Category: Focus on Recruitment

An Agency Advantage: Perspective

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

If you have a favorite book, you know that every time you re-read it, it loses a little bit of punch. A week of your favorite food may send you to Fresh City, hungering for a little variety. Even your favorite song, on loop, will make you feel as if you’re hanging out in an elevator. The truth is, the more familiar material is, the more we become blind to its effects. The same holds true for companies who write and produce their own hiring marketing material.

Whether your hiring campaign is being considered by management, product experts, or internal team members, it’s likely for them to simply assume key benefits and essential elements that just don’t register for someone browsing online or flipping through a magazine. For a business deciding on a hiring strategy, the results could be disastrous.
One great advantage of any agency can deliver is a little perspective. As outsiders, agency professionals immediately engage by considering a message from the viewpoint of an audience. This is such a critical process of attracting new talent—and frankly, communicating any marketing message.

If you’re testing your current employee messaging, ask yourself these questions: Is what I’m saying immediately apparent to my audience? Why should they care about what I’m saying? Is my content too detailed? Not detailed enough? Thinking like a consumer is something agencies are trained to do, and through audience-first perspectives, help you arrive at an optimized brand and hiring strategy that could work wonders for your organization.

Signing off for now,
Buyer Advertising
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Online Job Interviews: Yea or Nay?

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We may not have rocket boots or flying cards (yet) in these modern times, but one futuristic trend is making its way into HR offices already: the online job interview. Although it may seem like something from the Jetsons, HR personnel and hiring managers alike are giving up the leather chairs and clipboards, and instead asking potential candidates to stay home and switch on their computers.

There are a few compelling reasons that face-to-face is becoming passé. Services like Green Job Interview (greenjobinterview.com) are promoting their product as enabling hiring staff to make decisions without the ecological cost of carbon-burning transportation and paper waste. As they put it, “By utilizing secure, browser-based technology and support services, organizations and candidates interact face-to-face while minimizing costs, maximizing time, and reducing environmental impact.” Other companies providing “virtual” job interviews include HireVue (www.hirevue.com), which promotes their service by stating you can save an average of $3,000 to $5,000 by interviewing and hiring online.

Of course, as a trend, nobody’s certain if this all-too futuristic fad will catch on. There are bound to be hiring managers who won’t give up their hiring routine for the sake of a little gasoline and paperwork. So the question remains: will online hiring become a recruitment standard, or a flash in the pan?

Until next time,

Buyer Advertising
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Incenting the Masses

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It’s a topic that receives less attention as the recession lingers: recruitment incentives. Despite having a swelling of potential recruits per opening, as hiring managers, you know that quantity doesn’t always translate into quality. The best solution for filling an open position is to first attract top talent, and then keep them at your organization. But with limited budgets, how do you make this happen?

Consider allowing more personal expression into the workplace. Although an admitted time sink, companies are experimenting with opening up sites like Facebook and Twitter—often for business, networking related purposes. Companies are also providing time for music and exercise, finding that the resources they’re expending catering to high-performing employees is more than worth the investment.

Above all, remember that a plethora of available talent doesn’t necessarily translate into increased productivity, and ultimately higher revenue for your business. Taking the time to plan a thoughtful, fun, creative, rewarding workplace is a great strategy for truly utilizing emerging graduates with a lot to offer your organization.

‘Till next time,
Buyer Advertising
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Human Resources—Preparing for 2011

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As HR professionals, we’re looking forward to the future as new trends constantly emerge. Today, the landscape of hiring quality employees is shifting more rapidly than ever. 2011 will be no exception—expect plenty of changes that affect the way your organization recruits new talent.

According to the HR Management blog, there are 10 major changes to the way recruitment will work in 2011. Here are the highlights:

1. Rise in health care costs.
2. Focus on domestic safety and security.
3. Use of technology to communicate with employees.
4. Growing complexity of legal compliance.
5. Use of technology to perform transactional HR functions.
6. Focus on global security
7. Preparing for the next wave of retirement/labor shortage.
8. Use and development of e-learning.
9. Exporting of U.S. manufacturing jobs to developing countries.
10. Changing definition of family.

(Thanks to http://www.humanresources.hrvinet.com/hr-trends-2011/)

Make sure you bookmark our blog as we explore some of these issues in greater depth. Share your thoughts with us!
Signing off for now,
Buyer Advertising
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Black Friday and Your Recruitment Drive

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There’s such a thing as a “hot new deal!” when it comes to hiring initiatives. Though it doesn’t involve catalogues and bright red callouts, it’s your job as an HR representative to fill important positions. From your perspective, you want the best and the brightest pool of applicants to make the most intelligent decision and hire an outstanding employee. As a potential hire, what this opening means to them is this: a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Like Black Friday deals, it’s your job to communicate to employees-to-be these great career opportunities. The good news is that there’s a lot of new mediums open these days. Radio and newspaper advertising is still effective, but adding to the mix is also special Twitter announcements and Facebook wall messages. These social media avenues are often more effective in that job openings extend beyond your fans’ listings because of the way people share information—privately, publically, through messages behind the scenes.

Consider also landing pages on websites, press releases, and paid advertising on sites your target demographics frequent. With some planning and hiring initiative, you could find yourself with stampedes of qualified applicants—without having to wake up at 4 in the morning.

Buyer Advertising
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Measuring Your Online Hiring Campaign

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It’s a bit of a challenge even using traditional media: gauging the success of a hiring campaign. Throw in the relative new-ness of social media and the oft-lacking tracking tools from the likes of Facebook and Twitter, and you can rapidly find yourself launching hiring campaigns in the dark. Without reliable methods of tracking you investment, it’s hard to say if your social media hiring efforts are paying off. There are ways to assess what you invest, however.

