Ensure your recruitment campaigns are designed for success

Sarah Eldredge

Running a recruitment campaign can involve hours of wading through piles of unsuitable CVs – or worse, not receiving any.

Recruitment processes can cause headaches for any company, large or small. But clever, well thought through recruitment ads can cut through the clutter straight to the star candidates. Presenting the opportunity in the right way to attract the right quality of candidates, getting the advert out quickly to fill the vacancy as fast as possible, attracting enough people to have a good selection but not too many that it makes filtering them impossible – these can all add up to one tough task.

Delivering a successful recruitment campaign is a vital part of this process, and one that can address a lot of these issues. But how can you set yourself on the right path to catching the attention of a star candidate?

Make the right impression

A recruitment advert may be the first experience an applicant has of your company, and first impressions count. If it gives individuals an insight into the ethos of the company, while communicating the specific employment opportunity, it will tick a number of boxes by helping to ensure the right fit between candidates and potential employer, as well as attracting applications.

We recently designed a recruitment campaign for global infrastructure consultancy, Opus International Consultants. The vacancies were for highway engineers at all levels at its Hertfordshire offices, where the environment is fun and relaxed. We suggested that like-minded candidates could be engaged by employing a humorous approach with its ads, a technique that was new to the sector, and had not been used by the company before.

The concept chosen, called ‘Are you our type?’ incorporated witty headlines designed to cut through the noise of other campaigns, and gave candidates an insight into what it would really be like to work as part of the Opus team.

The approach really resonated with the target market – there was an impressive level of engagement on social media, with the adverts sparking comments and debates on all platforms used, from LinkedIn through to Facebook. The company was very satisfied with the number and quality of applications they received.

Don’t become a cliché

Most recruitment campaigns within the engineering industry tend to be clichéd, showing stock images of men and women wearing hard hats looking at a blueprint or something similar. It is very hard to make an impact with plain designs such as these, as they tend to blend into the page. They may also unwittingly give the impression that the company is a boring place to work.

The choice of a purely typographical approach for Opus’s recruitment advert design was bold and different, reflecting the ethos and values of the firm, and the company’s bravery clearly paid off through the outcomes of the campaign.

Get the right balance

Often recruiters try to include everything that they want the candidate to know before they come for the interview within their recruitment advert. The result is an ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ approach, which comes across as cluttered, inaccessible and onerous – three words you would not want the candidate to associate with the opportunity.

The advert should be concise and entice the reader to want to find out about the opportunity, yet still provide enough detail for them to make the connection of what the role is and what the company will be like to work for.

You should also be careful not to exaggerate a role advertised; a candidate will quickly find out – and be very demotivated – if the promises in the advert don’t match up to the reality.

Finally, don’t underestimate the power of ensuring the advert speaks directly to the job seekers. Use ‘you’ instead of ‘the successful candidate’. This will help sell the role, and encourage individuals to picture themselves working within your organisation.

The Opus adverts really played on this approach, asking the candidates to think about whether they were the type of person talked about in the adverts. You can’t get much more personal than that.

Take an omnichannel approach

While there is still an important place for traditional printed platforms such as press or outdoor media, with the explosion of social media and a vast range of recruitment websites, it is absolutely vital to ensure your advert is responsive to all types of devices including desktop computer, tablet and smartphone.

The type of content you produce across various channels will obviously vary; however your branding and messaging should remain universal across all mediums and be instantly recognisable when used in print, online and across all social media channels.

Setting a recruitment campaign up for success can seem like an impossible and time-consuming task, but getting the look of it right from the start has such clear benefits. Recruiting the best candidates quickly and efficiently makes a significant, positive impact on business productivity.

Sarah Eldredge is Account Marketing Manager at full service creative agency, Michon

For more information about Michon, visit www.michoncreative.co.uk