age. Add to that, when you do marketing well, it's a massive lever propelling the business forward and understanding how effective advertising is as a huge business driver that affects the bottom line.

What's been feeding your imagination lately?

CH: We're very focused on how we brand AI agents, that something that's new in the world of brands and marketing. So if you're in tech and you think of people across AI, agents are now how we will be going to market across multiple platforms, and a lot of tech are thinking about this now. So how do we make sure that we're getting our brand across and making sure that they are distinctive and differentiated in terms of tone, in terms of do we personalise? How does that all happen? And I think that's something that's new enough, and that's definitely taking some of my headspace at the moment.

Will the adoption of AI make marketing easier?

CH: I think ultimately it will but right now we're in the middle of a storm. We are trying to get our heads around it, understand new tools, and pivot all while trying to do our day jobs and try this one, try that one. We're in this massive cluster storm of onboarding.

Ultimately, when we get there and we all find our groove of how it's going to take away all of the mundane tasks and help people focus on more upper funnel or more value-based jobs, it's going to be really helpful. And do I see it today? It's coming. People are at different stages of the journey; some people haven't even started while others are writing books and doing great things. So, ultimately, yes, it will be extremely helpful. Right now, we're in that onboarding period where people are still trying to pivot and learn.

Have you found an AI platform that you like?

CH: I'm using ChatGPT way more than I'm using Google now, and I would use that multiple times a day. I'd actually be using that every hour and so that's a big one. I have started using Claude as well and we've started to onboard Pencil with our creative team. So there are multiple tools that we're looking at. I've been talking to lots of different  AI agencies and platforms and tools.

What satisfies you most as a marketer?

CH: Seeing brand and business metrics move on the back of your campaigns.

What's your favourite piece of creativity?

CH: Barbie obviously did a lot of great stuff last year, and I loved the branded elevators because it's something that you can do across markets. It's super simple, and it was massively effective. I thought that was a piece of great creativity.

Another one that sticks with me was from Orange Telecom in France which produced this amazing video that was a compelling highlights package of French football stars such as Mbappe and all of these guys performing expert pieces of skill while scoring goals. But halfway through, they do this rug pull moment where they showcase that it's all women. I thought this was absolutely genius. Not only does it make you break down that whole bias that females are not good at football, but it also begs the viewer to think more holistically about the biases that we have in terms of inequality between men and women. That piece of creativity was absolutely genius.

What makes a good agency partner?

CH: What makes a good agency partnership is the constant communication and not just waiting till a brief comes across to then bring people on board. From us as a client, ensuring that we are constantly giving the flow of information around the business needs in terms of products. And what makes them a good partner is being very proactive about bringing ideas to you and being on the front foot I feel all of the time, rather than waiting for you to come with a brief.

I think that's something that I always look for – that hunger for the agency to be creative, or creative ways to solve for business solutions.

What would you say has been your boldest creative play?

CH: In 2022 we created this campaign called ‘Dare to Share’ and it was all about breaking the taboo about speaking about salary. It was in the US. We asked people, ‘Would you take a dare, or would you share your salary?’ And we went out on the street and asked the question as part of the campaign. It was advocating for job seekers and employers to lift the taboo, and we promoted salary transparency to get people to talk about it.

So, when we went out with the campaign the next day, we had about 5000 Indeed employees create a Slack channel, starting to share their salaries, going ‘We need to walk the walk and talk the talk.’ We didn't think it was bold, because it's something that we speak about openly, but what it did was ignite this massive fire within our own house. And everybody started sharing salaries, it was amazing to see, but it was also awkward to feel the impact it had, but that is what we're asking people to do, so the result of the campaign was actually quite palpable.