Prepare To Improve Your Recruiting Results

It's 8:45 on Monday morning when the HR manager of a specialty manufacturer receives a call from a first-shift supervisor. The supervisor just fired a material handler (the third one in the past two months) and needs a new employee right away.

At 4:30 the same day, the controller at an IT services firm is walking out of the president's office after telling her that he accepted a job with one of their clients across town. He's leaving in two weeks and they haven't even closed the quarter yet.

That Wednesday, a sales manager for a customer service outsourcing business rushes into the call floor director's office to tell him that he just closed a sale. He's promised the new customer that they can staff a six-person team to receive their calls...starting in 5 days...at a 35% discount off the standard service fee.

These mini-dramas occur every day behind the windows of America's companies, forcing employers to recruit candidates in a highly reactive environment. Small and mid-sized businesses remain unprepared and ill equipped to respond to these workforce crisis.

Taking control of the process
For most employers, this is a zero-sum game because there is little retained value from previous recruiting efforts. They must start the hiring process from scratch every time a position becomes vacant. Although managers can't always predict when they'll need to fill an open slot, they can prepare their organizations to respond faster when the need arises.

There are three primary recruiting sources available to the typical organization: paid advertising, recruiting firms (a.k.a. headhunters) and temporary staffing. Many employers use a combination of these along with secondary sources like employee referrals, customers and competitors. Over the next three columns, I'll describe creative and cost-effective ways to achieve better results from these sources. The remainder of this article will highlight some ideas for leveraging recruitment ads.

Techniques for effective advertising
Advertising is always a shotgun approach. We put our message in front of thousands of pairs of eyes in order to attract the few people who fit our hiring criteria. It is important to have a system in place (before running the ad) that will help to quickly identify and contact the best candidates. The following hints will help your company use advertising to its fullest advantage:

• * Define the position clearly before running the ad. A written job description includes both the tasks and functions of the position as well as the criteria one must meet to perform the job. A well-constructed position description makes it easy to write an effective posting.
• * Choose the right medium. Why do small employers (with one location) post jobs on national websites like Monster.com and Careerbuilder? If you want to attract candidates who live in your area, you should choose more targeted sources.
• * Get specific. The most detailed ads produce the best-matched responses. Eliminate the fancy typefaces, logos and pictures and put your money into more lines of information. Include the hiring criteria, the salary range and the primary functions of the job.
• * If you're going to use classified advertising in a daily newspaper, run it on Sunday only. There's a reason why Sunday ad rates are more expensive than weekday--the Sunday issue attracts the most readers.
• * Process responses through a checklist. Many companies find themselves unprepared to handle the number of resumes that their ads produce and take too much time to sort through the responses. By comparing all incoming resumes to a checklist that includes your hiring criteria, you can quickly separate the strongest candidates from the unqualified ones.
• * Don't be afraid to throw away resumes. A lot of time is wasted by re-reading resumes that don't fit the job criteria. It's better to discard a "maybe" than to spend time moving paper.
• * Track the number of responses, number of interviews and time-to-hire for each position you advertise. Whether you hire new employees once a week or once a year, this information will help you quantify the effectiveness of your advertising.

A final word on paid advertising--while classified advertising remains one of the most common recruiting methods, Internet job boards offer some distinct advantages to the small employer. Assuming that you select a site that will be seen by your target audience, an online posting costs less, provides more information and runs longer than the printed version.

Positive results can be achieved by following these rules online or on paper. Remember to use detailed information; prepare a process for screening responses; then measure your results. Preparation will help make advertising pay off.