Recruiting, especially on a large scale, can be a daunting task. It is considerably less challenging, and much less time consuming, if you follow some essential guidelines and use a careful, logical approach.
Start by making a pot of coffee because even reading this document, let alone performing this function properly and efficiently, takes time.
Keys to Success
Ultimately the success or failure of a recruiting campaign is identical to that of any other advertising campaign: Did you achieve the goals you set in terms of new hires (sales in product-based campaigns) while staying within budget and time constraints?
To achieve this success means taking these steps:
1. Treat recruiting just like any other advertising campaign.
2. Consider your ad copy from the standpoint of the people you are trying to recruit, e.g. “Think Like a Reader” of your ads.
3. Be logical in your preparation. Have your ads and support documents ready for posting before placing a single ad.
4. Create a database both to ensure you don’t waste time and materials and so you can track results.
Your Advertising Campaign
Being successful in your advertising campaign starts with researching who you want to attract, where you are going to look for them, what vehicles you want to use, when you want or need results and how much you can afford to pay in advertising. Your approach should be identical to a multi-pronged advertising campaign for a product except for one key difference: your company IS the product.
Who are you trying to recruit? Raw people who are new to your field or industry? People with some experience but are still willing and able to learn? Or experienced vets who can produce right now? Maybe your goal is a combination of these three groups.
Regardless, your advertising copy should be unique and appealing to each group. Entry-level copy should focus on “a rewarding new career” then list some of the rewards, such as salary, trips or the ability to grow with the company. Experienced people are usually concerned with one thing: how much does it pay? Intermediates will want a combination of both growth and pay.
The key element in each piece of copy—and all good writing—is to “Think Like a Reader.” Look at the job ad from the perspective of if you were the one looking for work, what would attract you to the company? Once you’ve got that angle, write your ads that way.
Determine Where to Advertise
Where you decide to advertise is also important, both from a geographic perspective and a media one.
If your top candidates are new college graduates, then your primary focus should be on where current seniors get their information. That comes in the form of on-line postings on college campuses (free from many single schools, with a fee for running the same ad at multiple schools) and on-campus job fairs. There may be a booth fee for the job fair; there will be costs with equipping it, staffing it and creating handouts and give-away items so students remember you.
If the people you want to recruit are experienced pros, go where they are likely to hang out. LinkedIn is a great—but not cheap—source of on-line recruiting since you can target specific user groups such as car salesmen. Time and budget allowing, you might also consider running a print display ad in the top industry publications, such as Advertising Age for ad pros.
When you need results is also an element that cannot be overlooked. If you feel that print advertising is the only way to go, be aware that many magazines have deadlines at least 4-6 weeks in advance of the publication. On-line jobs can be posted much faster but they don’t have the same visual impact because they generally are text only.
Where Do You Place Your On-Line Ads?
Let’s assume you decide to go the on-line only route with your job postings. Who do you use? The big guys like CareerBuilder and Monster? The middle-tier folks like Craig’s List, LinkedIn and Google Ad Words? Or the smaller job boards such as the free ones that many colleges offer?
Your budget, how many people you want to reach and how many resumes you are willing to sort through will dictate at least part of this. Monster charges $349 for one 30-day ad in the greater Sacramento area. CareerBuilder charges $419 for one job, one month. Craig’s List, which has job boards in most major cities, charges from $25-$75 per help wanted ad depending on the locale. LinkedIn and Google charge by the number of people who click on your ad “pay per click” or similar methods. The National Association of Colleges and Employers (the NACE Network) offers free ads for single campuses, but charges varying fees for national ads.
A good basic assumption is that inexperienced job seekers are going to look at the big guys first, followed by Craig’s List. When searching for job boards, they are far more likely to use a search engine they are comfortable with, such as Google or Yahoo, than one they may not use frequently, such as Excite.
Google Ad Words and LinkedIn make sense when your ads are part of your own website. They work by attracting job seekers to your site, not a job board.
Key Words
This brings up another key element in your ads: keywords. Keywords are words or phrases searchers (job hunters) are likely to use when seeking jobs. Writers are going to use “writing” and “editing” in their searches, but not “sales.”
