Jobs = Content Marketing

Not Steve Jobs, but actual jobs. (Although, today we are also reminded that product launches are the jewel in Apple's marketing crown).

A job ad is content marketing

Especially for startups.

It's a chance to explain what you do. It's a chance to bring your culture to life and to get people excited about your vision. If you do it well, it can go viral.

A job ad is distributed across a huge number of websites. If it's good it will be shared, reweeted and liked. People in your network can share it with people in their network.

It's great content marketing because you are not selling to people, you are provinding an opportunity. An amazing opportunity to join this exciting team to do something different and change the world.

I was reminded of this because last night I shared some cool jobs for one of our portfolio companies, lostmy.name. I know that two people in my network bought lostmy.name books as a result of seeing the job ad. How cool is that? - they promote jobs and sold their product.

Treat job ads as marketing

In most companies, job ads are written by a line manager (with coercion from HR). No-one from marketing looks at it.

I personally think that every job ad should always be an opportunity to share the brand. Marketing should sign off on it. Even better, the CEO should sign off on every single job ad.