Much to my surprise, I met with a client earlier today, who was recruiting for a Sales Executive and had placed a lineage job advert in his local newspaper!
Within 24 hours, he received over 30 phone calls direct to his mobile from prospective applicants…he received a further 3 calls during our hour long meeting! Were the applicants of sufficient quality to progress? NO! Did he regret his strategy? YES!
To most internet savvy companies; advertising jobs in the local newspaper is undoubtedly a thing of the past! Having worked with job seekers for years, I’d be hard pressed to remember one who said that they searched the paper for job listings!
How is Your Employer Brand Perceived?
This story however, raises a number of issues and one of the glaring ones for me, is thinking about how is your Employer Brand is perceived by potential applicants. If you were a job seeker, would a cheap lineage job advert make you scream “I want to work for this company!” I would suggest NOT!
As Business Leaders, we are great at positioning our companies to attract business and increase sales, but why are so many companies out there so poor at selling their companies to prospective new employees?! After all, your people are the backbone of your business!
If you struggling to attract the best talent, or indeed retain them, you may want to have a look at how your Employer Brand is perceived online. Ask your employees why they enjoy working there? Why do you enjoy working there? What attracted you to the company in the first place?
Prospective applicants will have different push points and so you need to make sure that you demonstrate as many of those reasons as possible, so that candidates start imagining what it’s like to work there, before they ever even consider applying.
The Role of Social Media in a New World
With the growing use of technology and social media in the world of recruitment, we are presented with constantly evolving routes to the ideal candidate. This is great news for business, as we are no longer solely reliant on traditional Recruitment Agencies to source talent. So what are you doing to capitalize on this trend?
There has never been a better (or easier time) to promote your Employer Brand! Increasingly, I am having conversations with clients about using video online to sell their roles, which is having massive success in the marketplace! Why not video someone in the role currently, talking about how much they love their job? What a fantastic way to engage applicants and sell the opportunity to them from the outset!
Look at You Looking at Me Looking at You!
It is also worth bearing in mind, that in the same way you might check out potential applicants on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn before an interview; applicants will check your company out across these platforms too! If you don’t have a social presence, then a prospective employee might ask why? If you do have a presence and there is no content, they are still going to ask why!
Make life easy for yourself and review your current talent attraction strategy from the eyes of an applicant. Does your Employer Brand really stand out above the competition? This is so easy to get right and yet so many companies still get in wrong!
Look From The Eyes of The Candidate
Put yourself in their shoes…what would you want to know about your business? Done well, you will find that you fill roles more easily and cost efficiently, with the best people and you can start building a talent pipeline for the future…
Every day, I see companies posting job adverts to various online job boards, which are actually just lengthy job descriptions, listing every responsibility that an applicant would undertake. All of this effort is in the vain hope that the right people will magically find their advert and even more magically apply! With 100s of 1000s of roles advertised, do you really think this is likely?
If you would like to discuss your current recruitment strategy and how you could improve your Employer Brand online, then please do not hesitate to get in touch to arrange a no obligation review, using the contact details below.
