Rethinking Recruitment in Security
The security industry is acutely aware of the challenges in hiring in a difficult labor market. The answer could be in your recruitment marketing strategy.
It’s not an overstatement to say many service contractors approach hiring with one pillar in their strategy: job boards. Job boards are an effective tool in gaining a lot of visibility for your open positions amongst active job seekers. Where job boards fall short is in reaching passive candidates.
Passive job candidates are typically defined as individuals who are not necessarily looking for new employment but are open if an opportunity becomes available. Even when talking about the challenges of the current labor market, it’s not inherently true to say there is a labor shortage. The labor market isn’t necessarily low on people—it’s low on people who want to return to the workforce (it’s estimated that 70 percent of the labor market is considered passive employment). The key to making your recruitment strategy more successful is knowing how to reach and appeal to those individuals who would return to the market if the conditions were right. In this article, we’re exploring actionable steps to rethink and improve your recruitment strategy.
Step one: Identify your company’s ideal state.
In hiring, there are typically two clear sets of requirements: criteria required by the company or contract and criteria required of the candidate themselves.
Company/contract requirements are straightforward: geography, quantity, timeframe. If the company is a multi-state or multi-market company, it’s possible you have job openings that are very similar from state to state. Knowing there is overlap, you could create a list of requirements that are needed from an open role to fulfill your contractual obligations.
When it comes to candidate requirements, the conditions might take a bit more work to pull together. Does the candidate need specific qualifications? Are there certain required attributes (e.g., an age minimum)? Are there attitude or behavioral criteria to consider? Once you know your ideal state (or, ideal candidate) you can budget dollars more appropriately on recruitment distribution strategies.
Step two: Budget time and resources on platform delivery.
When looking to hire the right candidates from a passive market, posting on job boards and letting the application sit until filled isn’t the best approach. With digital advertising available on individual apps and platforms, companies of any size now have a multitude of ways to reach their ideal state employment audience. Facebook, Google, Tik Tok…each platform has their own advantages in traffic generation for open roles and strengthening your employer brand. If you’re just getting started in recruitment marketing, know that there are many free platforms you can build accounts with which can help introduce you to paid advertising tactics, keyword trends and analytics.
Step three: Analyze the data.
The main takeaway we want to relay in this article is that recruitment marketing needs to be actively managed and flexibly approached. Depending on your analytic platform of choice, you can see how much traffic is coming from each channel you are marketing from, what it is doing on your website, and if they are converting into the action you want to see (like an application form fill). Digging even deeper, you’ll be able to see which efforts are leading to qualified interviews and hires. As you actively manage the effort, you collect this information and adjust in order to improve.
If you’re interested in learning more about recruitment marketing and building an ecosystem of candidates long-term, check out our .
To learn more about recruitment and applicant tracking solutions, visit teamsoftware.com.
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