Couldn’t make our Hard-to-Fill Roles, Fulfilled! webinar last week? No problem. We have you covered with this lightning quick recap of some of the top things we learned.
The context
We all have roles at our organizations that are particularly hard to fill, either because they’re niche or competitive positions or because they’re located in tough hiring markets. While our webinar experts focus on hard-to-fill roles in the healthcare space, their strategies and tactics for recruiting for competitive roles can be borrowed to boost your hiring results in any industry.
The experts
Kelly Piccininni, Talent Acquisition Manager
Kelly is responsible for recruitment, retention and employer branding at Northside Hospital, where she manages a team of 40. Prior to Northside, Kelly owned a Snelling Staffing Services franchise for five years.
Jessica Summerfield, Social Media Specialist
Jessica helps tell the Advocate Aurora Health employer brand story through social media, employee stories, employer ambassador activation, career site strategy and more.
Top 7 takeaways:
1) Your EVP should guide your approach
The best way to get talent to actually take notice of your Recruitment Marketing content? Use your employee value proposition as your guiding star. Take a look at survey feedback, employee reviews and conduct employee interviews to find out what’s unique and awesome about your company. The outcome of this research is what you market to get the attention of the best talent.
2) Focus on “the real”
Once you’ve found out what your “special sauce” is, you need to communicate it as authentically as possible. You can consider sharing employee-generated content and employee stories to achieve this. Use real employee photos not stock photography, even if they’re candid shots taken with your mobile phone.
3) Say it and then say it again (and again)
People need to hear a message multiple times for it to absorb. There’s an old advertising adage about the Rule of Seven: seven is the number of times it takes for a message to actually lead a person to action. So, we need to put our messaging in front of candidates multiple times by using different social media channels, job sites and varied content types.
4) Let data and research drive your strategy
Each position may need a somewhat unique plan. Different channels work for different roles and you need to appear on several of them at once. No one channel can answer for all of your roles anymore. Research and find out where your target hiring demographics are spending time online and what job sites are most popular in different areas or with different talent segments.
5) Leverage technology
Use technology to deliver on a personalized experience. You can use retargeting software to encourage people to visit your site again in the future. There are also software solutions that can help tag site visitors and identify their role area so you can deliver tailored images and copy on your career site. To implement more advanced tech solutions like these, your internal Marketing or Web team colleagues may have some insights or tools you can use. Alternatively, you may want to consider partnering with a vendor or agency for help in the space. A few we know of include Symphony Talent (our webinar sponsor), PhenomPeople and TMP Worldwide.
6) Measure, analyze, strategize
Recruitment Marketing teams typically have smaller budgets to work with than our marketing counterparts. Want to know where to spend your limited money? Need to increase your budget? Track your results carefully to observe the best channels and vendors to invest in. Close measurement will also help you to better communicate the success you’re achieving to make the plea for more budget down the line. During the webinar, Jessica shared a phenomenal Recruitment Marketing campaign template that lets you plan and track results. We’ll be sharing this template on the Rally blog in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!
7) You are not alone!
Continue to learn from other Recruitment Marketers. Because there are lots of organizations where there’s only one Recruitment Marketer it can feel isolating. Connect with other Recruitment Marketers, tune in to webinars, attend conferences and join Recruitment Marketing Facebook or LinkedIn groups so you can learn more about the newest trends, what’s working and how you can be most effective at marketing your organization to competitive talent groups.
Looking for more?
You can check out the Questions & Answers from this webinar, which we’ve compiled for you in this blog post. You can also access the full Hard-to-Fill Roles, Fulfilled! On Demand Webinar to get more insights and SHRM and HRCI credits.
Rally note: This webinar was hosted in partnership with Glassdoor and Symphony Talent. Thanks to our sponsors for helping us to develop and share educational resources like this one!