A story about how Mitton Media used a multi-channel recruitment advertising strategy, including our own JOBSPIPELINE®, to deliver skilled-trade recruitment success:
Let’s say you are a major construction company. You just landed a multi-million dollar contract. However, in order to fulfill the contract, you need to staff up immediately with lots of hard-to-find skilled workers. The clock is ticking. What do you do? Where do you turn for effective recruitment advertising?
A major construction company found themselves in this type of situation and decided to contact the recruitment advertising specialists at Mitton Media. The project assignment was to research, create, and deploy a multi-channel recruitment advertising strategy to generate awareness and drive candidate response to an upcoming job fair for Skilled-Trades and Crafts positions.
Here’s what happened:
The Situation
The employer needed to hire hundreds of skilled workers for a major construction project in a rural area east of Houston, Texas. The employer’s “traditional” recruitment advertising process was NOT generating response from enough candidates: print employment classifieds; LinkedIn postings, and cold-calling by recruiters.
The recruitment advertising specialists at Mitton Media met with the company’s HR decision makers and recruiters attached to the project. After a series of “discovery” meetings, we uncovered:
- The number of positions that had to be filled with experienced Welders, Ironworkers, Riggers and Pipefitters.
- The employer’s significant “Points-of-Difference” and workplace amenities that would create an emotional connection with prospective applicants.
- And the multi-channel media strategies most likely to do the best job of reaching and engaging candidates as they went about their normal daily routines.
As part of the “discovery” process, members of the Mitton Media team visited a few of the company’s actual job sites. The purpose of our visits was to get a real feel for the jobs that had to be done and to record interviews with several current employees about why they had chosen to come to work for the company, what their jobs meant to them, and how their lives and lives of their families had benefited by coming to work for this employer.
The Solution
Every situation is unique. Mitton Media never walks in with a “cookie cutter” solution. Instead we do our own research and design a recruitment advertising solution that is customized based on the results of that research.
In this case, Mitton Media’s extensive in-house worker demographics research and media usage surveys indicated that the specific skilled trade workers sought by the employer were, for the most part, big fans of listening to the radio. (Recent industry research shows 92% of the Millennial population in the USA is reached by traditional AM/FM radio every week of the year! Compare that to only 12% for Pandora and 6% for Spotify.)
Using additional demographic-specific behavioral tools, our trained media planners and buyers were able to identify, quantitatively and qualitatively, which radio stations in the area would do the most effective, cost-efficient job of reaching, engaging, and delivering a quality response from the greatest number of skilled trade workers in the shortest amount of time.
So based on the Qualitative and Quantitative research, our SPOT-ON ASSESSMENT® Media Usage Surveys, and one-on-one conversations with current employees, Mitton Media’s overall recruitment advertising solution focused on a blended approach, including:
- Targeted sixty-second radio recruitment advertising hiring messages.
- (BTW. We only use sixty-second radio recruitment messages. It’s based on the results of a scientific study, led by Dr. David Allan, which proved thirty-second radio commercials are only half as effective as sixty-second commercials in communicating employee recruitment-style messaging.)
Strategic placement and deployment of job-specific information on JOBSPIPELINE®, one of Mitton Media’s advanced recruitment services.
- (The URL is easy to remember and employer information shared on a customized landing page enhances candidate reach, engagement, and the completion of a significantly higher number of online applications.)
In addition, contrary to the conventional wisdom of “HR Best Practices” and professional bloggers, Mitton Media’s overall media strategy did not include a single employment classified, online job board posting, or social media activity.
The Results
As soon as the two-week radio campaign started, a tremendous amount of site traffic was recorded and tracked on JOBSPIPELINE®- A strong correlation was quickly established between the days and times of site visits and specific air times during the radio recruitment advertising schedules.
- According to the employer’s own online tracking, as a direct result of candidate visits to the JobsPipeline.com website, over 200 hires were made BEFORE the actual job fair even took place!
- The morning of the hiring event, over 2,000 candidates were lined up waiting for the doors to open at 8 am.
- By 9 am the number had grown to over 3,000 candidates.
- While the majority of candidates were from the local area, several had traveled as much as 300 miles to come to the event. (The Hidden Recruitment Network effect generated by Mitton Media’s
campaign strategy.) - This attendance number far exceeded the employer’s previous job fair experiences, those supported by “traditional” recruitment resources, and significantly surpassed management’s expectations.
- Almost 1,000 candidates were processed by 2pm with 200 offers tendered. Remaining candidates were given handouts and recruiters cards, explaining the options of applying online or going to the employer’s hiring office on Monday morning.
The most important news of all?
Within a three-week window after the job fair event, all positions had been filled!
Do you need to hire NOW?
The employer retained the services of Mitton Media based on our level of experience, knowledge, resources, and proven track record. They hired all the candidates they needed, created a candidate database for future opportunities, and saved several thousands of dollars in recruitment and project delay costs.
Regardless of your industry, Mitton Media can create custom programs for you that will generate immediate awareness, engagement, and response.
Contact Recruitment Advertising Specialist today and schedule a free initial assessment.
