DETAILED DATA ON PLACING RECRUITMENT ADS

I am going to give you some more detailed data about making a job advertisement.

You have two extremes: a very tough ad talking about how difficult it is and the “Easy Money” ad. These are two different ends of the spectrum, the “Easy Money” one is only talking about inflow to the prospect while the other one is only talking about demanding outflow, production, from the future employee.

Now you might place an advert which is towards the outflow end of the scale but not quite so extreme. It depends on how popular the job is. If you had a job that was very popular, a lot of people would want it, you should definitely move it up towards the tough extreme. And if it is a job that few people want you might have to move it down towards the other extreme.

It's going to be hard for you to only employ people who are all very happy glamorous producers. So you might, in the ad, tell a little bit more about the inflow, but you never go all the way about how easy and how much pay. So, popular jobs where you expect a lot of applicants you make the ad tough. And more unpopular jobs you normally put in a little more about the money or the inflow.

WRITE A JOB AD TO THE INDIVIDUAL

When you write a job ad don't write it to general people, write it TO the INDIVIDUAL reading the ad. Direct it always to YOU “We are looking for YOU” and you talk directly to the person throughout the ad. You don't write “We are looking for a person who... blah, blah, blah.” No. “We are looking for you who want to do an excellent job.” That has much more impact.

You should also know when you make ads talking about how nice the job will be and how much money the person will make that your clients might be reading the ad. You should realize that job ads are amongst the most read ads in the entire newspaper, a lot of people read these ads even if they aren’t looking for a job.

Reading job ads gives people an idea of what is going on in the market, who is hiring? So, a lot of people read these ads and that might include your clients. Imagine you are a client of a company and you read an ad from them saying “Come to us and make easy money” what would you think? You would think you pay that company too much. It's awfully bad promotion for a company. If you are a client of a company and the ad they place talks about “You have to be VERY productive, VERY professional.” When you read that ad it explains to you why you are a client.

A TIP TO SAVE MONEY IN PLACING JOB ADVERTS

Another way you can save money is that instead of having a big ad in the newspaper which is normally quite expensive, you make a small ad where you say “Accountant, are you interested? Go to www.your-companies-home-page.” Then you place the full ad on your home page where you give full information about the job. Then you know that those who apply really understand what you want and need.

Today most people will anyway go to your homepage and check out your company. So, you can direct them to your homepage right in the ad. It works nicely.

PRODUCTION RECORD IN THE AD

When you start to make your ad and you decide how challenging you want the ad to be and if you decide if there are any limits you want on who you hire: how much experience, university degree, etc, a correct limiter is always “You need to be productive.” and not only that “You need to be able to show previous production.”

Something we always ask for in the ad is a production record: “Write down what you have produced.” Most companies don't ask for that; they want to know what education you have had and what job experience, what companies you worked for, and maybe what your functions where. But they don't ask for your results. You say in the ad “We want you to give a record of your results.”

It's quite interesting that most people usually forget this when they apply for your job. And other people go “Production record. Oh yeah.” and they make a record of their production.

ANOTHER HIRING AD TIP

One thing to also push in your ad is actually willingness to help “Are you interested in helping?”

EXAMPLE OF A JOB ADVERTISEMENT

I can give you an example from a company you know, IKEA. I remember an ad I saw a long time ago in Sweden. The ad went a bit like this “DESIGNER. WE ARE LOOKING FOR THE BEST DESIGNER IN SWEDEN.” That was the headline. Then it said “If you are not the best designer you know you could be. We are looking for you who are interested in getting a lot of responsibility and to design furniture to be distributed all over the world. However, if you get this job you should know that you will not start designing anything for the first nine months. During that period you are going to work in one of our warehouses pulling furniture, packaging, doing cashier work, doing decorations; you are going to work basically in every position in the warehouse until you fully understand the entire production flow.

This is a hard and physical job, during this period your salary will not be higher than anybody else in the warehouse. And if you pass, then you will start to design. We are not going to give you any fancy company car but we definitely are going to give you a huge challenge and in order to be able to handle that you have to be one of the best. Interested? Good. Send you application to...”

From this ad they got designers from the most professional designing bureau's to apply from all over Sweden; people who were very professional but bored.

