5 Things to Check When Your Recruiting Program Isn’t Working
You’ve posted your jobs online, maybe even paid to sponsor the posting to make sure it has priority visibility. After a week the applicants are barely trickling in, and the quality is not what you need. What’s wrong?
1. CHECK THE TITLE AND LOCATION.
Is the posted job title descriptive enough? Too descriptive? Is the location listed too narrowly? When you are looking to attract candidates on job boards, you are targeting those who are doing an active search or who have set up job agents. For both, the candidate needs to enter search terms. Try searching for your posting and see how easily it comes up using intuitive keywords. If it doesn’t, try testing some title and location variations.
2. MAKE SURE YOUR OPPORTUNITY IS ADVERTISED WHERE TALENT CAN FIND IT.
To target talent who are not actively looking, it is important to bring your message to them. Are you doing social media recruitment? Using LinkedIn or Indeed searches to target your messaging? The right talent aren’t hiding, you just need to go where they already are.
3. CONSIDER PAID ADS TO GET BEST RETURN ON INVESTMENT.
With syndication technology and social media, it is no longer necessary to pay to post every opportunity. However, with post boosting options and pay-per-click listings, it is often a smart strategy to put some budget behind a particular post. Test out a few options- a boosted Facebook job posting will typically triple the organic reach, and Indeed PPC posting charges only for clicks on your actual job. Consider a mix of sponsorship to improve reach and return.
4. REVIEW THE JOB DESCRIPTION.
Even if you are getting folks to click on the posting, and you are driving traffic to the listing by social media recruitment efforts, great talent may drop off before applying. Why would this be? One reason may be a job description that is overly legal-sounding or simply not compelling. Candidates want to know what is great about your company and why the role matters. Make sure the job description speaks to this so they can see themselves in the role.
5. LOOK IN THE MIRROR.
Even with low unemployment or an overall tight market for a specific skill, you should be getting some traction on your postings if all the other tweaks are made. If you aren’t, it may be time to take a closer look at your employer brand and how your current employees feel about the company. Candidates are consumers- they are researching companies and reading reviews...and referrals are very influential. If what they see turns them off, no amount of opportunity marketing tweaks will change that.
Written by: Allison Small, VP of Program Development and Execution, TalentCMO
Links and other interesting stuff:
Is Your Recruiting Social? Are you “marketing” your company and jobs to talent using social? By 2020, 2.95 billion users globally are expected to be on social media. Reach out if you need help engaging talent on social.
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Check out this sweet Career Showcase (a standalone microsite built for candidates to show company's authenticity) that we built for one of our clients.