Jared Nypen and his team manage Recruitment Marketing on a corporate level for Great Clips, and they help teach recruiting to the company’s franchisees. Being a “teacher” of Recruitment Marketing is just one of the reasons why we invited Jared to become a Rally Recruitment Marketing Mentor.
Another reason? He’s built Recruiting functions from the ground up for some great brands, and has a ton of great experience to share.
As the Vice President of Talent at Great Clips, Jared is a talent acquisition veteran. While he has worked in the field for the last 14 years, he began his career doing merchandising for Target.
“I was tapped on the shoulder to do some campus recruiting. It was intended to be a one year stint. I was suppose to go back to merchandising. I loved what I was doing so much that I essentially forgot to go back,” Jared joked.
Jared’s journey into Recruitment Marketing came while working at Best Buy. Seeing the first few uses of Recruitment Marketing pop up within the industry, Jared says he had a realization that the recruitment strategy couldn’t exist without Recruitment Marketing tactics.
“I don’t think anyone knew to even call it Recruitment Marketing at the time,” Jared recalled.
What can companies do to adopt Recruitment Marketing?
Jared feels there needs to be a larger connection between a company’s Consumer Brand and Employer Brand. Understanding it takes a shift in a company’s marketing mindset, the connection is something he is constantly working on in his current role. He offers a great, real-world example:
“When our consumer marketing team starts building commercials for our salons, they’re not thinking about the fact that the stylists is wearing an apron in the commercial. It gives the impression to a stylist who may not like to wear an apron that Great Clips does chemical treatments. In reality, we do haircuts. They’re thinking of it as, ‘We put this apron on so that we can make sure that the customer knows who the stylist is and who the customer’ and were saying,’ That actually has an impact on Employer Branding and perceptions that people form of Great Clips as an employer.”
When speaking at industry conferences, what is the most common question you get asked?
Jared has had the opportunity to speak at industry conferences and participate in panel discussions. He says the most common question he gets asked is centered around, “How did you do it?” He offers a simple, linear approach.
“At the very beginning, make sure you know what your Employer Brand is and if you don’t – ask. Once you have your Employer Brand, then you need to find your audience and find your content. Then, get that content to the audience in the way that the audience wants it,” Jared explained. “Once you start to do that, you’ve started Recruitment Marketing whether you know it or not.”
Jared has had the opportunity to build Great Clips’ Recruitment Marketing strategy from the ground up and then, both teach and pass down those tactics to franchisees. Now, he’s sharing that experience with the Rally community.