Every year, the Rally Awards celebrate excellence in Recruitment Marketing and employer branding practices that attract and recruit talent through social and digital channels, as well as practitioners who have demonstrated how they’ve moved the needle to make a difference in their organization.
Samantha Schuch, Recruitment Marketing Manager at Spectrum, was recognized this year as a Recruitment Marketing Rising Star for going above and beyond this requirement, making a significant impact on talent acquisition at Spectrum in just a couple of years — and while being in a first-time Recruitment Marketing role.
In nominating her, Spectrum’s talent acquisition leaders provided the awards judges with rave reviews about Sam:
“Sam has done a nice job with the media and metrics. She is quick to respond and provides data in a story I can easily share with my business partners and team.” — Corporate Recruiting Leader
“Excellent communication, knowledge and support throughout the year as it relates to key metrics and KPIs for our efforts.” — Technology Recruiting Leader
“I have never felt as confident in our media mix and reporting as I do with you on the team.” — Talent Attraction & Acquisition Leader
Before we get to our Q&A with Sam, let’s learn a little more about her achievements.
Meet Samantha Schuch, 2022 Rally Awards Recruitment Marketing Rising Star
Samantha Schuch, Recruitment Marketing Manager, Spectrum
Samantha Schuch joined Spectrum as Recruitment Marketing Specialist in March 2020 and quickly rose through the ranks to become Recruitment Marketing Manager in less than 2 years. Even more impressive is that before joining Spectrum, Sam came from a consumer marketing background, having never worked in Recruitment Marketing before.
Despite this, she dove right in from day one to learn the inner workings of each of Spectrum’s business units and prepare specific Recruitment Marketing plans to help them meet their needs. Now, every month, using a metrics-driven approach, she takes each unit through a customized report to help them understand what’s working and what more they could be doing to attract top talent.
On top of applying her already-savvy media knowledge, Sam is constantly looking at data for new Recruitment Marketing tools and opportunities, immersing herself in learning, meeting new vendors, attending webinars to learn about the industry and trying new things. For example, she was the first to raise her hand to learn Spectrum’s contracting process and went on to manage all media contracts for Spectrum’s 2022 ad buys.
Sam is also quick to lend her knowledge and expertise to help her team. In 2021, she worked with other recruiting leaders to educate them on the offerings of paid social across LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, and she spearheaded a paid social strategy in 2021 that assisted in driving 32K+ applications.
Sam is an avid learner, eager to make a significant business impact and an all-around team player; all traits that make her a perfect 2022 Recruitment Marketing Rising Star.
To celebrate her win, and hopefully impart some of her wisdom to our community, we sat down with Sam to learn more about her career, her approach to Recruitment Marketing and what’s next.
Rally: So Sam, how did you get started in Recruitment Marketing?
Samantha: I was looking to continue my career in marketing and advertising after relocating from Tampa, FL to Charlotte, NC, and I came across a job posting for a Recruitment Marketing Specialist at Spectrum.
After interviewing for the role, and learning more about what Spectrum offers their employees, I knew this was something I wanted to learn more about communicating to job seekers. I also really wanted to work for my now-manager, Vanessa Sain-Dieguez, who has an impressive talent attraction background, and learn more about this space from her.
Rally: What do you enjoy most about working in this space?
Samantha: All of my past experience has been on the consumer marketing side within agencies — using marketing to help clients drive sales. What drew me to Recruitment Marketing was being able to use my past experience to help connect job seekers with a career that could potentially change their lives. It was inspiring to use my marketing background to connect people with rewarding career opportunities.
Rally: What’s changed the most about Recruitment Marketing since you started your career?
Samantha: I started my career in Recruitment Marketing in April 2020, and since then a lot has changed. The job market, due to the pandemic, went from being company-first to job-seeker-first.
Because of this, we have had to change our messaging to reflect what job seekers are looking for in a career now, like our great pay, comprehensive benefits and opportunities for advancement, instead of just listings posted on job boards. We have had to test new media tactics to try to stand out. It was certainly a great way to jump into the industry — rolling with the punches and trying out many new things.
