The beginning of a new year is a good time to assess your recruitment strategy and think about the positive steps you can take over the next 12 months to achieve your goals.
Whether you’d like to reduce the average time it takes your business to make a hire or you’re looking at cutting your recruitment spend, a perfect place to start is by re-evaluating your recruitment advertising strategy.
Taking the time to refine and improve your advertising plans will help you to eliminate any unnecessary costs and increase the chance of attracting the top talent that your company craves, not to mention making your role just that little bit easier.
But how do you go about doing this?
Webrecruit suggests starting with the following:
1. Carefully looking at your advertising mix
What recruitment advertising sources are you currently using? And which ones are delivering you with the highest quality of candidates?
Make a list of them all and how many applications they’ve provided you with over the past 12 months. Then note the number of quality candidates that each one has delivered (these could be candidates who you’ve telephone interviewed, face-to-face interviewed and hired).
Recruitment software, such as an applicant tracking system (ATS) should be able to provide you with this information. If you do not currently use recruitment software, your advertising suppliers will have this data to hand.
You can now work out the percentage of quality candidates per source by dividing the number of quality applications by the total number of applications for that source and multiplying this figure by 100. The source with the highest percentage is the advertising source which is providing you with the highest quality candidates and one that you should definitely keep.
By all means, you can analyse these figures more in-depth and break your data down by vacancy sector or location (if you hire across multiple sectors for multiple sites); the scope for analysis is vast.
Also, it’s not just all about the numbers; think about any extra benefits that your advertising sources offer you. The important thing is that you’re getting the most value from your suppliers.
2. Thinking more about your job adverts
The job advert is your chance to really attract candidates to work for your business and isn’t something that should be rushed or ignored completely.
Your online job advert will be the first impression that candidates have of your business and a poor advert is likely to prompt them to quickly click off the page.
If you struggle to find the time to create appealing job advertisements for each role you’re recruiting for, try and prepare a short company introduction and a paragraph or two about the benefits and perks of working for your business. These can be included in each advert that you put out and will save you having to write them over and over again.
Alternatively, Webrecruit offers a copywriting service as part of our recruitment advertising package. Our team of Copywriters will create optimised job adverts for you, using a tried and tested format. Find out more.
3. Focusing on promoting your employer brand
72% of UK talent acquisition leaders cited that employer branding has a significant impact on hiring, according to LinkedIn’s 2015 UK Recruiting Trends report.
Putting your company’s own personal stamp on your recruitment campaigns is a great way of attracting candidates and setting your business apart from its competitors.
But, how can you communicate your employer brand values in your recruitment campaigns?
Think about the aspects of your company that potential candidates will see before applying. This includes your job advert, social media accounts and company website.
Make sure that you talk about your values and benefits within your job advert, promote your vacancies on social media and post employee testimonials and images of your environment on your company website. A ‘Why Work For Us?’ page can work wonders!
Interested in learning how Webrecruit’s Talent Finder service can assist you with your recruitment advertising needs this year? Find out more.