An important method to use here is to “tell it like it is” in terms of what your job is, what new hires are expected to do and which skills you consider essential. It could be that AutoCad experience is critical to your job, so include the term—possibly with an explanation, such as “AutoCad design and drafting software”—in your ad. Don’t use a lot of jargon, but do use terms that people seeking your type of job are likely to look for, such as “commission sales.”
Sprinkling these keywords around—or covering them up using HTML programming code—just to get noticed is not a good idea. Why? Because many sites will not let you use HTML, others will skip sites that use keywords in the heading but not in the body copy and most importantly, if your copy is loaded with keywords, but doesn’t make sense, no one will read it.
The keywords, such as AutoCad in the example above, also help when you get resumes. If your key words are not in the resume, the candidate doesn’t have the skills or experience you seek. Delete the resume and move on.
Time is Important Also
An important consideration that rivals cost is time. How much time do you have to post the ads? How much time do you have to sort through them, delete those that are irrelevant and hold your first round of interviews? Do you need to fill this position next week or next month?
If you are going to run ads for several positions over an extended time, such as hiring for new offices in different parts of the country, realize that you may need to run multiple ads in each market. Prepare your ad copy accordingly. Make sure each new ad contains enough basic information so job hunters can find it, but enough new material in a different order that the job boards will not reject it as a clone of your earlier ads.
Organize, Organize, Organize
So let’s say now you are ready to research your ad postings and run some ads. What should you do?
Organized people prefer taking several steps before placing ads.
First, determine which online job boards are going to get your ads, then create a database with links to the posting parts of each.
Second, have your ad text ready. Save a copy as Plain Text” or “ASCII Text” then use simple text editors such as NotePad to copy and paste it into the online database. Don’t open your text with Microsoft Word because control characters that are invisible in Word are often shown in other programs.
Common items in all job boards are contact information, your website, the job location, salary, the job title, job detail, plus the ad start and end dates.
In addition to having your ad body copy (the main description) in plain text, it’s also a good idea to have a summary of your company handy. One simple method is to copy a short of the “About” part of your website.
Along with that, keep a simple list of essential skills such as required and desired experience and software proficiency handy.
Even if your main ad explains how to apply for each position, it doesn’t hurt to keep a separate set of application instructions handy. Posting it twice may be redundant, but it doesn’t hurt. If you’re going to link to a website, be sure to spell it out, using the http://www.etc format.
Recent experience suggests many sites do not display all the information you want or need, such as the length of time your ad will run. Keeping a text version of “request for more information” listing your contact information, corporate website and a reply email address is helpful if you are going to hit a lot of websites.
It also doesn’t hurt to have several versions of your corporate logo handy, generally in small sizes but always in JPG format.
Database Design
One of Murphy’s Laws states that any information you don’t record will be critical at the least opportune time. Keep this in mind when setting up your recruiting database or spreadsheet.
It takes time to create a recruiting database. But doing it once means the data is available very time you have a similar task. Taking the time to do a thorough job the first time means less time spent when you want to run a similar ad campaign later.
Organization starts with Database column headings. They should include the location (city and state), main website, direct link to logging in so you can post jobs, a special email address just for job replies, a log-in user name, such as the email account and a column for passwords (use something exclusive to the job postings).
Some firms use different website codes to track where each ad comes from. They will look something like www.myjobs.com?rid=0001001. The “rid” stands for reference identification, which corresponds to a specific website and ad. The first group of numbers can stand for a website reference, such as CareerBuilder in cities 1, 2 and 3, and the second set a specific ad, such as ad 1, 2 or 3. In the example above, the first “1” refers to the first ad (which your database shows is with a particular website in a particular city) and the second “1” refers to the first ad. Using 0001003 would be first city, third ad.
It also doesn’t hurt to have columns listing the dates each ad (#1, #2, #3, etc.) runs and expires, plus at least one column for notes or comments. For example, many sites must approve ads before running them. Posting ads on Friday afternoon doesn’t guarantee they will run that weekend; they not appear until Monday or Tuesday.
Time and energy permitting, it also helps to add columns tracking the results. Depending on how involved you want to be, adding columns listing the number of responses in weeks 1, 2 and three won’t hurt.
The goal here is to determine which sites work for you and which don’t. This way you know where you got the best response for time and money, and which sites were a complete waste.
Email davereyn83@gmail.com with any comments or questions.
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