Call for fit for purpose recruitment channels and out-of-the-box thinking!
GCHQ's gamified recruitment process, crack the code to apply!

Call for fit for purpose recruitment channels and out-of-the-box thinking!

I have my personal profile in over 300 social media services. I travel 180 days and run well over 100 trainings or consultations per year. You can imagine that I'm not updating all my social profiles on a daily basis, nor do I read my Twitter feed very actively. I'm flooded with content day in, day out. And it has taught me to love fit for purpose channels! 

I want to see results. I want to know that whatever action I may take, it has an impact.

If not, I've wasted expensive time and resources. The most valuable things I have to work with. 

Long tail is nice, but nothing beats direct impact, measurable results that put daily bread on the table. 

And that goes with recruitment marketing, too. 

I hate seeing money wasted on advertising in channels that are clearly a mismatch to what the person or organisation is looking for. Sure, every now and then you need to try out new channels and ways of working to chase new clients, better candidates, and whatnot, but stupidity is another thing. And to me, it looks like a number of organisations are suffering from stupidity in recruitment marketing, wasting money on nonsense.

At least have fun with the money if you wish to spend it on something that's not necessarily a great opportunity.

Let's focus on job advertising for now, and forget wider recruitment marketing and employer branding for a while. 

I'm not giving you answers to go with, but something to think about. I couldn't do that even if I wanted to, as I don't know what you're looking for, where, or how. But I am giving you a few examples of out-of-the-box recruitment. At least some of them are funny if not always the best choice. 

Uber, for one, is using it's own app to find, attract and hire developers. Not sure if the audience is exactly right here, but it's their own platform after all. Why not give it a try! Could you use your own platform and convert customers to employees?

How about Spotify then? Using their own platform for headhunting! Think about it! The Swedish music streaming service is using playlists to attract people to work for them. That's out of the box right there!

Funnily enough, this approach was taken on me, a headhunter tried to attract me to move to Sweden and "join the band". Brilliant! The whole message is crafted on song names, arranged to a playlist that's the actual message.

Why not, right?

This one I found at Ellenton.

Billabong is one of many organisations to attract their customers to become employees. Now, this may be a common practice in the States, but where I come from, it's far from norm!

Especially when you're hiring fastfood workers or a sales clerk to the cornershop, and the job doesn't require much education or training, it may be a good idea to just tape the job ad to the shop window or pin it to the message board, so that anyone visiting the premises sees it and may easily apply.

Even better, you may be able to instantly recognize if it's the nice stay at home mom down the block or the dude that comes for his daily sixpack, who applies. This may sound like a normal way to post jobs where you come from, but where I live, it never happens! And it should!

If you're visiting a hacker meetup or a startup conference, you might just as well wear the jobs... This one I ran into at Slush (thanks Ilkka), Europe's biggest startup happening.

If you're looking for truck drivers, where do you post your ad? Exactly! This one I found on a highway close to Miami.

Mudflap is a sure place to notify that your company is looking for drivers or mechanics. Just cruise around or park that newly washed highway monster to a local gas station popular with truckers or find a truck park and let the applications flow in!

Where have You seen jobs advertised in a clever or funny way, that seems like a fit for purpose way to attract candidates for a particular job?


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Jacob Sten Madsen

🌐Recruitment/talent/people/workforce acquisition evolutionary/strategist/operational excellence advisor/manager 🔹Workforce/talent acquisition strategy to execution development/improvement, innovation, enthusiast 🌟

7y

Good post Tom, and someone actually back in 2015 set out how this could and should be done, see this: https://1drv.ms/b/s!AlXjm-RIEVbfgkFJeyfOq-U2u0uW

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