If you flick through the recruitment pages of your trade publication, it’s likely that there’s a lot less to it than this time last year.
Is this a sign of the current economic climate? Are there fewer positions out there or has the industry fallen out of love with the profile raising and kudos that glossy branded ads used to bring?
Clients want value for money, they want a swift and effective hiring process but more importantly they want choice. A talented marketer will add to your bottom line and with that brings an element of hope, enthusiasm and new ideas. Importantly, they want several to choose from.
On the last count, we effectively and regularly use over 20 techniques to source new candidates for free. Through the jobcentre, flyers, and references we have successfully placed marketers into employment and other than politeness, constructive feedback and exceptional service it doesn’t cost a penny.
With all these free ways to find marketers, it supports the argument that there really is no need to spend money on recruitment advertising.
Take two of our clients who are a prime example of free recruiters and what we affectionately call “pub people”. By networking and socialising they have made key hires from people they have met in bars, coffee shops and restaurants.
This approach doesn’t suit everyone but for these companies the innate value their employees share is being customer focused. These people aren’t just recruited for customer service roles but key senior positions.
Technology is moving at a rate of knots with employers and recruiters proactively using new networking techniques to find new Talented individuals and generate choice. Sites like Linkedin and Twitter are being used to find candidates with “difficult to source” skills or from specific companies meaning that contingency recruiters are able to enter the realm of the Head Hunter without protracted search processes and increased costs for researchers.
Although it’s still relatively new, sites like 2nd Life are being used to target passive job seekers. In a virtual world where you can be anyone you want; global brands are engaging with a new breed of passive jobseekers and making key hires over a longer period of time. The association of their company with new technology plants the seed in the future employees head that they are innovative, forward thinking and open to change.
With all these new techniques and free ways of recruiting, what does this mean for traditional print based trade advertising?
If anything the need to use advertising in the economic climate should be increasing.
Hiring managers’ thoughts may be turned to news of increased redundancies; high unemployment and news of competitors making sweeping cuts, many assume that a simple internet advertisement or database search will produce a choice of applicants for them.
sing a recent case study of a business services firm, the hiring client made the assumption that many agencies equalled choice. They certainly got choice and over a period of 4 weeks 90 or so CVs were received. Sadly, following a period of intensive interviewing (into double figures), the position remained vacant six months on.
A prime example of how choice can hinder success. Despite the volume of applications, the company struggled to manage the response and also identify candidates with the skills and experience they required. Not only did it pro-tract the timeline but it significantly discouraged the calibre of applicants they wanted to attract, sending out mixed messages that the company didn’t fully understand what they wanted.
A simple advertisement explaining the key responsibilities and opportunity within the firm would have yielded possibly a lower response, however the skills and experience this approach would attract would have made it much more effective process.
For example, we recently produced a creative advertisement to attract accomplished FMCG marketing managers whcih promoted our client to a wider audience. Whilst we were confident that an already known applicant could carry out the designed responsibilities, the hiring company felt that they needed to see the widest and best possible candidates available at that time. The advert attracted quite some response with around 50 applications received, admittedly not everyone was perfect. However by managing the process tightly, we were able to benchmark every application, provide constructive feedback and delivered a successful marketing manager within a three week timescale, demonstrating that advertising does not need to drag and delay the hiring process.
In a world where we expect instant results, many hiring managers see advertising as a long or last resort process. The assumption that agency databases can immediately produce plentiful, perfect candidates is out dated and old fashioned in today’s fast moving world.
If you think about your typical trip to work, every day we are bombarded with messages from people selling service on the radio, email, pop ups on the websites we choose to look at, telemarketing calls and direct mail. There is even TV on public transport.
However, consumer’s are starting to choose how they are communicated to and the content they receive. The Telephone Preference Service, Postal Preference Service, spam filters and blocking software allows individuals to block messages and contact they don’t want to receive. Maybe there is a place for advertising after all.
Even though daily newspapers are seeing a decline in paper readership and a shift towards online, trade publications are fairing comparably well. Ten minutes out of a busy day with a cup of coffee and an industry magazine can refresh your mind, provide you with new ideas, new contacts and case studies.
Even the most motivated and engaged employee flicks through the situations vacant to find out their worth, see who else is hiring and what skills are in demand. The most common feedback we receive from advertising is “I wasn’t looking for a new move but this sounds like my perfect job”.
Engaged and motivated candidates make great hires and what better way to attract them by allowing them to choose you. The benefit this brings is that they have considered can they do the job, what they would learn and finally what qualities could they bring to your company.
In conclusion, as more agencies and hirers move towards web based systems, the best way to get effectiveness in talent attraction programs is to remember that just like in marketing, integrated approaches work best.
The medium of recruitment advertising sits nicely alongside new technology showing that modern and traditional can work well together.