Trade Press Recruitment Advertising

By David Carter

Trade press advertising is useful when you are recruiting people with specialist skills, because you know that the audience of the publication is likely to contain readers with those skills.

The thing to remember of course, is that not all people read the job advertisements and even those that do, won't necessarily be looking for a new job.

There are several strategies that you can employ when recruiting in the trade press and a lot will depend on your company's approach to advertising.

Some companies prefer an all-out advertising campaign that not only tries to recruit people, but that also tries to sell the corporate image to a wider audience.

Companies that do this often miss the boat as far as recruitment goes, but at least the ad will be promoting them!

Other companies prefer to remain anonymous and will hide their identity behind a PO Box number or some similar mechanism. They claim to do this because they don't want their competitors knowing how much they pay their staff - or they don't want people to think they have a weakness or staff shortage in a particular area. The usual reason, is that they don't want their existing staff to know they are recruiting.

No method is wrong of course, but each has it's own problems associated with it.

Going "too corporate" might put off some candidates, but it will certainly attract others. Often though, the fully-laden corporate brochure type ad attracts the wrong people - those who are more concerned with their image than they are of the job that needs doing.

Typically they will ask questions about the benefits package, salary and "what's in it for me?" type questions.

That's not necessarily a bad thing of course, but it does make the recruitment process a little more difficult, because you have sold the candidate on the idea of working for a big flash company, rather than concentrating on what job needs to be done. Sorting the glory hunters from the genuine doers and thinkers is a very difficult task.

Anonymous advertising also brings its problems.

The most obvious is that the job seeker doesn't know which company he or she is applying to - and of course, it would be embarrassing for everyone concerned if someone were to apply for their own job!

Because of this, anonymous ads are a strict no-no unless you are advertising via a recruitment agency. (more on this later).

Also, there is a natural tendency when reading an anonymous recruitment advertisement to think, "Why are they hiding?" or "What have they got to hide?"

The alternative is to place your trade press recruitment advertisement via an advertising agency or a specialist recruitment agency known for recruitment advertising.

Both options should offer you a substantial discount against normal advertising rate cards and they should pass this discount on to you. Typically, a recruitment agency with good established contacts in the trade press should be able to offer you around 40% discount on normal advertising rates.

Advertising agencies might not offer the discount at all.

With an advertising agency, there will be no other fees to pay (unless they compile the ad for you), so if your advertisement is successful, it's only cost you the advertisement. Of course, an advertising agency will not be involved in the recruitment process, so sifting response and arranging interviews will be down to you.

Trade press recruitment advertising usually gets a good level of response, so bear this in mind if using an advertising agency.

With a recruitment agency, you will also have to pay a recruitment fee, but in this case, the recruiter should be doing all of the short-listing of candidates for you and preparing an interview list of only a select few of the respondents.

Hopefully, they will be involved in the interview process as well, as a good, experienced recruiter can be invaluable in these situations.

All recruitment advertising in the quality trade press will usually be display advertising. The key to successful recruitment advertising in the trade press, is to keep your ad focused on the duties of the job, almost to the point where you are creating a mini job specification.

Explain the salary and benefits clearly and early in the advertisement. That is what most candidates will be looking for.

If you leave the salary off, or simply put that package is negotiable, you will at least halve your response rates and that is never a good idea.

If salary is a contentious issue in your company, then I really recommend that you place your advertisement anonymously via a good quality recruitment agency that already has an established and recognised corporate style.

In the past, I have run many such anonymous campaigns for companies sensitive about salary levels and none have been recognised by the existing staff.

Most candidates know that if they apply to an agency in this way, that their application will never be divulged to the client and of course, the agency will not divulge your identity, except to the short-listed candidates, so it's a win-win situation.

If you want specific advice on creating effective recruitment advertising campaigns, please feel free to call me, David Carter on 01564 824554 or 07800 790427.