There’s no escaping the truth—recruiting is tough right now. Staffing firms compete for a shrinking pool of the best candidates, and visibility gets more challenging every day. But people ARE applying to jobs—we’ve seen the data. There are great candidates out there—and by making a few changes in your recruiting strategy, you can help them find your jobs.
In this three-part series, you’ll learn how to:
- Spend smarter to get more applications.
- Write job posts that get seen by more candidates.
- Optimize your job application to convert.
- Adjust your jobs-to-budget ratio to optimize results.
Ready to get started?
To learn practical tips and takeaways to make the most of your recruiting budget and get more applications? Read on…
Recruiting Reality: Factors You Can’t Control
At the time of this writing, the unemployment rate has dropped to 3.6%, basically where it was in February 2020 before the Covid-19 pandemic. But there are a whopping 3.12 million fewer workers in the workforce and 11.6 million job openings (over 4 million more than pre-Covid).
That’s reality—and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Do you know what else we can’t control? Recruiting advertising costs have skyrocketed.
- Facebook advertising costs are up 61%.
- TikTok advertising costs are up 200%.
- Google Impression costs are up 75% (with clicks up 14%).
There’s more…
At the end of 2021, did your staffing firm’s job slots renewal package double? Or triple? Job boards know staffing firms do a fantastic job of getting applications out of their job slots, and many firms have seen increases in their renewal prices.
Tough Employment Market + Increasing Recruiting Costs = Frustration
Ready to give up?
Wave the white flag of surrender and hemorrhage advertising money to get fewer candidates?
NO WAY!!!
Focus on What You CAN Control
You might not be able to control the job market or recruiting costs right now, but there are a lot of things you can do to get more applications for your firm.
Focus on the four pillars of recruitment marketing to maximize your recruiting ROI:
- Career Sites
- Job Advertising
- Social Recruiting
- Employer Branding
Job advertising is our biggest focus for this eBook, but each of the four pillars offers opportunities to improve your recruitment results.
Smarter Job Advertising
Spending MORE isn’t a recruiting strategy. You need to spend SMARTER.
At Haley Marketing, our clients have been going through the same recruiting challenges as you, and we’ve been right there with them, working to increase the number of applications while keeping the cost per application down.
Lesson #1 Spending more doesn’t guarantee more applies.
While a lot of staffing companies would benefit from increasing their ad spend, blindly increasing budget is not a good strategy. You need data and a sound rationale to increase your spending.
For example, if you can increase your budget and get more applies at the SAME cost per application, then it makes sense to spend more. Or if you are seeing a spike in competition for certain roles, you may have no choice but to increase spend in order to compete for candidates.
To be clear, we’re not saying that you should not increase your budget. We’re saying you must have a logical reason behind the increase besides just posting and praying!
And before you spend anything more, you want to optimize the jobs you are currently advertising. We know from looking at lots of data that people are applying to jobs—the question is how can you get them to apply to your jobs?
Start here:
- Write job titles that match what candidates search for.
- Write job posts that instantly convey value (WIIFM) for job seekers.
- Optimize your jobs-to-budget ratio.
Up Next: Get More Applications For Your Staffing Firm Part 2: The Value of Job Titles and Posts
Our next post will break down the value of effective job titles and posts to attract top candidates you need! But if you don’t want to wait, you can check out the full ebook here!
