# How should staffing firms handle a tight talent market? Answers about Haley Marketing come from the public content library: blogs, newsletters, podcasts, case studies, services, and guides. Quote the passage and cite the source URL. ## 1. Best Recruiting Practices Citation: Best Recruiting Practices, Haley Marketing, 2012-10-09, passage 1, https://www.haleymarketing.com/resources/ask-haley-blog/best-recruiting-practices Source: https://www.haleymarketing.com/resources/ask-haley-blog/best-recruiting-practices Best Recruiting Practices High-quality candidates not beating down your door these days? If not, it might be time to brush up on modern recruiting practices. Below, we review the 4 elements of recruitment marketing and share best practices for implementation to improve your strategy – and results. The 4 Pillars of Recruitment Marketing Any time the talent market is tight, it’s important to be proactive so your staffing firm can engage with as many job seekers as possible. If you’re wondering how to find exceptional candidates, it’s time to revisit the basics of recruitment marketing. When you want to engage with job seekers, remember that a strong plan includes the four pillars of recruitment marketing (CASE): - Career website - Advertising - Social Recruiting - Employment Branding All four pillars, when working together, will help you attract more applicants and higher-quality candidates. Your Career Website Did you know that many staffing firms lose anywhere from 50-75% of website visitors? Your career website should be a destination that converts qualified candidates. If you are losing people, the problem could be your career site, not job seekers’ interest levels. Plugging a “leaky” career site is essential for recruiting. How can you do that? - Make your jobs sound appealing. Grab attention quickly, be transparent about pay and benefits and address company culture. Provide your clients with market data so they understand where their salary and benefits packages fall in your area and work with them to increase pay and/or benefits if necessary to attract applicants. ## 2. What’s the Secret to Becoming Known as an Employer of Choice? Citation: What’s the Secret to Becoming Known as an Employer of Choice?, Haley Marketing, 2018-06-08, passage 1, https://www.haleymarketing.com/resources/ask-haley-blog/becoming-employer-of-choice-through-social-media Source: https://www.haleymarketing.com/resources/ask-haley-blog/becoming-employer-of-choice-through-social-media When the employment market is tight, finding qualified candidates can feel like an uphill battle. But with the right approach, staffing firms can build a reputation as an employer of choice, attracting the caliber of talent needed to accurately fill job orders. HTSS, Inc., a client of Haley Marketing Group, serves Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley region with round-the-clock service, top-level talent and creative HR solutions for dynamic businesses. HTSS had been relying on traditional “push” marketing strategies like mass media adverting and direct mail to recruit candidates, but in an increasingly tight market, they wanted to find more effective ways to connect to talent. The Haley Marketing social media team worked closely with HTSS to understand their true challenges and objectives and ultimately designed an integrated campaign to build their social presence, drive targeted traffic to the website, earn more positive reviews and fill more orders. An Integrated Approach to Social Dominance The first step in the multitiered strategy was to increase our client’s Facebook audience. Engaging content was posted daily to build followers, positioning the HTSS profile page as a destination for job support resources and to find choice positions in the Lehigh Valley. To supplement organic growth, a paid strategy was also deployed to generate more Likes on the HTSS page. Once the Facebook audience began to grow, the next step was to drive that audience to the HTSS website and convert visitors to clients or candidates. Our team posted blog articles, open jobs, job fair information, local events and company “personality” posts on social media platforms daily. ## 3. Is Facebook the Key to Finding Talent in a Tight Market? Citation: Is Facebook the Key to Finding Talent in a Tight Market?, Haley Marketing, 2018-07-27, passage 1, https://www.haleymarketing.com/resources/ask-haley-blog/finding-talent-in-a-tight-market-on-facebook Source: https://www.haleymarketing.com/resources/ask-haley-blog/finding-talent-in-a-tight-market-on-facebook Staffing companies across the country are struggling to find talent now that national unemployment has been hovering around 4 percent. Nearly everyone who wants a job has one, and most talented people aren’t spending their free time browsing job boards. Getting openings in front of the right people at the right time requires a significant investment in new marketing