Now, I am not going to get into arguments with the job boards, but my observations and feedback over the last few months working with recruitment teams (agency and in-house) is demonstration enough that changes in candidate attraction methods are needed.
Every single recruitment team I have talked to have said EXACTLY the same thing. Most boards (big as well as niche) deliver candidates to them, in similar numbers to previous months and years - in some case more! But the kicker is the actual quality of those applicants. This is decreasing ........ and quickly! I am being told fewer and fewer relevant candidates (sourced via job board adverts) are making it to interview.
Therefore the ROI of job boards is decreasing and boards are decreasing their effectiveness. Couple that with their annual price increases - one board in particular springs to mind here - and now these recruitment departments are seriously looking at their candidate attraction spend.
Just for reference I am not anti job boards at all, as they play an important part of a recruitment advertising mix - just maybe the number and the diversity used needs to be considered more. Less is more, maybe? These are just my observations, not a detailed survey.
But what else can you do to attract the quality candidates that are not responding to your adverts? Here are some different methods you could be using for candidate attraction:
- Sourcing and searching. Surprisingly this is not done as effectively as you may think in the recruitment industry. Whether it be searching your own database, LinkedIn or CV databases online, this is an absolute must. How can you even call yourself a recruiter unless you get out there and find those candidates?
- SEO your career site properly. When was the last time you did a Google/Bing search and found your career site appear for the keyword skills you always recruit for? Are your job postings even appearing in the search engines or are they embedded in your site with no visibility? A quick look at your (Google) analytics will tell you that. No, time to review that then, maybe the time is now to consider a product like Hirepad or Talentbond.
- Recruiting process. I don't need to go on about this - you know how poor you process is via your recruitment system (ATS). Don't even bother trying to fix it, it will take too much time and money. Go take a look at TribePad, Zartis, SmartRecruiters, Bullhorn etc.
- Employment brand. When did you last look at this? How do you present yourself to prospective employees or candidates? Does your website/careersite make it easy for people to understand your culture? If you are an agency, why should candidates approach you as opposed to other similar agencies? Are you experts or leaders in your sector? Are you approachable - can they contact you via anything other than email or your switchboard?
- Transparency. Put your recruiters out there front and centre. Make sure they have great LinkedIn profiles. Make sure there are bios of them with full contact details on your website - encourage people to connect and engage with them. And if you are worried about recruiter poaching/headhunting, don't be naive - remember they are the easiest people to search for, so get over it and focus on keeping them engaged and happy in the first place.
- Social media. Some of you make have assumed this would be the first choice, but it isn't. All of the above need to be done first, only then can you start to reap the benefits of using social media. You should be using LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more (dependant on your sector/industry for network relevance, of course). Recruitment has moved on to embrace social media as a key part of candidate attraction, so should you.
One of this things that ties all these things together is content. Good content - about you, by you and shared by you - is now such an important part of recruitment, yet many people are still failing to grasp its significance. Here is a slide deck I have put together just explaining this
I have started to call this Inbound Recruitment Marketing, because for me that is what it is. Attracting candidates or attracting talent to your company is so much more than placing adverts out there on job boards. You need to give them a reason to come to you and engage with you, whether that is simply giving you a call or sending you their CV.
Park the company arrogance or brand ego for a moment, and just think about why candidates / future employees would (or should) be interested in you or your company? Do you know? (Do you care? - believe it or not there are some recruiters leave that to their brand power!)
Do you ever demonstrate this by showing them articles, webcasts, videos, photos, blogs, photographs, employee interviews etc about your company?
Do you even bother trying to attract good candidates with great relevant content, or are you just going to do what you have always done ?
Thought so..........
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