The latest ONS figures report 781,000 live job vacancies across the UK, which has been gently falling from the high point of 1.3 million just after the pandemic. So, in theory it is still a candidate driven market, meaning you need to attract the passive audience. But there are many factors making the picture more challenging, not least for employers.
The 15% employer National Insurance kicked in at the beginning of April and is expected to cost UK businesses in the region of £25 billion. This comes on top of the challenges facing them from increased energy prices and services. Sectors like retail and hospitality are particularly challenged and there’s widespread reporting of closures and redundancies.
So employees face a risk and reward conundrum – “there’s jobs out there but am I safer staying put for a while?”
But employers still need to recruit, as the latest job vacancies attest to. A recent job board survey suggested that there are 4 million active job seekers out there, from a total of 37 million people in employed or self-employed jobs. So employers can reach them through the usual channels, be it a job board or employment agency’s books.
But we believe employers deserve to reach the best candidates out there, not just the best on the market. And that same survey said that up to 80% of those people not actively looking for a new job may change their mind if the right opportunity tapped them on the shoulder at the right time, with the right message.
So how do you reach the passive audience?
Much like companies who use our digital footprint to push us messaging about their products and services, you can do the same with a job opportunity. We’ve all searched online for anything from a bespoke cake maker to a pair of hiking boots and seen our social media feeds inundated with companies trying to sell us the same things over the next few days.
We adopt the same process by analysing an employer’s recruitment needs, candidate specification and carefully segmenting an audience based on their digital footprint that aligns with those needs. Where you live, what you buy, what interests you, relevant qualifications, what you follow, like, share, comment on, engage with; all of this allows us to create a bespoke target list for a job opportunity.
Engaging with that audience needs careful treatment. They’re not expecting you to get in touch, that’s what makes them a passive audience, they’re likely on the move and have a very short attention span. So, the messaging needs to be creative, impactful and with an easy and intuitive call to action. Short video content (really short!), relevant imagery, clever headline, copy light (very light!) and a way to capture the audience’s details easily, to allow for follow up.
And the process includes a remarketing strategy which pushes the same or slightly modified message to them again and again over the next few days. Experience tells us that we are more likely to respond to a product, service or job opportunity after we’ve seen it again.
As we’ve said, employers need to reach the best candidates out there, not just the best ones on the market. We’re doing this successfully for organisations and a wide variety of roles and have got pretty good at it over the years.
Talk to the experts, and we’ll tell you more. Contact us today or fill in this form for a FREE recruitment marketing audit.
