Unfortunately, we've witnessed industries who are laying off employees over the last year, but at the same time we've also seen industries that are struggling with the opposite and finding employees is a constant battle. Employee recruitment is changing, regardless of the industry and geographic location of a business.
The average business will spend $4,000 on employee recruitment per hire [source]. Add in the time it takes to chase down candidates, the onboarding costs and turnover rate ... and wow, it's tough out there for an HR team. The inability to hire the right employees can prevent the growth of a business to meet and deliver on the demand for their product or service.
Historically, recruiting methods have looked the same. A C-suite, suit and tie, brags about the benefits and how their company is better than the competition's company. Radio, job listings, billboards, signage on the building are meant to attract new employees to start working today! But what we've found is that if all these companies are shouting the same benefits in the same mediums, then nobody is standing out. They aren't attracting prospective employees because they haven't gained their interest. Remember, humans have less of an attention span than goldfish [source]. So when we see another billboard or sign or hear another commercial pushing "we're hiring" - we've already tuned them out.
Let's look at a stat:
84% of online users don't trust traditional advertising and rank their friends highest in forms of trust. [source]
If people are ignoring traditional advertising mediums, where are they going for information? If you guessed "online", you'd be a winner. If you guessed "their friends", you'd also be a winner.
So how do we take those two spaces and make it work for recruiting employees?
Attract
Attract potential employees where they spend their time most ... online. Social media, YouTube, Google. All potential employees are hanging out here. Read more on Social Recruiting Strategies in this previous post.
Build
Build a relationship with the prospect by having their peers speak on behalf of the company. Provide transparency and build trust by letting your current employees tell the story about why they came to work for the company, why do they stay, why should others come to work here.
Educate and Engage
If you haven't heard, video is a big deal. In fact, we named 2021 the year of video, read all the details here. Use video to educate job searchers on your company. Break down the barriers so they feel comfortable getting to know your business and the people they would be working alongside. Don't send people to your corporate website to fill out an application where the site's primary goal is to sell to your customers. They aren't a customer. They aren't looking for the benefits of your product, they are looking at the benefits and the culture of your company. Show that off. Engage a future employee into your world so they say "I want to work here".
Create Advocacy
Your current employees are your best advocates. It means so much more to a job searcher to hear from a production worker than what a C-suite employee has to say about the company. Use your employees stories (you know those ones you got during the Attract step) to drive the conversation. Once you make your employees the star, they are going to share socially, talk to their friends (remember how important we said friends were in building trust?) and encourage those in their community to join the company they are proud to work at and want to see succeed.
We talked a lot of talk here. Don't take our word for it that this strategy can work. Listen to three employees from different plants describe their recruiting campaign success in working with our team.
