Each time you need to make a hire, countless options are available for you to promote the job opening and attract applicants. One of the top applicant sources is your company career site — 30 percent of applicants from my company’s career sites are quality hires, the highest percentage across all sources. Other traditional sources include national job boards and employee referrals.
Beyond the most common applicant sources, you can diversify your sourcing strategy even more by reaching sources you might not have even thought about. Here are a few examples:
Local Classified Ads
While the majority of job applicants today research and apply to jobs via company career sites or online job boards, some still tap into local newspapers — either in print or online — to find job openings. If you’re exclusively focusing on and allocating your entire recruitment budget toward national job boards and overlooking classified ads, you might be missing out on star candidates. Consider testing out a handful of local classified ads to see if they bring in quality candidates. If classified ads don’t end up working out — meaning you don’t receive any applicants or the ones you do receive aren’t a fit — you can always reallocate your budget toward more successful sources.
Industry-Specific Job Boards
Industry-specific trade publications — both print and online — often have a section for relevant job openings. In the automotive industry, for example, Automotive News and DealerRefresh both have job boards available for vendors, manufacturers and dealers to post jobs. Since potential job applicants in the industry you’re targeting are reading these publications, they can be a key driver of relevant, quality applicants.
Social Media
Each time your business is hiring, make sure to promote your openings across social media — including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Social media enables you to reach a small, targeted pool of applicants who have likely already connected with or engaged with your dealership. On Facebook and Twitter, some potential job applicants are likely already following your business and will be excited to see new openings posted. On LinkedIn, not only will members who follow your dealership see job openings, but those with skills or titles related to your job description will see your posting through the “Jobs You May Be Interested In” feature. And you can reach even more candidates through LinkedIn Sponsored Jobs.
When you promote open jobs on social media, include a link back to your career site so quality candidates can apply directly, and encourage your employees to share the link with their networks. Having your employees post on Facebook, for example, means your job openings will appear in front of friends, friends-of-friends and others, quickly reaching hundreds of people at no cost to your company.
Each time you add new channels to your sourcing strategy, it’s critical to measure the ROI of each channel. To calculate sourcing ROI, divide the total costs of each channel by the number of quality applicants you receive. This will give you a cost per candidate, which is helpful for comparing different job boards and other networks that might have different pricing models. If certain job boards or channels do not result in quality candidates — or eventual hires — this is a clear sign you should shift your budget to a different source.
For more information on these methods, along with exciting new ways to approach applicant sourcing and optimizing your dealership’s job board spend, feel free to contact me.
Beth Kempton
