Rally Recruitment Marketing launched, and here's what I'm learning

One week ago, we launched Rally Recruitment Marketing. Rally is a new online community forum to learn and share the best ideas in Recruitment Marketing so you can gain new skills, advance your career and lead the future of talent acquisition. Everyone is welcome, whether you’re a beginner or an expert, and no matter the size of your company, team or budget.

It’s been exciting to see the response we’ve gotten. The absolute best part for me has been connecting personally with the practitioners who are signing up. I’m eager to hear how you came into your role, what your challenges are and how this community can support you.

What I’m learning is that there are many similarities among you:

You're at the beginning...

• You are the first person to have a recruitment marketing job at your company
• Or you are the first person to formalize recruitment marketing as a function
• Or you are trying to bring best practices in recruitment marketing into your role and your team
• Many of you seized an opportunity and created a job in recruitment marketing for yourselves

You're still figuring it out...

• Almost all of you work in HR/TA, but you consider yourself more as a digital marketer/brand leader than a recruiter
• You feel the challenges of the "newness" of the role – still explaining what you do and the value you bring, and learning how to partner with HR/TA/Marketing
• You're continually trying to deepen your knowledge of both recruitment and marketing, so that you can stay ahead and deliver better results
• You love connecting with other people like you, so you can learn from one another and get the career support you need

What I'm also learning is that we have something in common. Like you, I once created a new role for myself. I was a journalist working at a publishing company, and there was talk of putting our newsletter and magazine content on the web. I wanted in! After much persistence, I landed the role of Manager of New Media (a title I made up). I remember feeling like I was on the cutting edge, but also feeling like a misfit because no one else in my company had my job. And then feeling like a poser. What the heck did I know about Internet publishing? Turns out, no one did at my company. And neither did most of the publishing industry at that time.

Looking back, what made me successful in creating a new role wasn't specific experience that you might find listed on my resume. It was several character traits: having the initiative to try something new, being ok with failing sometimes, having the resourcefulness to try something else, and being determined to figure it out. These are the same traits that I see connecting each member of this growing community.

I hope that Rally can be a resource to help you figure out the emerging discipline of Recruitment Marketing, what it is today and what it will evolve into. That we can be a community where you can get ideas and know-how from other practitioners just like you – raise your hand and ask a question safely among your peers – get connected with a mentor who’ll offer advice and a boost when you need it – and grow our careers and our companies at the same time.

Please reach out with your ideas and feedback – because Rally is also at the beginning and we're still figuring it out – but I know we'll do it together.