Job boards when used in the right way can be a great source of quality candidates. However it’s widely recognised that job boards tend to attract active candidates, who only make up around 20% of the market. But passive candidates that make up the larger 80% are perceived to be the stronger higher quality source of talent. So what simple methods can you tap into that passive audience?
This is a quick example to illustrate how you can vary the type of listings you use on job boards to help attract passive candidates.
A couple of months back I was working on a particularly tricky campaign to attract a ‘Client Director’ level candidate for a leading market research firm – Kantar Worldpanel. The combination of skills and experience required for these types of brand and category advisory roles is unique, and not easy to come by; we knew we needed to attract passive candidates.
The client has their own direct recruiting team, working behind the scenes busy sourcing, but in addition to this we used a combination of job postings across three websites: Grocer Jobs, Marketing Week Jobs and Only Marketing Jobs. We chose these as our research indicated they were the appropriate channels to focus our efforts (we were looking for a combination of marketing, retail and FMCG experience). We did not use standard branded listings however.
The Grocer (http://www.thegrocer.co.uk/) is a popular magazine amongst retail FMCG professionals, like many trade publications it has a job board also Grocer Jobs. Rather than using a standard listing that only appears on the job board we opted to use an enhanced listing that features on the homepage of the main digital Grocer news portal. The result, far more people who aren’t actively looking for our role (but still operate within the FMCG niche we wanted to tap up) but consume the news of the Grocer became aware of the role. This led to a much higher than average (500% more) number of applications compared to using a standard branded listing.
Marketing Week’s job site also offers similar enhanced listing that target readers of the main digital news platform, rather than just the active job seekers visiting their job board.
With the third website we used, Only Marketing Jobs (OMJ) we chose to use ‘Targeted hand-picked search’ listings. Effectively what this means is that a human search is conducted to match up the vacancy with the candidates on the job boards database to improve relevancy. A certain number of candidates will then receive personalised emails designed to encourage them to apply OR pass it onto other relevant people. Powered by the UK’s largest network for marketing professionals The UK Marketing Network, and a large marketing focused LinkedIn group, the listings have a much greater chance of penetrating into passive audiences compared to a standard job board listing.
As we were attracting senior level passive candidates we needed to ensure the application process was simple so difficult to find candidates didn’t drop out of the process (a big problem with a lot of applicant tracking systems). To achieve this we set up a very simple micro-site (this didn’t cost anything, it’s a free app) to list and brand the jobs, with a few filter questions. Candidates could then apply via a simple CV upload or have the option of applying with their LinkedIn profile.
Kantar Worldpanel mini site
Results
- 188 click through’s from the various channels over 4 weeks
- 81 applications (43% conversion of clicks to applications, very high!)
- 2 successful hires
The 81 applicants had to complete the small number of filter questions before being invited to interview or not. So over a 4 week period this isn’t a massive number of applications (although quite high for this type of role) for the internal recruiter to deal with. Although we did use a combination of slightly more expensive passive targeting inventory, the cost of the whole campaign was equivalent to less than 20% of a single recruitment fee for such a role. Given there were two hires made at ‘Client Director’ level, the ROI was very good.
Further Information
If you would like to learn more or see tailored examples of how to use job boards and social media to attract passive candidates for your own positions, feel free to contact me at Jean-Paul@vonq.co.uk, or connect with me on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanpaulsmalls
Direct Recruiting 