Recruiting and marketing play a role in growing your firm, and it’s more important now than ever to make sure they are working together.
Recruiting and marketing go hand-in-hand. In this competitive landscape for talent, managers are working with both recruiting departments and marketing departments to bring in talent and fill positions with their firms. It’s hard. Really hard. Many of you have heard about the “great resignation,” and I think it’s only going to get worse as we go through 2022. Recruiters and marketers have to get smarter.
I’ll give you the golden ticket to finding good talent. Actually, I’ll give you a couple. First, call all your past employees whose performance you were happy with and had an amicable separation from. It doesn’t matter if they are in your geographic market or not. Call them. If they aren’t looking, they may know someone who is. Or maybe they are going to move back to the city where you’re located. Nonetheless, find out if they are happy where they are and if they would be interested in coming back. It’s as simple as sending them an email or calling them on the telephone.
Another way to recruit employees is to encourage your current employees to recruit their friends or alumni. Many firms have an incentive for current employees who recruit others to come work for the firm. Remind your employees of the incentive and the importance of having a strong team. Having more people results in less burnout. Win-win!
Have a local college or university with an architecture, engineering, or construction program? Contact the local dean and build a relationship with them. Students will often reach out to past deans/professors about jobs and if your firm is top of mind (aka if you have a relationship with the school) the dean/professor will tell them to reach out to your firm. This takes a little more time to develop these relationships with deans/professors, but nothing worth doing happens overnight.
Make it easy to apply to your firm through your website. That can be filling out an application or attaching a resume. Make sure you tell your story about working at your firm. Have employees give testimonials and stories about working for your firm. Put pictures of your employees completing community service or celebrating at a company function. All these things will bring your company to life and make applicants excited to work for your firm.
Recruiting and marketing play a role in growing your firm, so make sure they are working together. There is also some business development and sales going on during the recruitment process. Make it seamless. Make it a no brainer to come work for your firm.
Lindsay Young is president and founder of nu marketing. She can be reached at lindsay@numarketingllc.com.