The most important thing to remember is that an online hiring campaign isn’t strictly a game of numbers. You’ve furthering your employer brand. You’re increasing engagement. You’re disseminating information about your place of business. To evaluate effectiveness, you need to look at traditional online metrics including page views, landing page visits (if you’ve set up your system that way), and fan/follower counts. Actual conversions or hires remains a solid method to determine whether your campaign is working or not.

New, Web 2.0-savvy ways of tracking your hiring efforts include counting the frequency of re-tweets and searching out mentions of your campaign in other “new media” sources such as blogs and on personal posts. Using traditional and emerging metrics, evaluating your campaign makes a shift from quantitative to qualitative, but is still a very real and obtainable goal.

Signing off for now,

Buyer Advertising
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Writing a Brilliant EVP: Starting Out Strong

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They’re called Employee Value Propositions, and their purpose is simple: clearly outline the benefit of working at your organization. The start of a good hiring campaign often starts with a well-written, well-thought out EVP statement.

There are a few very good reasons to take the time and do things right. On the one hand, a great EVP provides at-a-glance discovery of your organization for employees-to-be. On the other, it’s an essential element in organizing the various pieces of a hiring campaign. A EVP makes a good “checklist” against which you can compare your online hiring efforts. Your Facebook recruitment posts. Your job fairs.

When actually sitting down and writing your EVP, you’ve got to stand out from the competition. Differentiation is essential if you hope to make a difference and catch a potential recruit’s attention. “Great benefits” and “teamwork” won’t make the cut—in fact, there isn’t anything more guaranteed to make a candidate’s eyes glaze over than reading everything he or she has seen a million times. Instead, use your EVP as an opportunity to relate what makes your company a great place to work. And be honest. Ensure your employee brand matches the reality of your workplace. An honest, upfront portrayal is necessary to attract the types of employees you want working in your office. As with most things HR, it isn’t always about quantity, it’s about quality.

Until next time,

Buyer Advertising
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Onboarding Online: Twitter Edition

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Although the buzz on popular news outlets would suggest otherwise, Twitter is still a newcomer to the social media scene. It’s radically different (read: there’s a 140-character limit), so companies and individuals alike are still learning to use it. Today at Buyer Advertising, we’re focusing on one of the ways that Twitter benefit your organization: as a recruitment tool.

To maximize your time effectiveness online, there are some essential elements you should be hitting every time you hop online to post about an open position. Here are some basics to get your started.

Provide a clear call to action. It’s great to promote job openings at your organization, but unless you tell casual Twitter surfers what to do next, they’ll be stymied. Get a link in that describes the open position in more detail while qualifying yourself as a reputable workplace. Don’t forget to include a website link where they can apply online once you’ve piqued their interest.

Fill out your profile completely. 140 characters isn’t much when it comes to qualifying you as the best place to work in town. Although you may get responses, you want responses from exemplary candidates—and that means they need to learn about your company before applying. Fill out your Twitter profile; it’s a good way to make the case for your company without bumping into character limits.

Link to your career site. Often. Always remember: Twitter is a portal service, not a content distribution site. It’s a good idea to have a landing page built specifically for Twitter leads that describes your organization, culture, and career opportunities before getting into the nitty-gritty of job descriptions. Remember your audience, however: keep sections colorful, focused, and brief so Twitter’ers don’t suffer from Web-shock.

Make Way for Mobile Recruitment

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

It’s more than Facebook: the upcoming trend known as mobile recruitment allows both you and employees-to-be access to send and receive information about job openings. Simply stated, mobile recruitment uses mobile phone technology to update a variety of social networks and involve potential recruits in a much more personal way, including the ability to ask and receive answers of their own.

One essential element of mobile recruitment is the job seekers’ ability to learn about your company. Smart phone technology is a must. Oftentimes, mobile job recruiters will advertise open positions, and include a link or a way to access special, mobile-optimized landing sites where they can learn about the position in detail through prose, pictures, and multi-media.

Another role mobile recruitment satisfies is the desire for affordability. Instead of job boards, billboards, and costly—through expansive—campaigns, reaching out and responding using mobile devices is an effective, soft-spoken way to reach results. Through mobile technology, recruiters are already seeing results at a much lower cost-per-hire. Get involved!
Until next time,

www.buyeradvertising.com

Beyond the Job Board

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It was the 20th century, and job boards were all the rage. Sites like www.monster.com sprung into being, linking beleaguered career-seekers with more opportunities than the classified section of their Sunday newspaper could provide. Since then, aggregators and site scrappers have snagged and deposited job listings and descriptions in centralized locations site for complete ease of access.

Of course, times change. What seemed like the pinnacle of online recruitment is changing as employees-to-be spend less time on traditional websites, and more time on social networking webpages.

Facebook remains the go-to source for social networking, and combined with the raw mass of human beings logging in every day, and excellent way to talk about jobs. And that’s the trick with social media: it isn’t simply listing positions your company needs to fill—it’s just as important to start a dialog with people. Friends recommending friends for open positions. Answering questions about your work environment. Sites like Twitter offer quick, popcorn glimpses into your workplace, while LinkedIn perfects the art of connecting people with positions in a way that’s more personal than “click-n-apply”.

The switch to social media is exciting, but it can also be confusing. Sometimes it takes months to plan the right strategy. Agencies like Buyer Advertising help.

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