Rally note: For a look into what the future of talent looks like, and how to prepare for it, read our free Ideabook, 8 Ways to Prepare for Tomorrow’s Talent.
Rally: What skills do you think are important for other recruitment marketers who are looking to forge their path in this space?
Samantha: Two skills that I think are important as a Recruitment Marketer are learning and questioning.
Even if you have been in this space for years, there is always something new to learn. Join community boards like Rally Recruitment Marketing or the Talent Marketing Board, and take as many training courses as you can to ensure you stay up to date on all the latest trends. Refresher training is also helpful when you need to get back to the basics. Some interesting training sessions I have taken are PH Creative’s Employer Brand Sprint and the LinkedIn Paths: Certificate in Advanced Talent Strategy.
Also, always question how you can make things better and more efficient. What you did a couple of months ago might have worked then, but might not work now. Figure out why and pivot when you need to. It’s not a failure, but a way to make what you already did better.
Rally: Turning the spotlight on you, what do you think has helped you to be a successful recruitment marketer?
Samantha: Being open to learning about the whole recruitment process has helped me become a successful recruitment marketer. The talent attraction and acquisition department at Spectrum has different teams ranging from Recruitment Marketing to the internship program and veteran recruiting, all the way to recruiting operations, tools and databases. Taking a step out of my role and learning what each of the teams does has helped me understand how I can better support them in their roles.
Before I implement media campaigns, I try to think about the whole process after we get a job seeker to the careers site to apply. This helps guide how I bring job seekers to the careers site and what I want them to do once they are there.
Rally: What project are you most proud of to date?
Samantha: I am most proud of helping set up our new metrics dashboard. We are now able to track where 90% of our careers site traffic comes from — all the way through to hire.
This has helped us showcase that job seekers have many different paths before they apply, and that diversifying our media spend is important to ensure we are there for all parts of the candidate journey. We are even able to track branding efforts like TV and radio, something that wasn’t possible before.
Rally note: To track candidate engagement across all of your social and digital Recruitment Marketing channels and understand what works best to attract talent to your specific jobs and employer brand, sign up for a free account of Rally Inside, our new analytics & benchmarking tool.
Rally: In your opinion, what is the area that deserves the most focus from recruitment marketers right now?
Samantha: In my opinion, there are two areas that deserve the most focus in Recruitment Marketing now.
One is the internal mobility/employee experience. With a shortage of job seekers in the market, recruitment marketers should take the time to develop a cohesive internal mobility strategy to retain the amazing talent they already have. Ask yourself: “how can we better our employee experience so we make people want to stay instead of trying to recruit new talent who isn’t there?” That’s the big question.
The other focus is employer branding. Companies need to take the time and money to communicate their value proposition so that as job seekers become ready to join the workforce, they already know who they want to work for.
Rally: Following this train of thought, what do you think the future of employer branding and Recruitment Marketing looks like?
Samantha: I think that since we now have a vast amount of advertising, targeting, tracking and reporting options at our fingertips, what is going to help companies stand out in the future is creative content and messaging.
As Recruitment Marketers, we have our go-to sources of where we place our media and content, but we need to figure out the strongest messages to promote to job seekers and answer questions like “why should they work here rather than there?”
Also, once they have joined the company, what can we do to make it a great place to work? I think Recruitment Marketing will have to work closely with internal teams to ensure we market a message that is true to the experience job seekers will have once they’re at the company.
Rally: What’s next for you in your career?
Samantha: I would like to continue to grow my career at Spectrum. I want to help build out the Recruitment Marketing Specialist role for our business units so that we can efficiently and effectively showcase how Spectrum is a great place to work across our various business functions like customer service, sales, products & technology and field operations.
Rally: Any final thoughts you want to pass on to the Rally community, especially those just starting out or looking to take their career to the next level?
Samantha: Always raise your hand to lead projects. Especially if you don’t know anything about the topic. It will allow you to grow your skill set and learn something new. It will make you a more well-rounded recruitment marketer!
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Interested in reading more about the Rally Awards? You can see all of the 2022 award winners on the Rally Awards website.
Be sure to also stay tuned for more lessons from our award winners in the weeks to come!
