Have you ever thought about your ROI is worthy of your money in terms of pay-to-post on job boards? The answer is uncertain when more and more companies struggle in the China talent market war. Year by year, we keep paying lot of money for posting on job boards, but we get less and less qualified candidates. Shall we keep doing this or change our mindset to another meansurement, which is called "Pay for Performance"?
Before we discuss the new measurement model, let's have a look at what happened to the top job boards at this moment. The number of job listings on Monster Worldwide fell dramatically in May compared with a year earlier. U.S. job postings were down 18 percent on a year-over-year basis for the second quarter, with a 21 percent drop in May. (source: Deutsche Bank ). What does this newly published data really mean? It indicates more and more companies won't trust the performance of job boards in terms of pay-to-post model, which the return cannot justify the investment on it. I won't expect the job boards will quit from the recruitment market within a short period of time and leave their market share to the new solution providers, e.g. social networking or other web 2.0 applications, even we see there is a growing trend for companies to allocate more sourcing budget to new solutions. What root causes result in the downfall of job boards? If we regard the total internet audience as 100%, the group of people who hang around top job boards (including niche job boards) only account for 30%. Have you ever evaluated the aftermath of spending 70% of budget to reach 30% of internet audience? Those issues have already been embeded for years. First of all, they are not efficient due to GIGO (Garbage in, Garbage out), which caused low ROI for pay-to-post model. Secondly, it targets most of active job seekers, but least semi-passive or passive job seekers. Since lots of companies are currently using ATS (Applicant Tracking System), which sends tons of auto rejection letter to candidates. In return, it results in negative candidate behavior for sending hundreds of applications to the every company even they are mission impossible, simply like a kind of game - "Throw it against the wall to see which it sticks to the wall".
Now you need to change your mind to look beyond the traditional sourcing channels like job boards. “Recruiting is much more complex than it used to be. You can’t just post an ad on a site like Monster and wait for candidates to come. You really need to do your homework and think of recruiting as a marketing campaign – who is my target market, and how can I reach them." (Source: SHRM) The new world of recruiting landscope force us to think like our colleague - Marketing Professionals. Sourcing strategy won't be simple as before, instead, whether or not you have a recruitment marketing strategy ranging from talent market research, employer branding, integrated sourcing channels, communication strategy, system & tools and so forth becomes a critical success factor to win against your competititors and gain sharp edge in the talent war.
Whenever you want to look forward, the best way is to look behind the pathway you have ever walked through. In the past, our sourcing strategy were Print, Print, and Print again through Newspaper Advertising, or Job Fairs/Event Recruiting, Word of Mouth, Headhunters. At present, the internet has revolutionized the way we recruit, leverage awareness and targeted messaging to reach active & passive job seekers, new solutions like content and visuals (blogs, videos, webcasts, etc..), networking and researching capabilities (Linked In, Facebook, etc…), online career fairs have been utilized increasingly. Then, what are the future trends for sourcing strategy? Integrating engagement tools into your recruitment plan is the key for future success. Those engagement tools range from online search engine marketing (SEO/SEM), mobile marketing, gaming, Interactive Videos, blogs, virtual world, e.g. Second Life, podcasting or jobcasting, social Networking e.g.Facebook.com, LinkedIn.com.
The future sourcing strategy should have 3 features: Integration, Interactivity and Innovation. your recruitment strategy must be integrated.…each element should compliment the other.
…in a cohesive and consistent message. Here I attach a sourcing framework for your reference. From that, you can assess where you have done well, where you have never touched.
In this chart, CRM (Candidate Relationship Management) and Relationship marketing are the gray areas which might never ever exist or always be ignored. Here the relationship is not just how frequent or how quick you feedback your candidates about the interview results. It's all about how you put the concept, framwork, methodology and system & tools of customer relationship management on managing your past, existing and future candidates. I saw few companies put efforts on this part. But if you don't do so, no matter how well your sourcing channels are, there is always a broken link within the engagement model and can never be the sound recruitment eco-system.
