Recruitment or hiring has evolved over the past decade from the traditional method of walk-ins and word of mouth to the current method which combines the traditional media with interactive power of digital technology that most businesses apply. Thanks to the invention of the Internet and now Web 2.0, organizations now have the ability to facilitate their recruitment the way that once was impossible. Social networking sites, blogs, video-sharing sites are examples of the advancement in Web 2.0 which makes the world a much smaller place.
With all the advances in technology today, there is several fundamental knowledge one needs to know before one can start hiring. Most companies fail to identify their target market effectively, probably due to the lack of understanding of their target market behavioral attitude. Therefore, they waste their resources (time, money, etc) unnecessarily without meeting their objective of hiring the best talent for their organization.
Here are 5 tips hiring personnel can refer to when it comes to hiring the best talents to maximize one’s human resource campaign:
No. 1: Decide Who You Want to Reach Out To Carefully
This step is paramount in determining your target market to reach out to. Before you launch your first campaign, you need to decide what it is that you want to accomplish. Do you want to deepen the quality of relationships, take your potential employees through the sales cycle or to create branding awareness to educate them? Why are you sending your messages? How are you going to track them?
Set clear goals before you start creating your page or profile, and build your messages and campaign around those goals. Decide and fix on the market to approach before going any further.
No. 2: Choose the Right Platform to Target Your Potential Employee
The right platform is essential in recruitment or hiring process. Although typical methods like prints and classifieds are reaching out to substantial amount of eyeballs, not all can be successfully converted to your potential employee. Leverage extensively on the online platform where there are channels where talents are in right now. For example, research from comScore World Metric points out that Malaysia sits in 3rd spot for social networking penetration amongst Asian countries.
Moreover, popular social network sites like Facebook and Twitter are the places where the Internet-savvy Gen-Y’ers are in right now. So, if your target market is fresh graduates, why not tap into this online platform?
No. 3: Invest in Online Marketing Campaigns for Recruitment
With the invention of Internet, marketers need to change accordingly too. Companies need to start market their hiring advertisement online. With many benefits like effective measurement of each campaign, spot-on targeting approach, and not to mention much cheaper compared to print advertisement, organization need to jump on the bandwagon too.
Furthermore, these so-called Gen Y’ers online talents will be spending a lot more of the time online and with specific and strategic advertising, one can engage more potential talents for your organization.
No. 4: Be Creative in Your Recruitment Marketing Campaigns
Your recruitment marketing campaign also have to be creative to not only capture attention of the potential employees but to educate them further. Details like the values and benefits they can expect upon joining your organization will prove crucial in getting in the best talents.
Typical job posting of selling your company and the job should be replaced with creative juices of stories and testimonials from both employers and employees to engage them on a different level. People will definitely remember you for that.
No. 5: Monitor Results and Select the Best Method Accordingly
It's important to know how your recruitment campaign and market is responding to various methods that you tried. Test a few messages and on different platforms to see what they respond to and what they don't respond to (one common test is to send the same message with several different subject lines to see what your potential employees favors).
As most online channels can provide statistics and report, do have a look at reporting (metrics) to see which online channel are more effective and have a higher rate of response from your target market. Use the lessons learned to build your next campaign.
On the whole, hiring talent today should be a combination of several methods or channels to increase relationships, response rates and conversions through smart, targeted communication. Taking the online channel into account, social media platform can be integrated with other online marketing platform to improve your hiring process.
