Lights, camera, recruitment

Job recruiting takes to the airwaves with a new television show that matches employers with jobseekers

The Internet is a powerful forum for recruiters and jobseekers alike, but in a tight labour market, employers have to pull out all the stops to attract the best candidates. Employers need to take advantage of all media at their disposal and this means entering the world of broadcast, an as-yet-untapped recruitment medium.

“It’s a real jobseekers’ market,” says Workopolis brand manager Cheryl Goymour. “Unemployment is currently at a 30-year low — 6.4 per cent in November. There’s a real war for talent out there, especially in certain high-growth industries. Companies are doing everything they can to recruit the best talent.”

Workopolis, an online career resource with job postings from across the country, is now offering employers a creative new way to sell themselves to potential recruits. In October, Workopolis launched a 30-minute show, Workopolis TV, on Report on Business Television featuring career advice. In the new year, the show will feature employers talking about what makes their companies great places to work as they highlight available positions. A call-in segment will let jobseekers get more information about the company, the position and how to apply.

Goymour says this 10-minute “career matching” segment, as she called it, will serve as a means of employment branding — a way to market to potential job candidates the same way a company markets its brand to consumers. The show airs Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights at 6:30 EST and 8:30.

Unfortunately, employer branding is still relatively new and too many Canadian employers are still treating recruitment as they did decades ago when there was a glut of available talent, says Gabriel Bouchard, vice-president and general manager of Monster.ca, another online career source.

Earlier this year, Monster.ca was considering launching its own television show to help employers sell their brands to potential recruits, but because Monster.ca doesn’t have the same relationship with broadcasters as Workopolis does — both Workopolis and ROB TV are owned in part by Bell Globemedia — it was only able to get air time during off-peak hours, such as Sunday afternoon.

“It wasn’t the best use of our marketing dollars,” says Bouchard.

Instead, Monster.ca is stepping up its campaign to market itself as a forum where jobseekers can find a better boss by running television ads in the Toronto market. The campaign is the result of a Monster.ca survey where 83 per cent of respondents reported their relationship with their direct boss is the most important factor contributing to job satisfaction.

“The most qualified people out there have the ability to choose which company they want to work for and they’re going to make their decisions based on the feelings they have toward their new boss,” says Bouchard. “As recruiters and as employers, we’re going to have to start paying more attention to this.”

Leveraging the HR corporate brand

That old and worn medium radio is still in play as well. Telus Mobility, a Canadian telecommunications company, launched a radio campaign in late August and early September in Toronto and Montreal to recruit call centre workers. The radio ad was produced in the same way as the company’s product ads, with the same woman doing the voice-over, and the same tag line at the end: “Telus — the future is friendly.”

“We leverage our Telus Mobility brand, which is a phenomenal brand in the market space,” says Telus vice-president of HR Jackie Puchalski. “Any product advertising or recruitment advertising, people automatically know it’s Telus Mobility and that helps generate the candidate pool for us as well.”

The company ran the ads on one radio station in Toronto and two in Montreal to target the 18-to-28-years-old age group because the majority of the call centre workers fall into this category. During the same period, Telus also did field marketing by handing out flyers to people on the street. It also bought a full-page ad on page two of Toronto’s commuter paper Metro, a space that is generally reserved for product ads.

The traditional classified advertising isn’t usually successful and Telus wanted to take it up a notch, says the company’s manager of recruitment in Toronto.

“We’re always looking for innovative ways to recruit,” says Shawn Elliott. “Everybody reads the first five pages of a newspaper but not everybody, especially if it’s a commuter paper, gets to page 12 (where the classified ads are).”

During and after the campaign, traffic to the Telus website was up substantially. Listeners and readers were directed there for more information about job opportunities, says Elliott.

To broadcast or not to broadcast

However, broadcast advertising isn’t appropriate for all companies, cautions Bouchard. He says companies can’t rely on listeners or viewers being able to recall or write down the website address to which these ads direct prospective candidates.

Television and radio ads are also very expensive and don’t make sense if a company is only recruiting a very targeted audience, such as IT professionals, but it can work for large retail companies that are recruiting thousands of lower-skilled workers, such as sales clerks, says Bouchard.

“You can use this to build your brand as an employer of choice,” he says. “To show what you do that is unique in your industry to treat your employees well.”

The McDonald’s ads that ran in the United States this fall, with famous former employees singer Macy Gray and track star Carl Lewis talking about the leadership skills they learned while working at the fast food restaurant, is an example of the proper use of the mass marketing tool.

Internet still key in recruiting

However, before a company spends thousands of dollars on television and radio ads, Bouchard says it should first invest in its corporate website.

Though the Internet became the main method by which people search for jobs in 2005, many employers aren’t making the most of this resource. “It’s still a very new vehicle that not too many companies have mastered the art of leveraging,” says Bouchard.

If a company builds a good recruitment hub on the web, it shouldn’t turn to radio or TV to attract people, he says. “The best way to drive traffic to a website is to advertise on the web.”

Building career web pages and creating web job postings has to become part of the recruitment communication strategy, says Bouchard. The creators and writers need to think like jobseekers and make web pages and ads that sell the company. When recruiters post ads on other career websites such as Workopolis or Monster.ca, they should include several keywords and list it under several categories so jobseekers are more likely to find it.

A company’s career web page is also an ideal way to build a relationship with potential candidates, which increases the company’s ability to attract the best people, says Workopolis’ Goymour.

“Employers must have a continuous presence and relationship with candidates,” she says. “They should be creating an ongoing dialogue with people who have submitted their resumés. Something as easy as setting up an auto-reply e-mail that a resumé has been received and will be reviewed, will go a long way in forming a favourable impression of your company in the minds of candidates.”


Sell your company as an employer of choice

Traditionally, job ads solely relate the skills and qualifications necessary for the position. They don’t tell jobseekers what’s in it for them. To attract the best talent, companies need to change their recruitment communication strategies.

“So far the match between the employer and the jobseeker has been made essentially on the skills,” says Gabriel Bouchard, vice-president and general manager of Monster.ca.

Because of the current talent shortage and the upcoming labour shortage, if companies want to attract the best candidates, “it’s going to become more important to offer jobseekers a better perspective about what’s in it for them,” he says.

To connect with talent on this level, HR should partner with the marketing or advertising department that already has the experience of communicating to clients with the intent of selling the company and its products or services. HR needs to leverage that expertise to build its communication recruitment strategy, says Bouchard.

“It’s not about providing information, it’s about promoting your company as an employer of choice and really convincing someone who has a job to apply for your position,” he says. “In advertising we called this seducing the consumer.”

The most important factor in determining job satisfaction is an employee’s relationship with his boss, according to a Monster.ca survey. No longer are jobseekers looking for jobs, they’re looking for good bosses, says Bouchard. Employment branding and recruitment strategies that keep this key supervisor/employee relationship in mind are essential, he says.

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