As the saying goes, “choose your hard.” And you have…

You’ve gone from struggling to keep your board filled (or lead pipeline full) to solving that challenge and growing faster than you thought possible.

Which has graduated you to a new set of challenges.

You’ve got more incoming leads than you can handle, and you’ve got to recruit enough great people to keep up with increased demand.

And that’s a hard challenge to fix. Especially when “OK” people aren’t good enough.

Nor are newbies you’ll have to train yourself.

You need qualified, experienced guys and gals who also have the work ethic and cultural fit that great companies like yours insist on.

And one thing about those people is they’re almost never looking for a job.

They’re like gold to employers, so they pretty much always have a job.

So digital ads on Indeed, Craigslist, or jobs boards won’t reach them.

How do you fix this problem?

mass media for recruiting

Why Mass Media Recruitment Spots are the Answer

You fix it the same way you started it: through mass media advertising.

I know because my advertising work with clients has both caused and fixed their need to hire more great people.

For example, here’s the latest recruitment ad I wrote for a plumbing client in Cleveland:

 

How’d it work?

Within three days they had five outstanding candidates.

By day four we had to pull the ad and swap it out for a regular ad, and the client did end up hiring at least four of the five candidates.

Boom. Problem solved.

But why did it work so well?

7 Reasons That Recruitment Spot Got Immediate Results

1. The client had already been on the air for four months.

The longer an effective branding campaign runs, the more the owner will have established an identity in the mind of the listenership. On radio, that means when you talk, people will feel like they know who is talking to them, and that your words are credible. This is a crucial factor for recruitment ads.

2. Radio reaches people who already have good jobs

Unlike job boards and other digital recruitment tools, radio reaches people who already have jobs, which is exactly who you WANT to reach. This means your average candidate from a radio recruitment ad will be of higher quality.

3. Radio reaches family & friends of ideal recruits

If you write your recruitment ad to resonate with (and in some cases to describe) the ideal candidate, then family and friends of your ideal candidate will recognize that the job is a perfect fit for their son/brother/buddy and tell them about your opening. This greatly increases your chances of reaching exactly who you want to reach by at least a factor of five, if not fifty. And who doesn’t want to 5X their recruitment reach?

4. Great people demand great co-workers and managers

Nobody wants to be an A player on a team of bums. And that makes it easier to recruit A players from workplaces that don’t provide them with A level coworkers and managers. So if your recruitment ad presents your company as the ideal home for A players, it’ll pull much harder than you might expect.

5. True craftsmen require respect for their craft.

If real craftsmen feel like they’re being made into cogs in an organization were their craft is rushed or downplayed in favor of sales, they’ll suffer moral wounding from that and eagerly look to move to a company that matches their values. Recruiting this kind of craftsperson is easier when you understand their motivations and write ads that resonate with their values.

6. Ads that break through the clutter work better

A recruitment ad can’t work its magic until it grabs listeners by the ears. But any ad that does break through the clutter will 10X its response. The example ad did that in spades.

The opening story resonated with (most) working men

Who hasn’t driven a shit-box car at some point in their lives? Most men certainly have, especially ethical and meticulous craftsmen who’ve put integrity above profit. That’s why the opening story resonated with skilled and ethical plumbers so strongly. In fact, the first candidate to respond went out of his way to share his experience suffering a setback that forced him to drive a rattle-trap jalopy. This helped candidates to instantly bond with Andy, motivating them to reach out.

So was that so hard?

No.

Yet the opening statement remains true.

Growth and increased business demand will solve a lot of problems.

But they also create new challenges that you’ll have to solve.

Granted, they’re a lot more fun to face than challenges surrounding a lack of demand or profit margin.

Even still, they remain challenges.

So choose your hard: will you remain addicted to digital pay-per crack, or will you break into mass media advertising and graduate to a new set of challenges?

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