Know Your Audience – Friday Distraction
(Editor’s Note: Today’s post is brought to you by our friends at Kronos, a global leader in delivering workforce management solutions in the cloud. Kronos announced a multi-city international tour of KronosLIVE, an event series that offers the latest insights on how organizations can manage their most strategic asset – their workforce. For details, check out their website. Enjoy the post!)
The first rule of good communication is “know your audience.”
If you’re speaking to a group, understand the group’s point of view. If you’re talking with a person who focuses on the numbers, then include numbers in the conversation. Effective communication is about us changing our style and content so the other person or group responds favorably.
The same goes for recruiting. If you want people to apply for opportunities with your company, you have to be where they are and speak in their language. I couldn’t help but laugh at today’s Time Well Spent from our friends at Kronos.
According to Pew Research, 65 percent of American adults use social networking and 92 percent of companies use social media for recruiting. It’s a great example of “know your audience.”
But by contrast, 90 percent of American adults own a cell phone, 64 percent own a smartphone, and 42 percent own a tablet. Yet, only slightly more than half of Fortune 500 companies have mobile optimized career sites. Meaning there’s still work to be done. Maybe this article from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) on how the most sought-after talent prefer mobile recruitment would help.
When you’re trying to figure out your audience, there are two approaches:
1) Look at the trends. In the social media example, I’m sure companies didn’t all develop social recruiting strategies at the same time. But social media usage has jumped tenfold over the last decade. So, as the popularity increases, the need for social recruiting did as well. Now we need to align our recruiting strategy with the trend.
2) Ask your audience. Instead of (or maybe in addition to) following the trend, look specifically at what the people connected with your company are doing. Using the social media example again, Facebook might have the most active users but you find more candidates using LinkedIn. Then it makes sense to focus on LinkedIn.
All indicators point to recruitment remaining a challenge in the months and years to come. Organizations will not be able to find the best talent if no one applies. It’s time to find out who your ideal audience is and where they are spending their time. Then tailor your recruitment marketing to get the response you’re looking for!
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