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How To Recruit Through Newspapers and the Web
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Business New Haven
11/12/2001
By:
Lori Green
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Are you finding the talent you need to grow your business? If not, perhaps you're putting all your recruitment dollars into only one medium. Many employers tend to post available positions on a national Web site or place an ad in the local newspaper, rather than doing both. But recruitment-advertising experts say that using multiple media channels is the most effective way to find qualified job candidates.
The right media mix will improve your chances of reaching a broader swath of your target audience. Recruitment tools can include newspapers, Internet, radio, television, billboards, direct mail, job fairs and database marketing.
If you have a modest hiring budget, you probably won't be able to afford to advertise on broadcast media. However, a local newspaper with a sizable circulation combined with focused Web advertising can be the ideal advertising strategy for reaching large numbers of job seekers.
By placing ads on the Web and in the newspaper, you'll get the attention of different cross-sections of workers over the course of their day. For example, if you're looking for a machinist, your best candidates are probably not surfing the Web during the day - and may be too tired to do it in the evenings. But many factory workers read the daily newspaper during lunch or while on breaks. Newspapers are also an effective means of reaching office employees who use computers regularly during the work day but may not be permitted by their employer to access the Web for personal use.
Even though the combined approach of a local newspaper and Web posting can produce optimum results, you still need to make the right choices among the options available. The majority of job seekers are searching locally. That's what makes a local newspaper with a broad circulation a good choice.
As for the Web, the problem is targeting the right prospective employees. The best way to do this is to post your ad on a site that works like a search engine or data-mining tool.
Let's say you need to hire a financial analyst. You can post the job on various sites of interest to financial professionals, but that can ratchet up your costs rapidly. Instead, if you place an ad on a “search agent” site that has a large network of affiliated sites it taps into, you will reach both passive and active job seekers who visit those sites regularly. You also reach potential candidates at the national, regional or local level.
Search agents are far more focused and targeted than large Web-based job boards, and give you a laser-like ability to target the best candidates where they are looking for employment.
Passive job seekers will often use search agents set up to bring them job ads from sites related to their profession, and if your ad is part of the network, it will arrive at their desktop soon after you post it. People can then respond to your ad directly at no cost. Conversely, when a suitable résumé hits the search agent's database, a subscribing employer would be notified that there was a match.
Many recruiters find substantial value in reaching passive job seekers. These are people who are looking for a new position but are still gainfully employed. In fact, most job seekers with résumés posted online are currently employed and use their search agent to e-mail them if an attractive opportunity arises. This practice is likely to increase in the current economic climate as employees strive to be proactive in staying aware of other employment options. Also, newspaper circulation is expanding as more people are demanding daily in-depth news coverage of important national and global events.
However, most workers do not yet search for jobs exclusively online. Recruitment advertisers prefer a “printegration” strategy so that placement of print and online ads is combined. Some newspapers are finding that 95 percent of employers who buy classified ads are also posting their ad on the paper's classified Web site, if they have one. Because these two media function differently, the ad needs to be adapted to be most effective in both formats. Print publishers should be able to consult and assist employers in designing ad copy tailored to print and online job boards.
For instance, Web postings of ads should first appear as abbreviated job descriptions that are sufficiently enticing to compel prospective candidates to click on the position to get more information. So the ad's header needs to have more hook appeal than in print form, where the full text of an ad is immediately visible as one scans the classified columns.
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