The SHIFT Hit Your Hiring Plans?

No matter how talented your recruiters, marketing department, and human resources staff, their effectiveness is hindered if they don’t have the tools and strategy to make screening and hiring processes better.

Most companies limit candidate sourcing to ads they post online and in print media; that’s a limiting and guarded approach when talent acquisition requires a more aggressive and concerted marketing plan. For starters, recruitment marketing should include all communications that an organization uses to reach and engage job seekers, from job postings and personal emails to social media and career fairs. Every company website should provide easy access to a career page. Don’t miss opportunities to promote job openings on billing statements and other customer touchpoints. Encourage customers to refer friends and relatives. Employers have dozens of interactions with customers that present opportunities to promote job openings. Few take advantage of them.

It’s also past the time when companies should be wondering if social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Instagram should be used to promote job openings and careers. The question must be “Which ones should we be using?” To paraphrase an article in Forbes: It’s easy to make fun of Facebook. The unguarded vanity of high school “friends” all tends to reinforce the insanity of the social network, but over a billion people use it—even those who complain about it. And for large, multinational companies, it’s becoming an increasingly valuable tool for marketing and recruiting employees.114 And that’s just Facebook!

Here’s a shortlist of marketing tools, many of which are free, and available to any size company in any industry.