Category: Focus on Recruitment

Recruitment Drive Initiatives: Part 1

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

Faced with the task of launching a brand new recruitment initiative for your company, you could find yourself at a standstill. Between the many new types of media available today (including social media avenues like Twitter and Facebook) the options are more numerous than ever. 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?

No matter your medium, make a strong case for your open positions. Just what about your company provides value to your employees? Is the work culture? Compensation? Location? All have are important selling points to top talent. 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.

Signing off for now,

Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com

Quick SEO Tips for Recruitment

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

Promoting jobs online is a great strategy. Not only is it a cost-effective way to advertise specific opportunities, online venues have the potential to reach a younger demographic—often an attractive hiring range for companies looking to fill positions. But even by accessing a variety of online job posting opportunities, if nobody’s reading your postings, there isn’t anybody who’s going to apply through this medium.
One important topic to address is optimizing your jobs for search engines. The more index-able your postings, the more potential employees will connect with your opportunities. Here are a few tips.
Cross post: Promote opportunities on your site, as well as through Facebook, Twitter, and your blog.
Optimize: Use searchable phrases common to the industry. Shoot to hit these job phrases that are based on what people would actually type into their search engine.
Integrate real media: Use print and brochures to send potential hires to your job listings.
Stay current: Post often. If you don’t have any new openings, stay fresh by posting topical news and other career-related interest bits.

Signing off for now,
Buyer Advertising
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Crowdsourcing: Part 2

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

If you’ve read our last post on the Buyer Advertising blog, you’re familiar with the concept of crowdsourcing and its ability to deliver specific business-oriented benefits. Crowdsourcing is the art of tapping into your existing social network to solve problems or achieve quick results. Here are a few ways you can leverage crowdsourcing to maximum effect.

Charity drives – The more people who know how to make a positive difference, the more successful a charity event or fundraiser will be. Keep your message concise, clear, and provide a way for fans to connect with your happening.

Lead generation – Whether you’re sourcing customers or clients, asking for a boost doesn’t hurt. In many cases, you can reach maximum effectiveness by sticking to a single industry—for instance, asking if any of your fans are involved in the health industry, and if they know someone who needs your company’s service.

Talent sourcing – If you’re tackling a project, you may have need of contract work—fast. Crowdsourcing is a low-overhead way to connect with discounted rates from professionals. In some cases, bartering services can eliminate cost altogether.

Taking home the prize – In some businesses, winning an award can mean a ramp-up of your market appeal. Tapping into social media to ask (nicely) for votes is considered acceptable, and could fast-track you to the blue ribbon.

Good luck in your future crowdsourcing endeavors! We wish you the best.

Until next time,

Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com

Leveraging Social Media to Reach a Diverse Applicant Pool

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This week’s blog is written by Jody Robie, Executive Director Business Development at Buyer Advertising.

2011 offers many new and innovative tools to not only source candidates but to make a social connection with them. Using social media can give your organization another platform to have the important conversation, promote the benefits of your company and build brand awareness as an employer of choice. Here are a few key places to start which don’t require a large financial investment.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn offers the ability to source candidates with both their free and recruiter license model. Additionally, there are more than 100 million members representing more than 200 countries. There are more than 1200 groups with a diversity reference, but you also can start your own group as a way to connect with your target audience. Joining a group allows you to connect with the members, make comments, start conversations and promote job openings. www.linkedin.com

YouTube

YouTube has more than 1200 videos tagged under “Diversity and Inclusion”. It includes the opportunity for your own employees to share their first-hand experience working for your organization. Video is replacing the formal brochure as the most effective and efficient tool to give a candidate or an employee the chance to connect with your culture. Having a video on your own website greatly increases the optimization of your career site. Giving your employees a flip cam can also give them an opportunity to share their personal experiences, promote core values or just show the personality of your company. www.youtube.com

MeetUp

There are more than 250,000 monthly MeetUp groups worldwide. MeetUps are groups which extend beyond virtual connections into real life meetings. You can join a group for a particular discipline such as Bioengineers in Atlanta or Black Professionals in Boston. You can also create your own group with special features which have costs associated with each option. www.Meetup.com

For more information or to view our website and portfolio, please visit our website, blog and social media sites listed below.

Signing off,

Buyer Advertising

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MAINTAINING MORALE AFTER LAYOFFS

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In once-in-a-lifetime economic downturns like this one, lay-offs are an unpleasant reality many businesses must face. As budgets dwindle, saying goodbye to valuable employees is often a double blow: on the one hand, you’re losing a valuable source of labor, and on the other, your remaining workforce will react negatively to seeing their co-workers let go—translating into a loss of morale and work. If you’re faced with the necessity of lay-offs, here are few tips to mitigate damage and keep employee morale up.

Go in with a strategy. Plan out communications in advance—before you effect layoffs—that reaches your employee base. Your messaging should explain not only why these layoffs were necessary, but also illustrates a plan of action that your company will take to grow and prosper. Present these changes as an important part of growth, not a sign that your business is failing.

Conduct one-on-one listening. Even in the wake of personalized meetings, ensure that middle managers are available and prepared to answer the inevitable questions your employees will have.

Give it time. If yours is a smaller organization, avoid increasing workload or taking on large projects right away. One fear employees may have is that their daily responsibilities will compound multi-fold—address these concerns right away and start building a stronger, more successful company.

Signing off for now,

Buyer Advertising
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Troubleshooting Your Hiring Strategy

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In tough economic times, becoming complacent doesn’t pay. With a larger applicant pools, it’s possible for HR departments to tap into greater wells of talent: a double-edged sword. On the one hand, finding the best of the best becomes more of a reality. On the other, the sheer mass of applications to wade through to get into that position takes time—and as you know, that means money.

Of course, the strategy that maximizes your time is recruitment advertising. The tactics you use should aim not for the quantity of applicants, but the quality. Tailor your media—articles and web postings—with language that challenges an applicant as much as invite their resume. If you’re looking for extremely qualified applicants, don’t be afraid to ask for that up front.

Agencies like us exist to maximize the dollars you spend in recruitment initiatives with results that improve the functioning of your organization. We welcome all questions!

Signing off for now,

Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com

Building a Community

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With recent changes to the way search engines like Google return results, and as a necessary step in the evolution of hiring strategies, social media is unmatched. Every day, we see companies like Progressive and Staples use their Facebook collective buying power of thousands to increase sales revenue—not to mention to exist as a powerful well of talent to draw upon. You recognize Facebook’s role in your own ability to stay competitive. But how do you get started? For those beginning from scratch, here are a few tips to steer you down the right path.

Don’t Market. Social media is a whole different species from traditional channels. When you’re deciding what to write in the omni-present “update” box, steer clear of anything that promotes your business. “Friends” are not customers, and they can smell a pitch a mile away. Stick to content that benefits them, not yourself.

Start Right. First rule of social media: empty fan lists tend to empty unless acted upon by an outside force. Ask friends and employees help “seed” your fan list to get you started. If your new fans like what they read, they just may invite friends of their own.

Lighten Up. All work and no play makes Jack… well, you know the saying. Facebook and its ilk are mediums of leisure—therefore, part of your posting strategy should be to entertain your fanbase. Try a few techniques and see what works best.

Happy hunting,

Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com

An Agency Advantage: Perspective

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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
www.buyerads.com

Incenting the Masses

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

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
www.buyerads.com