The Help Wanted Sign Is Marketing Too

Drive down Grape Road or through downtown Elkhart this spring and count the help wanted signs. Restaurants, retailers, manufacturers, contractors. A lot of Michiana employers are having a hard time finding people right now, and the owners I talk to are tired of it.

Most of them treat hiring as an HR problem. Post the job, wait, repeat. I’d suggest treating it as a marketing problem, because that’s mostly what it is. You’re trying to get the attention of people who aren’t looking for you yet and convince them to take a next step.

Recruit like you market

Think about how you’d market a new product or service. You’d figure out who it’s for, what makes it worth choosing, where those people spend their time and what you want them to do next. Hiring works the same way.

The difference is that most job ads skip all of that. They list requirements and duties, and they sound like every other job ad in town. If a customer ad read that way, you’d never run it.

Answer “why here?”

The person you want to hire probably has options right now. So the first job of your message is to answer one question: why would someone want to work here instead of down the road?

Be honest and specific. Maybe it’s a schedule that works for parents. Maybe it’s a boss who actually trains people. Maybe it’s a crew that has stuck together for years, or a clear path from an entry-level job to something better. Pay matters, and if yours is competitive, say it out loud. But pay alone rarely sets you apart for long.

Ask your best current employees why they stay. Their answers are usually better than anything you’d write yourself, and they sound more believable too.

Make applying easy

Here’s where a lot of employers lose people without knowing it. Walk through your own application process on your phone and see how it feels.

A few things to check:

• A real careers page. One page on your website that says who you are, what you’re hiring for, what the work is like and how to apply. Every recruiting ad should point there.
• An application that works on a phone. If it needs a résumé upload and twenty fields, a lot of good people will quit halfway through.
• A way to just call or stop in. Some of your best candidates would rather talk to a person than fill out a form.
• A fast reply. If someone applies Tuesday and hears back two weeks later, they’ve probably taken another job.
• Current postings only. Take down jobs you’ve filled so people aren’t applying into a void.

Use the channels your community uses

Job boards are part of the answer, but they mostly reach people who are already looking. A lot of good potential hires aren’t actively searching. They’re working somewhere else, a little unhappy, and they’d move for the right place if they heard about it.

That’s where the channels you use for customers come in. Social media, your own customers and employees, local community groups, signs at your location, and yes, radio. I work at Federated Media, so I’ll admit my bias, but a recruiting spot reaches people in the car on the way to a job they don’t love. That’s a very different audience from someone already scrolling a job board.

Whatever you use, keep the message the same everywhere and send it all to the same careers page.

The next hire starts with the last one

How you treat applicants gets talked about. A quick reply, a respectful interview and a clear answer, even when the answer is no, all build a reputation that makes the next hire easier. The same goes for how your current team talks about you at a cookout. That’s marketing too.

If you want to see where your marketing has gaps, hiring included, the Marketing Checkup is a good place to start.