It's Not Always Black and White
Recruitment Advertisement
According to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), Small and Medium Enterprises (SME’s) account for 99% of all private sector business in the UK. This is a huge proportion of UK businesses that may not have regular recruitment requirements or the infrastructure to cope with hiring a new person. Does this sound familiar?
Consider that you have a job opportunity in a small business; it inevitably means that the rest of the business has to be stretched beyond its capabilities just to fill the void, never mind extra resources required to recruit. So, it comes as no surprise that when we asked a number of businesses why they had chosen to advertise in the newspapers for their latest role, we repeatedly received the response: “It is what we have always done”.
Newspaper job advertising has been the primary route to attract new talent to businesses for decades. As such, many SME business owners have successfully used this method to hire for decades too. But if you don’t hire very often, the chances are you won’t have experienced the continuous decline in responses you now receive from hard copy newspapers.
A new customer was recently referred to us after they had paid £1,500 to advertise a Finance Officer position in the local press. Unfortunately, they only got 1 response from their press advert and he was not suitable.
Like many organisations, this company does not recruit very often, they don’t have a dedicated HR or Recruitment Manager and they do not have the time to keep up to date with what is happening in the recruitment industry. So, when asked why they chose the press to advertise, their response was (yes, you guessed it) “because it is what we have always done”.
I am not saying that advertising in the press is a permanent no-no, what I am saying is to consider your recruitment options next time you have a void. Just because you have always recruited in a particular way, does not mean that it will generate you the best results. Spending a few more minutes reviewing how you can recruit today may actually save you time and money tomorrow.
See this post for more tips on some things you can do differently in 2017 and please don't forget to bookmark this page - you never know when you may need to recruit in the future.
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