As a business owner, you know marketing your products and services is a must in attracting and retaining customers. But did you know that recruiting and retaining top talent requires similar strategies and focus?
At ZippyApp, we know that one of the biggest challenges you face as an hourly employer is healthy supply of quality applicants. That’s our focus, and we provide you with the most efficient and cost effective recruiting solution to meet your staffing needs.
As discussed in our previous blog, Recruiting and Hiring Millennials (for your restaurant jobs), Millennials are expected to make up 75% of the workforce by 2020. Why is that important to you? Because in order to develop a recruitment marketing strategy to attract this demographic, you need to understand them and how they engage.
For starters:
- Mobile: Is the device of choice for millennials, and over 90% of job seekers.
- Social: Are their channels of engagement.
- Local: Is the nature of hourly jobs.
As an hourly employer, some of the challenges and barriers you face are:
- High Turnover: 50% to 300% annual turnover is common.
- Classified Ads: Costly, noisy, and ineffective.
- Difficult Apply Process: Any friction / bump in the apply process limits engagement and reduces applicant flow.
What the workforce needs:
- Easy apply process.
- Lots of jobs.
- Quick response and reaction time.
In today’s competitive market, most job seekers consult up to 15 resources, including job boards, business website(s), employer-review sites, and social media channels to learn about the opportunity and the employer. They also want to understand the work culture (extremely important to millennials), the work style, issues at the workplace, and whom they might be working for or with. Because of this, it is important for your entire web presence — website(s), career sites, social media channels, and even job ads — to have a clear, consistent message and apply process.
Your recruitment marketing strategy must be comprehensive, with a wide range of coverage on your employer brand sites and an ease of engagement for your applicants. Your job opportunities must be described with excitement and have fewer words that include key requirements to attract the right candidates (we will give tips on writing leaner and meaner job descriptions in next week’s Blog, stay tuned!)
Your current employees and loyal customers are your best advocates.
Your current employees are your best advocates for your job opportunities. They are the ones to share with family and friends about current open positions, and often toot their employer’s horn on the work environment and conditions. Implementing an employee-referral program is a good way to incentivize them, and get pre-qualified candidates.
Be sure to leverage your current customers as potential candidates when applicable. Hand our hiring cards, hang banners, and place hiring placards at your restaurant tables to capture the passive applicants at the location. ZippyApp’s unique QR Code System provides a QR Code for each of your hiring locations, where job seekers simply scan and apply using our Common Employment Application, attracting candidates on the spot.
Focusing on marketing as a recruitment strategy can pay off in the long run. Developing a strategy that will attract new candidates is a challenge in itself, but retaining them and reducing your turnover is one not to be forgotten. Be aware of this and develop a comprehensive strategy that appeals to both will keep you at the forefront of hourly recruiting.
Do you have any recruitment marketing tips to share? We’d love to hear from you! Comment your thoughts below.
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