Internet Recruiting Tips for Recruiting Great Talent in Low Unemployment
The economy is moving along nicely. Low unemployment, rising real estate prices, low inflation and over 200,000 jobs added in July all point to a very fertile economic environment. Companies want to grow, but many are experiencing the double whammy; longer time to fill new job requisitions as well as losing key employees to their competitors. In Central Florida, we have a net 138 people moving here every day. How will your company find this talent? Posting on sites like OrlandoJobs.com is certainly important since it is the leading job board for Central Florida for the last ten years. But, in low unemployment, you may have to consider other tactics.
“Companies also have to live with the fact that almost all your employees can be found in Google, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Your competitors with live recruiters are coming after them since skilled talent is scarce in low unemployment.”
You really need a recruiting strategy that will find great people to fill your open positions. One thing's for sure, your budget will have to increase. The reason for this is that you will have to put together a strategy that uses four to five resources that can find and deliver job seekers you can hire. Here are some ideas that I would use all at the same time:
- Niche Job Boards. While job boards like Indeed produce numerous resumes, many skilled positions go unfilled. To find great talent for your current needs and pipeline, you have to have a presence on a niche job board and/or a local job board for your specialized positions. The challenge is finding niche sites that can produce healthcare, technology, claims, sales talent and any other “hard to fill” position. When doing your research, ask the job board how they market their site and attract passive candidates. For example, if you’re looking for a worker’s compensation claims specialist in Orlando, GreatInsuranceJobs.com would be a site you have to consider (even though I am writing this article as one of the partners, I know exactly what we do to attract passive candidates). GIJ has over 28,000 workers compensation professionals in our current database that you can access. We attend three major WC conferences each year and collect over 500 new “passive candidates” who sign up to be alerted to specific jobs as our clients post them. GIJ is the job board partner on WCI360, CLM and Business Insurance.
- Social Media Sponsored Job Posts. Like niche job boards, social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook allow you to “target” the talent you are looking to hire. Both Facebook and LinkedIn work the same way but this is how to do this. Create a post on both your LinkedIn Employer page or Facebook company page. Make sure you have a great title and job description. It doesn’t matter how many followers you have on these pages. You will pay to sponsor these posts and put this on the walls of anyone who may qualify based on the criteria you select like location, job title, etc. You pay for this based on cost per clicks (CPC) or cost per impressions (CPI).
- Follow Talent You Want to Hire. LinkedIn and Twitter work well with this strategy. Simply search out people that you think would be great fits for your company and follow them (Twitter) or send an invitation (LinkedIn). Once you follow, your target will be alerted and often times they will follow you back. The key to this strategy is to make sure when they do “check you out”, they will easily be able to see that you have a job opening that has their name on it. This strategy works well but your employment brand and opportunities has to stand out to get the best traction. Once they follow you, then you have a way to communicate with them directly!
In low unemployment, you have to use many resources at once to really make an impact. Using a major job board, niche board and boosting social media job posts all together will really help you attract great candidates. The good news is that if you negotiate well and understand CPC and CPI, you may not have to dramatically increase your budget to get fantastic results. Email me with any questions! (Roger@OrlandoJobs.com)