Running Job Advertisements in the right places

Having developed a sub-standard advertisement, many businesses then run it in their local newspaper, Pennysaver or wherever and expect that they will attract enough people of the right quality to fill their needs.

There are any number of places where job advertisements can be run, and yet it is not intuitive to know where those places might be. One of the questions that I am most commonly asked by my clients is where they should advertise, and there is a wide variety of different alternatives which differs significantly from industry to industry.

The problem is that at any given time there is only a small percentage of the employed population actually looking to change jobs. Statistics indicate that most people start looking around because they are not getting on with a supervisor, and a good strategy is to have your company information and job details at the very place they are visiting while they are exhibiting their displeasure.

One very effective technique to find those places is to ask your employees about their reading and media habits. If you can be at the place where your employees are spending time at the precise instant when they are inclined to look around because their supervisor is holding them back you may well have success in reaching people who have not yet decided that they are really looking around.

If you think about it, people often say that the best job openings come through networking opportunities. The reason for that is because there is a connection between the candidates and the job opening, and I believe that this connection can also be created if the right job is put in front of a candidate who is not necessarily even looking for a new position.

If, for instance, the employees in a company tell you that they all visit a certain website for their news, then putting a banner advertisement on the site might be a great way to get people to visit the employment opportunities site that you have put up as a result of going through the "employee evaluation proposition" described earlier.

More information on the concept of advertising in nontraditional places can be found in the article "where to advertise for employees".

The Four Critical Steps to Hiring

Establish the Profile
Develop the Process
Grade Candidates
Evaluate and Execute

Establish the Profile

Make sure that you know what talent you are trying to hire. Start from scratch and take time to define the job rather than rushing and simply rehiring the person that you are replacing.
Develop the Process

Successful hiring depends on having real choices. Write advertisements that will attract a large pool of candidates and have a process so that heavy response levels don’t stretch your resources .
Grade Candidates

You can’t afford to rush the selection process. You need to have an effective screening process and evaluate candidate skills carefully in relation to the job profile you established.
Evaluate and Execute

It is essential to have a robust interviewing process. You need to have candidates interviewed thoroughly and then check references and do background checks.

Hiring Edge Information

Job Matching

Job
Talent
Match

- Identify the soft skills the job requires -- if the job could talk, what would it say?
  
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