People might respond that the Recruitment department should probably handle advertising for open jobs without giving this topic deeper thought. Companies are beginning to see some evidence that this legacy approach might not represent the best practice going forward. Even though, today, Recruiting still handles most of these duties, Marketing is probably better equipped to develop messaging that is more aligned with today’s technology and multi-generational of job seeker demographic. Working with clients that involved Marketing into the recruitment process, we ourselves [Candarine] saw time spent on job advertising decreased, advertising costs were reduced, and we consistently attracted higher quality candidates.
Here are five reasons we believe that Marketing should write and publicise job advertisements for open positions:
1. The Recruiting Department is not trained in advertising. Recruiting is trained to assist hiring managers determine their staffing needs, identify the most qualified candidates for their positions, and help both candidates and managers navigate through the interview and hiring process. This is a very different skill set than what is needed to design an effective advertising campaign. When people are asked to step outside their domain of expertise, the result is typically of lesser quality than when a more qualified person in the organisation handles the task.
2. Job advertising creation takes time from a recruiter’s core responsibility. Each hour that a recruiter spends on job advertising creation and distribution is one less hour available for screening, selecting candidates, and interviewing applicants. Additionally, the task of job advertising probably takes longer for a recruiter to do than a Marketing Specialist so it is not only better for Marketing to do this job, but it is also more efficient for the company.
3. Marketing understands the company’s branding strategy. Branding is essential to a company’s success, and an important component of a successful branding strategy is each employee understanding and embodying the brand image. In order for this to happen, all job advertisements need to be in line with the branding strategy as well as designed to attract candidates that fit within the brand. Marketing eats and sleeps the branding strategy while Recruiting typically only possesses a basic understanding of branding.
4. Marketing knows how to capture people’s attention. It takes skill to catch someone’s eye and make them respond. In today’s age of short attention spans, you only have a few seconds and fewer words to accomplish your goal. Marketing spends all day perfecting this skill and can easily transfer this skill from selling products or services to selling the company to prospective applicants.
5. Marketing knows the best channels to attract the target demographic. Creating great advertisements isn’t just about crafting the perfect text, but knowing where the people that you are looking for “hang out.” Marketing uses this strategy when targeting specific demographics for sales campaigns and can use the same strategies to determine the best channels to use for job advertisements.