Don’t lose your (local) rag
Newspapers serving local communities will continue to play a key role in making your organisation an employer of choice in your area
Date:
20 June 2005
Source:
Recruitment marketing
The internet has come a long way in a short time. It is now a highly effective recruitment channel with plentiful benefits: efficient, measurable and, used correctly, delivering candidates at a fraction of the cost of press advertising or agency hiring. Advocates predict a wholesale migration of recruitment advertising to the internet but, while there is evidence of a partial migration (newspaper readership continues to fall as media-hungry consumers are spoilt for choice – web, wap, multi-channel TV), a full-scale exodus has yet to occur. Why?
One reason is that online purists tend to consider the advantages of the web on a purely transactional level – one job advertised, many CVs received, one bum on a seat for a minimum cost. Yet the role of good recruitment advertising has always been much broader.
Local battles
Online devotees correctly identify global reach as another advantage of the web. But this overlooks a simple fact: most recruiters, and therefore most advertisers, are local organisations looking to hire people within their local community. Regardless of industry or sector, they are locked in a local battle for talent, usually within a geographical area of not much more than 10 square miles.
Recruitment advertising is a valuable weapon in this battle. Adverts in local papers not only fill vacant roles, they help recruiters to build a reputation as an employer of choice in the local community. Their advertising is seen not only by immediate jobseekers, but by casual browsers flicking through the pages of their local rag, as well as groups such as parents and friends who are often influential in the job-seeking process.
In short, recruitment advertising in local newspapers does more than hire candidates cheaply. It establishes an organisation as a good place to work within the commutable area surrounding it. This may require a little more investment in the short term, but it delivers easier, cheaper and more effective recruitment in the medium to long term.
Sense of community
You can’t build a local employer brand on the internet. The vast majority of people don’t use the web for community news and information. Think about your own media habits. You use the web to find news and information on a national scale, but has it replaced your local newspaper? I doubt it. The internet may be gradually superseding national newspapers but at a local level we still love our community newspapers.
Perhaps this will change as technologies develop and converge. Until it does – if it does - local papers remain the key channel for recruiters wishing to build an employer brand within a small geographical community. So, the next time an online salesperson gives you a pitch based purely on cost per hire, remember this lesson. To build a brand in your community and to ensure cost-effective advertising, you are best served by a strategy that includes both press-based and online options.
David Thompson is client service director at Highpoint Recruitment Communications (www.highpoint-group.co.uk)