• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 14, 2015

There's a growing U.S. trend in the way brands use a variety of advertising media to search for employee talent. Swedish fashion retailer H&M became the latest company Thursday, launching its first-ever national recruiting campaign.

"Place of Possible" aims to attract talent interested in entering the fashion industry to support the company's rapid expansion worldwide. The national advertising campaign boasts its benefits in online media, outdoor billboards, and in-store display ads, as well as a college tour featuring an H&M Airstream.

The ads will spread awareness of what the company calls "competitive compensation, benefits and advancement opportunities that make H&M a viable and attractive launching pad for careers in fashion."

The advertising spots focus on individuality, allowing employees to express themselves in a variety of clothing and hair colors and styles.

It's not clear whether a creative agency or H&M spearheaded the campaign. H&M calls its marketing department a global advertising agency, where the team creates multichannel campaigns and produces marketing materials, but it does work with traditional creative agencies like London-based Suburbia, as well as London- and New York-based Wednesday. It has also worked with Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, Shanghai, to name a few.

The growing trend also pulled in a fast-growing search agency. Marty Weintraub, aimClear founder said to recruit top talent, his agency promotes content with paid search, and sprinkles in posts on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to various in-industry occupational psychographic targeting groups. "We also promote it to the media so as to consistently reflect the brand of a company on the move, hiring, and more," he said.

This type of advertising campaign not only bodes well when looking to hire top employees, but "prospective clients love to work with companies that present a rich corporate culture."  Weintraub said "the SEO prominence of our HR recruiting efforts serve remarkable double duty as clients vet us as a company." 

Weintraub said marketers want perspective employees to discover their company for the same reasons the company wants clients or consumers to discover it.