Recruitment Marketing: How to Avoid the Mistakes Others are Making

It doesn’t really need to be said that we’re living in strange times.

In the midst of both a global pandemic and an ostensible “labor shortage,” the number of business leaders who have cried about nobody wanting to work might lead you to believe that it’s impossible to find talented people in such a drastically different working climate. Let me assure you out the gate that that isn’t true: the reason said business leaders are so vehement in spreading this narrative is because they’re approaching the crisis incorrectly – and they aren’t even aware of it. Securing new workers in the midst of such unstable times is going to require a series of re-evaluations regarding your company’s recruitment marketing strategy – and if you want to avoid the pitfalls that said oblivious business leaders have apparently fallen into, perhaps a little bit of introspection in this time of transformation might lead you to safer pastures. 

Here’s how you can avoid winding up with no people in the midst of this labor shortage.

Employees’ Needs Have Changed: Why People Are Leaving the Workforce

The reasons for the labor shortage lasting as long as it has are varied, and I won’t even attempt to list them all: only the major ones that businesses can take note of and learn from. 

When the pandemic initially hit, a lot of lower-skill businesses discarded the majority of their employees and ran off of skeleton crews of higher-skilled employees. These skeleton crews took on a more significant burden of work without receiving any pay raises, went out to serve the public in the middle of a pandemic without any paid health insurance, and learned from the previous incident that however secure they thought their jobs may have been, they weren’t. The imminent risk that many of these jobs presented of dealing with the public in the middle of a pandemic made these workers reconsider everything: if it was worth risking themselves for a job they hated, the lack of work-life balance these jobs provided, and pay that was well below the national average. And so they stepped back from those kinds of low-skill jobs, and are actively searching for something better.

Would-be employers must understand this to take advantage of the situation, positioning themselves as that better option these hardworking employees are looking for.

Not Like Other Jobs: Recruitment Marketing and You

So how can you put yourself out there as the job these ambitious employees are seeking? Try a few of these tips and rake in the candidates:

• On your social media, put forward real-life examples of employees that love your company. Candidates trust word-of-mouth information from current and former employees, and having a few employees put forward publicly (perhaps in video testimonials) why they love working for your company is sure to go a long way with would-be candidates.
• Make sure your employee value proposition is clearly defined, and make sure you have communicated it well. In short, you want would-be candidates to know what they get in return for working with you, why they should choose you and not your competition, to be splayed on every online billboard you’ve got the budget for. Communicate it in your job postings, communicate it on your social media, and when your candidate comes in for an interview, make sure you can clearly explain those benefits to them in person. 
• Use cutting-edge technology to give you the edge over your competitors. As much as efficient and powerful tech is key to growing businesses and making sure they run smoothly, tech is also vital to recruitment marketing. Consider investing in a programmatic advertising plan, such as the one by NAS recruitment; programs like these purchase ads based on algorithms that are meant to give you the most exposure for your money. 

Improving Your Recruitment Marketing Strategy is the Key to Success in 2021

There are so many ways for you to push your brand’s image forward in these trying times: hosting COVID-safe recruitment events, launching social media campaigns where you attempt to engage your target demographic with compelling content, and accepting feedback from the public as they respond to your campaign are just a few more. The most important thing is to be constantly changing: stagnation and unwillingness to evolve with the times are what’s keeping so many other businesses back. As long as you keep an open mind and keep working to attract the attention of the talented few, they will come: and if you’ve worked on developing and expanding your employee value proposition, they will come in droves.