Moving into Recruitment Marketing

Employee Spotlight: How I Moved Into Recruitment Marketing

Holly Watson

Holly Watson joined Webrecruit in February 2013 and looks after marketing for the business.

 

I always dreamed of becoming a writer. I studied Creative Writing at university and after graduating, I stepped into the job market bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (and slightly naïve), assuming that I would fall into my dream job straight away.

Of course, I was wrong. I applied for publishing jobs, writing roles, unpaid internships, anything to give me the commercial experience I was lacking. Eventually, disheartened, I continued to work in customer service (in the complaints department for a utilities company) while taking on any freelance writing and social media work I could pick up.

 

In February 2013, I finally secured a job where I got to write something other than customer apology letters; I joined Webrecruit as a Junior Copywriter, tasked with creating job adverts for our client base.

This was a type of writing that I’d never tackled before but something that I actually enjoyed; I liked the unique way you could approach each advert as every company has its own style and culture you could use as a selling tool within the advert. There was a lot of work that went on behind the scenes with the advert creation, in terms of jobseeker behavioural research and SEO. It was also a great feeling whenever an advert I had written had attracted hundreds of applicants and resulted in hires.

As I started to get more comfortable in the business, I progressed to a Senior Copywriter role and had the opportunity to work alongside the marketing department to create new content, including blogs for our website and articles for external publications.

Eventually, I moved over to the marketing department on a permanent basis as the need for extra resource grew. Previously, I’d been so focused on writing, I’d never even considered marketing as a potential career but it was the perfect blend of everything I enjoyed: writing, design and analytics.

When Webrecruit’s long-serving Marketing Manager decided to move on to pastures new, our MD offered me the chance to fill the position and develop my skill-set, rather than making an external hire. I was still relatively new within the department but I had good knowledge of the business and felt like marketing was something I really wanted to progress with. Luckily, I had an incredibly supportive team around me and I was given the opportunity to attend numerous courses to improve my skills.

 

Since I stepped into my role within Webrecruit’s marketing department, I’ve completed a company rebrand, launched a new website, helped develop new product offerings, re-designed our brochures and other sales collateral, overseen compliance processes and managed dozens of campaigns from planning to completion. The level of input I’ve had and autonomy I’ve been given has been fantastic.

For me, the best feeling is when a lead comes into the business off the back of a marketing campaign, a prospect becomes a customer and a few months later, I catch up with them for a case study and they tell me how happy they are with our service. I love that I get to see the full lifecycle.

It’s also been exciting to see the growth of our technology, Webrecruit ATS, over the past few years. What started off as a relatively simple product has grown into a sophisticated piece of recruitment software. We have internal release meetings on a monthly basis and the amount of new functionality that’s entering the system is vast.

Since I joined Webrecruit over five years ago, the company has evolved but one thing that’s remained constant is the brilliant people we have working here; everyone is genuinely nice and cares about what they do. I’m a people-person and very fortunate in my role that I get to collaborate with pretty much every department across the business. We also have great company socials; we’re lucky that our head office is based in a beautiful part of the UK where we have access to beaches, countryside and great bars and restaurants all within 10-15 minutes of the office.

 

Fancy changing your career? It’s a really exciting time to join Webrecruit as we gear up for big growth over the next 12 months. Check out our current opportunities on our careers site.



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