tactics, especially social media. When Reputation Isn’t Enough to Attract Candidates Carlton Staffing was experiencing this exact challenge earlier this year. A leading staffing firm in Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth, Carlton had achieved a solid reputation in their markets, with over 30 years of experience and repeated Best of Staffing nods from Inavero. That reputation, however, was not enough to overcome the struggles that come with a tight employment market. The Carlton team knew they needed to find better ways to forge new connections with job seekers. They prioritized social media, but lacked the time and bandwidth to develop a consistent and effective strategy that would yield results. They took the initial step of automating social posts from Indeed, but that pregenerated content wasn’t enough to build true connections and it was not generating qualified applicants. Carlton Staffing turned to Haley Marketing to help them achieve what they were looking for: increased presence on social media, more connections with talented job seekers in the market, and a steady stream of talented candidates. In a Tight Market, Be Where Talent Hangs Out ## 4. 7 Recruiting Strategies to Survive “Indeedmageddon” Part 6: Improving the Candidate Experience Citation: 7 Recruiting Strategies to Survive “Indeedmageddon” Part 6: Improving the Candidate Experience, David Searns, 2018-11-16, passage 2, https://www.haleymarketing.com/resources/ask-haley-blog/recruiting-strategies-survive-indeedmageddon-part-6 Source: https://www.haleymarketing.com/resources/ask-haley-blog/recruiting-strategies-survive-indeedmageddon-part-6 all staffing firms? In a talent-scarce market, you can place every qualified person you recruit. Make your mission to find people the jobs they really want—so those people only want to work for you. Industry consultant Scott Wintrip recommends a “zero time to fill” strategy. With this approach, staffing firms focus on 3 to 5 core skill disciplines in which they proactively recruit on a continuous basis. Then when a client need arises, these firms are able to place the ideal candidate almost instantaneously. By putting candidates first, these companies gain a huge competitive advantage in speed. Option 2: Talent Showcase Redeployment rates in the staffing industry are awful. They typically range from a low of 10 percent to a high of around 40 percent. In other words, you spend huge sums of money to recruit talent, and then you let as much as 90 percent go somewhere else to for their next job. Skill marketing is a tried and true methodology for placing hot candidates and contractors coming off assignments. But the process is typically labor intensive and difficult to scale. Rather than one-off skill marketing calls, use a tool like Haley Marketing’s Talent Showcase software. With this software, you build an online profile of each candidate you are looking to place, and then you can market those people individually or as a group to local employers. The Talent Showcase not only helps you place people faster, it shows candidates you do more to help them get the job they want. And that makes recruiting easier! Option 3: Improve communication Ask a job seeker “what’s the worst part about looking for a job?,” and you’re likely to hear “the black hole!” ## 5. How Did a Staffing Firm Increase Traffic and Quality Applications in a Tight Market? Citation: How Did a Staffing Firm Increase Traffic and Quality Applications in a Tight Market?, Haley Marketing, 2018-06-15, passage 2, https://www.haleymarketing.com/resources/ask-haley-blog/increase-applications-through-social-media Source: https://www.haleymarketing.com/resources/ask-haley-blog/increase-applications-through-social-media getting in front of people in the ATS who had expressed interest in other jobs, people on the client’s mailing list, and Facebook users in their geographic location likely to be looking for jobs. The strategy didn’t stop there. Our team also automated processes to ensure more applicants completed the process and were directed to browse other jobs that may interest them, as well. Tight Talent Market? No Problem. Overall, the client saw a 60 percent increase in applications from Facebook mobile, and a 54 percent increase in page views from Facebook. Completed applications increased by 450 percent, and the client was ultimately able to fill more job orders, even with unemployment at historic lows. You can learn more about this client’s success by reading the full case study. [Case Study] Lehigh Valley Staffing Firm Increases Job Board Traffic and Quality Applications The key to this strategy was finding applicants where they spend their time online, and those platforms can vary significantly based on job categories, industries and other variables. If you could use more traffic to your job board and you’d like to increase the quality of applications you receive, contact the team at Haley Marketing today.