WHO RESPONDS TO THE CHALLENGING AD

When you put out these challenging ads you will see you mainly get applications from people who are already employed, you get very few applications from unemployed people. I am not saying that all unemployed people don't want to work, but I think you would agree with me if I said “If you loose your job, how long would you be unemployed?” You wouldn't agree with being unemployed. Probably you would just do anything to have a job.

Truthfully, there is always some work to do, I know people who are managers of large companies and I asked them “What would you do if you lost your jobs, and couldn't get another job?”

A manager of a large company said “I would cut people's lawns. I would just do something. I would never sit at home and just wait for somebody to call me.”

Productive people already have jobs and when you place a challenging ad it is the guys who already have jobs that are going to call you. There are many people who work in companies where the management is not very nice or where they feel “I already know everything and they don't give me any more challenge,” or “it is a family company, there is no way I can become a manager because they don't promote people based on production they promote people based on who you are related to. So, there is no chance for me. But, I will never change job just for a few more dollars. If I am going to change job it is going to be because I have a job where there is a bigger challenge.” That is why it is useless to talk about more dollars. Productive people know that if they are going to make more money they are going to have to take more responsibility. It is not that they don't want to make money they just know that if they are going to make more money they need to have a job with a bigger challenge.

CHIROPRACTOR SUCCESS

Another example was a Chiropractor from San Francisco. He heard this information and realized why he had a problem. There was one position in his company where he could never get a person to stay, it was the Central Receptionist. This person had to keep track of all the chiropractors and at the same time handle the telephone and all the people coming in. It was a very busy job and he always tried to “sell” the job, “this is a nice job if you like people” and “You get a lot of contacts, and you work in a very nice office,” he tried to sell it.

People came, they were there for one or two months, “This is hopeless.” And they left. So when he heard about this he said “I have got to try this.” After this person applied this data he said

“I created this very, very, tough ad.” He more or less said “IMPOSSIBLE JOB. This is a super busy, almost crazy job. Not only are you going to handle the telephone, which is ringing all the time you are also going to have to control where all the doctors are and make sure they are always fed with patients. At the same time you will help every patient and answer all their questions. It is a very, very demanding job, most people cannot handle it. At the same time you have to be very nice and service minded, and you need to like to help people. Interested? Send your application to blah, blah, blah.” He sent this ad to the newspaper.

The newspaper called him back and said “There must have been a mistake here. You can't be serious that you want to place this ad because you are not going to get any applicants.”

And he said “Yes, I want to place it.” He was just hoping it was going to work. He didn't expect any applicants from this ad but anyway he placed it and within two days he had ten applications. All these ten people had jobs, one of them was a Manager at IBM, she was a lady about 50 years old and she was determined to get the job.

He interviewed her and she said “I'm totally bored with my job at IBM. I want to have a job where I feel I help people.”

“But,” he said “this is a receptionist job, this is very low pay.”

And she said “I don't care because I am financially independent. I have all the money I ever need. What I need is a job where I feel I can help people!”

That is the kind of applicants you can get.

Now he actually didn't hire this lady, he hired another one that was even better and he said “This person has worked perfectly now for a year and has not once complained about the traffic, because we told them about it from the beginning.”

WHERE THE SELECTION STARTS

So, this is where the recruitment starts, the selection starts already with the ad, and if you make mistakes here it is not easy to handle them later, but if you do it right you always have a bunch of good candidates.

NO GOOD CANDIDATES?

Something we often hear is that “There are no good candidates anywhere.” This is never true. I used to ask “How many people are you intending to employ in this position?”

“One.”

“Okay, good. So, if you can just find that one right guy and hire him, you don't need 100 right guys, but you need one.” But people have the idea that “If there are not hundreds of good people then I cannot find one and if there are very few good people out there it means that everyone who already knows this job already has a job.”

Now, the right way to get people who are already employed is to challenge them. If you try to buy them with more money you will normally just loose because you will end up with a money motivated person who actually isn’t very loyal. Think about it, how loyal someone is if they leave one company just because of a little more money in your company? Not very loyal.

So, if you hire somebody with just more money, you know already “I have a person who is not very loyal.” and “I can loose this person as fast as I got him.”