Attention – that’s what our audience has and that’s what we want to gain. Yes, it’s easier said than done, but when we have supporting data, that can help us make better decisions about our marketing. It helps us meet our business goals. It helps us select the right strategies and tactics to go where our audience is.
Let’s look at this recent study from Clutch, which is a company that uses data to guide business buying decisions. (Right up my alley!)
A survey of 507 full-time employees who started full-time jobs in the past six months revealed the following insights on how candidates discovered job opportunities:
- 41 percent use job boards
- 25 percent leverage networking
- 14 percent use social media
- 5 percent relied on email newsletters
What can we learn?
Companies Must Have a Presence on Job Boards
Active job candidates are still going to job boards to find open positions, which makes a lot of sense. If we are looking for a job, we are going to where the jobs are.
That’s the attention we need, which presents more questions.
- How Are You Getting Your Jobs to the Job Boards?
There are a lot of options here. Recruiters could manually be posting your open positions on the job aggregators or other job boards. Your applicant tracking system could be pushing jobs directly to the boards. You could be using a programmatic solution to distribute jobs to dozens, hundreds or thousands of job boards by the click of a button.With the sheer volume of job boards (and open jobs), it’s vital to get your open positions to where your candidates are spending time. Quite honestly, we don’t know exactly where that is. The recommended strategy is to push your jobs to as many job boards as possible and then use the data to determine where the best conversion rate (and quality) is coming from.
- What Does Your Job Description Say?
This is the next step in the process for the job candidate, but it’s actually the first step for your recruiters before the distribution of the open jobs.Starting with the job title, then the actual job description, what are you conveying to the job candidate that makes them want to click on your job opening? Forget about applying for the job. Let’s just focus on getting them to click on the job title. Then, we get to what happens when they read the description.
(Luckily, I just wrote a long-form blog on The Ultimate Guide to Job Descriptions in 2019)
The main takeaway – think about the job seeker and what’s in it for them. What do they want to read? What will get them excited about your open position? What will get them to apply for the job?
What can your company offer they don’t have right now? Are you listing salary? Are you listing benefits? If you aren’t, you should be.
Networking Still Has a Place
With 25 percent of placed job candidates saying networking was how they discovered job opportunities, that illustrates the importance of recruiters.
Job fairs and networking events have worked for years. How are you working with local universities? How are you going to places where people are undervalued and ready to take the next step in their career?
This is already a strength for a lot of recruiters. They know how to connect with the job candidate and show them the grass is greener on the other side. It’s a tactic that’s not going away.
Social Media Makes a Mark
It’s only 14 percent, but I’m guessing your recruiters don’t want to throw away part of the jobseeker audience by just ignoring social media.
The social media outlets provide a perfect outlet to recruit the passive job candidate. They could be frustrated with their boss. They could be fed up with a shift in company culture. They could just be sick of feeling undervalued on paycheck Friday.
Then your content appears in their timeline. You’ve developed a relationship with that passive job seeker over weeks, months and years by becoming a thought leader. Sharing blogs, creating infographics, posting videos, relaying testimonials – those are just the start of ways recruiters can make connections with job seekers on social media.
Beyond its strength of connecting with the passive job candidate, social media continues to create more access to the active job seeker. Facebook Jobs, LinkedIn Jobs, Facebook Groups and LinkedIn Groups are just four examples where active job candidates are going on social media to find their next job opportunity.
Email Newsletters Were Low… But Those Job Alerts!
Seeing email newsletters driving five percent of new candidates could be surprising when coupled with these other stats from the survey:
- 88 percent of people used automatic job alerts when searching for a new role
- 61 percent say job alerts are effective
- 21 percent say job alerts are very effective
What are we saying when we say job alerts? We’re talking about the email communication that shows up in the job seeker’s inbox showcasing a new position that’s been posted.
How can you get them to sign up for job alerts?
You could rely on the main job boards, but that’s a little risky? Why is it risky? Let’s say the job seeker gives their email address to the job board. What’s going to show up in their inbox? It’s going to be a job alert featuring new jobs. They could be YOUR new jobs or more than likely, they are going to be YOUR COMPETITOR’S new jobs. Not great!
How can we get them to only see your jobs? Drive them to the job board on your website.
If you can get the job seeker to sign up for job alerts coming straight from your company, that guarantees they are only going to receive job alerts and new postings your recruiters are placing for. That’s what we want!
What’s Our Takeaway?
- Get jobs to the job boards. Active job candidates are going there. Seriously consider a programmatic software solution to make data-driven decisions and leverage software to purchase job advertisements based on data and rules.
- Don’t ignore networking. People still like the human connection. And recruiters love to network. Set your team up for success and play to their strengths.
- Social media makes more of an impact. It’s the perfect location to target passive job seekers. It’s becoming more robust in targeting active job seekers.
- Job Alerts. Job Alerts. Job Alerts. More than 80 percent of job seekers think they are effective. Get those job seekers into your system and keep them updated with personalized job updates based on their preferences and skills.
This study came from actual job seekers who were recently placed in new positions. Using that data to tailor your strategies and tactics will help your recruiters meet their SMART goals in 2019.
