Oil industry recruitment is a multi-billion dollar industry. January 20th, 2016 Air Energi and Swift Worldwide Resources formally merged together to become Airswift, one of the largest business staffing companies in the US.
By all accounts, the merger was a success. At the beginning of 2016, the company was expected to generate over $1.2 billion a year in revenue.
From a branding perspective, they did a great job combining the companies.
Likewise, the new website has an exceptionally clean look and feel.
A quick Inspect shows us they’re using Hero Font, which offers a smooth and modern aesthetic that’s nice and easy on the eyes.
Anyone who has hired us to build out their sales-driven marketing process knows we are big fans of tools like Font Awesome and Dashicons. Airswift did a great job using icons like this to illustrate the company’s story.
If that’s not good enough, you’re also looking at five different conversion paths here. The new company offers five categories of business services; consulting, agile back-office management, global mobility management, managed workforce solutions, and talent acquisition. Each category link takes you to a sales page that speaks directly to the problems the solution solves.
This is a win-win. Visitors can quickly find information and Airswift can quickly convert them to leads.
So if they have so many things right, what’s the missing ingredient? I’ll give you a hint. It’s the “R” word you’ve been hoping that girl you met on Tinder wouldn’t bring up.
Like all recruiting, oil industry recruitment is a sales-oriented role. You have prospects, sales funnels, and numbers to hit. The critical difference in talent acquisition comes from the complexity of managing expectations on both sides of your funnel.
Compared to recruiters, other oilfield sellers have it made. If you sell drilling chemicals, your inventory doesn’t change very often. You might switch your stock up annually, but you have more than a few orders of Bauxite Beads.
Conversely, when you “sell” oil industry recruitment your inventory is people. Specifically, qualified job candidates. Many of those candidates aren’t exclusively relying on you for their career search. Imagine if your few orders of Bauxite Beads were actively trying to sell itself into your accounts.
It’s brutal when your inventory is your competition!
Relationships are everything in this environment. Successful oil industry recruitment firms teach their recruiters to constantly cultivate strong relationships. The entry-level placement you make today could be the perfect high-paying executive hire in 5-10 years.
When you look at the results, there’s no doubt Airswift’s culture is centered on strong offline relationships. Which brings us to the one thing Airswift is missing — scaled online relationship building.
Disclaimer: No, I’m not picking on my friend Ryan Hagle at PROCOR CHEMICALS, INC. His products came in handy here. They let me illustrate a point while subtly encouraging you to check out his drilling fluid solutions. Thank you, sir!
Pro-tip: If you want to build strong relationships, find reasons to link to your network’s websites on your site.
The new site’s main navigation gives us five options; Candidates, Services, About Airswift, News, and Contact Us. The simplified site structure is perfect for Search Engine Optimation (SEO). Well played, Airswift.
That’s right, the News link heads in the right direction, but doesn’t get us to picking up the girl’s phone number, a.k.a. the visitor’s email address. That’s because News is the closest option we get to a blog. When you click-through, you see all the latest on why the company is awesome.
Let’s make this abundantly clear, there is nothing wrong with telling people how awesome you are! The problem is telling people you’re awesome only gets you so far.
Airswift’s website has to sell multiple prospects. The company’s staff needs to be sold on its vision and value. Its external jobs candidates need to be sold on the company’s proven professionalism. The company’s corporate prospects need to be sold on its ability to produce results.
Looking at Airswift’s “News” through that lens, the page is perfect. Visitors can quickly see the company’s reputation as a proven and trustworthy partner are true. But, this perfect page points to the problem.
When your marketing achieves its goal, you have reached the end of the marketing funnel. The conversion took place. The deed is done. After you click-through, you’re sold on Airswift’s value. You have nowhere to go from there.
In other words, we’re looking at a transactional one-time conversion. Someone hears about Airswift and thinks, “Are they legit?” After visiting the site, they click “News” and say, “Yup. Looks like they’re super-legit!” The transactional nature of the conversion means it can demonstrate value, but it can’t foster relationships. Once you see Airswift is the real deal, you don’t have a reason to come back.
Hold up, James! Are you telling me a page my website can foster relationships?
If trends in Google Analytics showed individual candidates were the most important part of our audience, I would further brand it the “Get Hired Blog”.
If trends indicated it was more lucrative to target content towards corporate recruiting teams, I would further brand it the “Got Candidates? Blog”.
Reach out to the 71 highly-engaged and enthusiastic employees who shared our roll-out message last year.
Ask each of the 71 employees to write a blog post within 30 days that answers the #1 question both job candidates and corporate clients ask them regularly (that’s 2 blogs in 30 days).
Within 30 days I would have 142 blog posts.
Have the marketing team edit and Search Engine Optimize each blog post.
Create a content calendar posting articles twice a week on Tuesday and Wednesday morning.
If you’re following along at home, that’s all of our content for nearly a year and a half!
Stagger the publishing calendar by topic category and author to ensure we don’t hit on the same topics too often or too closely together.
Include two articles about how awesome we are each quarter.
Since we’re delivering outrageous value each week, we will earn the right to brag on ourselves every now and again.
Acquire an enterprise employee advocacy software, such as Sociabble.
Activate every employee in the organization to share company content across their personal social networks.
Create a portal so other employees can submit articles.
Track results each week and adjust the strategy accordingly.
Is full of people who want to regularly hear from Airswift.
Demonstrate authority with “Join (insert number of subscribers)!” opt-in messaging.
Consistently deliver quality content that helps our audience and fosters relationships at scale.
Airswift already has strong online authority. They are in a perfect position to dominate a whole bunch of critically valuable keywords while building an engaged community that drives traffic, leads, and sales into their business.
You don’t have to sell oil industry recruitment to make this work for you. All you need is a team that’s bought-in and ready to rock. Over time, relentless execution will produce relationships at scale. And all those new relationships will produce the most important “R” word in business; REVENUE.
Judging from Airswift’s activity on Facebook and LinkedIn, they’re ready to kick it up a notch. Are you?
If you know one, forward this to the Airswift employee in your network. If you don’t know someone there, do me one better and put these tips to work in your business. I’d hate to see all this free consulting go to waste!