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How To Use the Tools of the New Economy To Recruit
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The How-To Business Book
11/20/2000
By: Lori Green
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Is your Internet recruiting campaign paying off? You may be raking in lots of résumés from those popular job-posting sites, but how long does it take you to weed through them all? And once you do, are you finding the best-qualified candidates?
Well, if you're getting deluged with prospects who really aren't the right fit, you need a few pointers on how recruitment advertising works on the Net.
A couple of years back, a lot of companies became very enthusiastic about using the Web to find new employees. They saw it as an inexpensive way of getting their message out to large numbers of people. But like a lot of what is delivered over the Web, it comes without a filtering system.
According to area human resource professionals when employers post job ads on national Internet boads they can get 500 responses from all over the world, whereas from a newspaper ad they may have received 50.
To save the time and expense of sorting through hundreds of résumés, you can use pre-screening software that does all the sorting and matching work on résumés coming in from all media ads. Specific e-mail address and phone numbers can be used by a recrutiment agency to identify resposnes to an individual client.
Employers need to use a strategic mix of media for recruitment purposes. If, for example, a company needs to hire cashiers, a combination of direct mail, radio and print ads would tend to work best.
Large numbers of dollars need not be spent on the overall campaign: The key is to target and time the ads effectively. That way, word gets out about your company, your brand and your need for employees. Companies - especially smaller ones with limited advertising budgets - tend to try two weeks of radio and then if that doesn't work, they turn to three weeks of print outlets. Such a scattershot approach is guaranteed to fail.
It's better to take a look at the array of media available, as well as your open positions. Then you can place and time your ads strategically so that all the pieces work together. For instance, a print ad is seen in a trade journal by a prospective candidate, who later that day views your video ad at the movie theater. When that person runs across your job posting on the Web, she feels that she's met you somewhere before. Your ingenuity is starting to work its magic.
When using the Internet, try posting job openings on specialty sites, where people who visit are more likely to have the skills you need. These sites are not as busy with ads from hundreds of different companies, so your ad is more likely to draw attention - and responses. Many employers lack a strong employment section within their own home site.
Remember, most people will start there first if they are interested in your company. Include an online résumé form for interested applicants to submit. This tells job-seekers that you are eager to hear from them. It also makes the job of reviewing applications a lot easier for human-resources people, who won't have to hunt for e-mail attachments or delete formatting codes of résumés pasted onto e-mail messages.
And don't overlook traditional advertising media such as print, radio and TV for recruiting in favor of an “Internet-only” initiative. Give the Web an active role to play in distributing your messages. Just makes sure that those messages are packaged as part of your overall brand building strategy.
The design and placement of your recruitment ads are as critical to attracting new employees as they are in pitching your products to new consumers.
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