Why wait until January 1?
We don’t need to wait until the start of the calendar year to evaluate what’s working and implement changes. Granted – major changes shouldn’t be made every week, but digging deep into performance every 3-6 months is the correct timeline.
For your recruitment marketing, let’s dig into the four pillars (career sites, job advertising, social recruiting, and employer branding) with areas to analyze to get the most from your recruitment efforts in the second half of the year.
Career Sites – Look at Job Titles
In doing a report for a client last week, one of their job titles was literally “Glue Machine.” Not surprisingly, the results for that job were 13 clicks and 0 applications. Yes, it’s a bad title, but let’s understand why because there are two reasons.
First – the number might not be zero, but the amount of people searching for that job is either zero or very close to zero. The hyper-specific job title might match the skill you need from a candidate to fill that job, but your candidate isn’t typing that title into Indeed, ZipRecruiter, etc. They’re typing in “warehouse” or “manufacturing” or “production” or might not even be typing in anything and just performing an empty search while relying on the algorithm to determine results based on past search history.
Second – if someone does see “Glue Machine” in those search results, human curiosity will lead some people to clicking on it. The data is showing they aren’t converting.
Use resources to find what candidates are searching for in their job search. Indeed Hiring Insights is a fantastic resource. If you don’t have access to Indeed Hiring Insights, then simpler and generic is always better.
On top of that, to close the loop on why this is a mid-year resolution for career sites, the SEO for a job titles of “Glue Machine” is not going to be very helpful. It builds off the point above that people aren’t searching for that title, so the Google algorithm won’t be rewarding you in search results. Write job titles and job postings with terms people are using in their search.
Job Advertising – Make Sure Salary Meets Market Rates
Another really great example comes from our monthly reporting where a manufacturing staffing agency is trying to hire for a production job (good title!)
However, the salary on the job was below market rates. The production job featured a salary of $17/hour, but for a production job in that city, the average hourly wage was $18.36 – that’s an eight-percent difference! We aren’t even taking into account the similar jobs in the area (outside a production company) that could be featuring a higher wage.
This job didn’t receive applications, which makes the staffing agency unhappy and the client actually unhappy. But let’s think about that a little bit further – if we are able to bring this data back to the client, then we can show two things:
- The wage for this job is below market value
- Because the wage is below market value, this is why we aren’t getting applications.
Conduct research and benchmark in your area. Use that data to your advantage to put the right salary on your jobs and discuss with clients.
Social Recruiting – Quality >>>>> Quantity
The noise on social media continues to grow (hello Threads!) Because we (as people, nothing professionally) have so many options, it’s more vital than ever to think through every piece of content you are creating for social media.
Quality >>>>> Quantity when it comes to social media. No one wants to see every single job as a separate post on your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages. People don’t want a generic Instagram post every single day. You don’t have to jump on every new trend on TikTok. The algorithms reward a post with 20 likes, 7 comments, and 3 shares much more than if you post 20 times in a day. Your impressions on that one post receiving engagement will be much greater than the impressions on those 20 posts combined?
So, what can we create?
Listen to the questions coming from your candidates and employees each day – create content around that. Write down the questions that recruiters and the sales team are receiving constantly. Having content around those literal FAQs will have awesome returns.
Data helps here because it’s going to show what’s working with your client. The most engagement for my first social media client was highlighting an internal guacamole content between their team. I never would have thought that would get the engagement it did when hitting “post,” but it did and there’s a lot to learn from that for future posts for this client.
Employer Branding – Build Your Brand
Quite simply – build your brand in the local community, and it doesn’t have to just focus on digital marketing.
I’m going to use the example of Wegmans, which is a grocery store chain in the Northeast part of the country. They have an incredible local brand because of its involvement in the community as well as a great experience in the store. It’s quite amazing.
Think about how your company can build its brand locally. It’s not throwing up a billboard on a local highway or posting a blog on your website. This is the work that has to happen before doing all of that content.
What experience do people get in working with your brand? Are you doing anything with community service in your local community? Can you sponsor a local kids’ event? The list is seemingly endless on what you can do to build that local brand.
When that work happens – it will help with the rest of your recruitment marketing and employer brand. Yes, it will take time, but monitor when you start these activities. and see how it helps your candidate flow, candidate quality, and time to fill.
WRAP
Evaluating recruitment marketing (and all of your marketing) needs to happen throughout the year. It can’t just be annual, but it also can’t just be weekly. Getting into a routine of looking at it throughout the month, and making changes every 3-6 months will prove to be the best process.
If you need some help with evaluating that recruitment marketing, Haley Marketing is here to help. Contact our team today, and we’ll analyze the four aspects of your recruitment marketing – providing some helpful and actionable takeaways to get more of the right candidates for your open jobs!
