We know the struggle that midsize companies have in recruitment marketing. Twenty-four percent of midsize companies said they lack budgets for advertising, 28% said they lack budgets for compensation negotiation and 18% said they can’t afford a recruiting staff.
Red Branch Media, a marketing agency that works predominantly in the HR technology field, and Beyond, The Career Network announced results of a national survey of midsize businesses which revealed their biggest recruitment marketing challenges.
The “Recruitment Sweet Spot” survey includes human resource professionals in midsize businesses who shared their thoughts on budgetary challenges, recruitment strategies and employer branding.
According to the recruitment marketing survey results, mid-size companies are becoming less reliant on job boards, with 92% of HR Pros who participated in the survey revealing that they rely upon social media recruitment to supplement traditional recruitment efforts.
In fact, social media is where these midsize companies said they feel most comfortable communicating their employer brand. A lack of confidence in traditional recruitment channels explains why 50% of companies plan to invest more in social media for their recruitment needs.
See: Hiring RoI: The Future of Optimizing Recruitment
“HR Practitioners and recruiters are being squeezed by rising costs and are unhappy with the results they are getting from larger job boards–even though there appears to be very little movement away from these job boards. Even more shocking was the dissatisfaction the vast majority reported with everything from candidate quality to ease of use,” said Maren Hogan, CEO of Red Branch Media.
Three of the biggest struggles midsize businesses face when recruiting talent are: writing effective job descriptions (27%), keeping messaging consistent across all recruitment levels (24%), and accurately representing their employer brand (22%). According to midsize businesses, however, job boards continue to be a great source of quality hires, second only to employee referrals.
“While a budget can certainly help small and midsize businesses compete with industry giants, a strong employer brand could be more crucial than money,” said Joe Weinlick, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Beyond.
“Companies need to get better at selling their brand to potential candidates, and they have the tools, considering that it is not uncommon for an HR department to place more ads than marketing. The fact that only 6% of midsize business respondents said that a weak employer brand is their biggest recruitment challenge—yet they still struggle to hire—suggests that employers need to make big changes to their recruitment process.”
Also read: Recruitment Marketing in 2016: HR Managers Rely on Content and Social Media to Find the Perfect Hire
Image credit: the-agencygroup.co.uk
