Dr John Sullivan Talent Management Thought Leadership
Post jobs on sites that your top employees visit because top candidates likely visit them, too.
There is so much overlap in the actions of your top employees and top recruiting targets. That means that if you know the Internet, information, and learning sites that your current employees visit regularly and spend a great deal of time. You now also know where your top recruiting targets are “hanging out.” Those frequently visited non-job board sites might include YouTube, Business Insider, WSJ, AI News, or even TikTok.
Fortunately, you can easily find out specifically where your current employees “hang out” by having them fill out a simple “Where do I spend my time?” anonymous electronic survey. Once you know where your current employees can be reached by proxy, you now also know where your recruiting targets would most likely see one of your job postings.
Smart recruiters should begin using this “time on site” information to develop a “frequently visited profile” that covers their recruiting targets. Then, this “recruiting target profile should be used to guide the placement of a few open job announcements on a handful of these most visited sites.
The Many Benefits Of Posting On Alternative Sites (That both your employees and your recruiting targets frequent)
After years of researching the most effective places to post your open jobs, I have found that posting on these alternative reading, watching, and listening-focused internet sites also exists. It can, by itself, improve your applicant flow. The top 5 benefits of using this “frequently visited approach” include:
Spending more time on a site results in more applications – Because your recruiting targets already spend so much time on these alternative sites. That extra time, coupled with the reduced number of job postings you have to compete with, will increase the odds that your post will be seen and read. Because they frequently visit these sites already, you won’t have to do anything to drive potential recruits to a site.
You’ll reach many more potential recruits – Obviously, job boards are a good place to reach many active job seekers. Unfortunately, many of them are cluttered with other postings. Your postings may not even be seen, and it’s also important to realize that as many as 80% of the people who are qualified for your open jobs won’t be actively looking on major job boards. So, it makes sense to identify alternative sites where your postings will actually receive much more attention. Those are the sites that both your employees and your recurring targets already visit multiple times during the week. They, of course, visit them to read about their profession, watch videos, or listen to podcasts. So, this “frequently visited profile” will give you a second chance to effectively reach passive prospects and those who will miss your jobs when they visit job boards.
You will face less recruiting competition – Because so many recruiting functions exclusively post their open jobs on large job boards and their own website. Any recruiting on these “frequently visited alternative sites” will be much less likely to face strong competition from your top talent competitors.
Your job post will stand out – Few competitors will also place job announcements on these alternate sites. Your individual job announcements are much more likely to stand out and be noticed and read by both active and non-active job seekers.
Surveying your own employees is easy and inexpensive – Fortunately, it is relatively easy and inexpensive to conduct an anonymous e-survey. Sample your employees in a job family to identify the sites where they spend most of their time.
Over time, your results will improve – If you make it a practice to continuously ask a sample of your applicants in each job family where they learned about this job opening. Over time, you can easily add new and better sites for posting. And you can simultaneously drop the least effective ones. It’s also a good idea to ask new hires to provide you with a list of their frequently visited sites during onboarding. To find out if any of these alternative sites triggered them to apply.
The Categories Of Alternative Sites That Your Employee Survey Should Identify
Any employee or applicant survey should identify the most frequently visited sites in each of the following categories. The most frequently visited categories and the ones where the most time is often spent appear early on the list.
Learning about their function/industry sites – The ability to learn is a key indicator of top talent, and your survey should identify the sites where the best employees (and candidates) go to learn. Those learning site categories might include industry associations, instructional and how-to video channels, benchmarking sites, popular functional podcasts, and the leading functional and industry newsletters.
The smartphone platform – Posting on the mobile platform is essential because it is continually accessed by recruiting prospects. So, your survey should identify the best ways to get a job announcement noticed on the mobile platform, including voice, text, video, pictures, memes, and email.
Social media sites – Your survey should identify the popular social media sites with potential candidates that are the most frequently visited (i.e., LinkedIn, X, Instagram). The survey should further identify which of these social media sites are job candidates most likely to see and read a job announcement.
Internet sites – The survey should identify what search engines they primarily use as well as the websites where employees get their weather and news. Next, the survey should identify the popular Internet sites employees frequently visit (i.e., TikTok, YouTube, ESPN, Spotify). Finally, you should also attempt to identify the “job search-related Internet sites” that even your employees occasionally visit (i.e., Glassdoor, CareerBuilder).
Podcasts – Because of their popularity. One of your primary goals should be identifying the podcasts your employees and recruiting targets subscribe to or listen to. Those podcasts should include industry-specific ones as well as general interest ones.
Mass media sites – Your survey should identify mass media sites that recruiting targets regularly access, including broad circulation newspapers, magazines, TV and radio, and even film sites.
Events they attend – The survey should inquire about local and national professional conferences your employees occasionally attend. It should also identify the not-for-profit and personal interest events (i.e., food festivals and car and home shows) that employees occasionally attend. And yes, you can even identify the sporting events that your employees regularly attend.
Organizations that they participate in – The survey should also identify which professional organizations they join. As well as any community or university-based organizations in which they participate.
Additional categories of ways to reach recruiting targets – In your survey, also ask your employees if they would notice job announcements on mass transit or at airports. Also, ask if they would be noticed at shopping malls, in movie theaters, or as outdoor advertisements.
Implementation Tips For A “Frequently Visited Profile” Effort
If you’re serious about implementing a “frequently visited profile program.” Here are some implementation tips that you should consider.
- Run a pilot – It’s best to first run a pilot test of your frequently visited program for one job family with frequent openings. Then, use the resulting performance metrics from that pilot to refine and debug your program further before you roll it out to the whole organization.
- Make sure your survey is anonymous – Amazon, for example, has used the dating site Tinder to place job ads. However, you will only learn about these “somewhat embarrassing sites” if your survey is completely anonymous. You can also increase your survey response rate by offering a small incentive for those employees who complete it.
- Pretest your survey – To get the highest response rate from your employees. The purpose of your survey and why it is vital to your recruiting effort must be compelling and clearly communicated. In addition, your survey must be quick to fill out, and it shouldn’t raise any significant questions when it is being filled out. So, it’s wise to pretest your survey among several of your employees before you send it out.
- Work with consumer marketing – I further suggest that those in recruitment should work closely with their own consumer marketing department. They are experts at using this kind of survey to identify where potential customers can be reached through advertising.
- Consider developing a college hire profile – This same approach also works extremely well in college recruiting, especially when you are trying to recruit top college talent without relying on University career centers.
- Leverage IT access to employee browsing data – If your company monitors employee internet usage, analyze this data for employees working in often open jobs. To discover which websites they frequently visit. By segmenting this information for advertising opportunities, you can identify the sites employees use without conducting surveys.
- Use performance metrics to identify what’s working – In addition to continually updating your profile with new sites. It’s essential that you identify the sites that had the most impact on finding the candidates that you actually hired. Do that by asking each new hire during onboarding which site had the most impact on convincing them to seriously consider applying and working at your organization. You should also have metrics to determine if this program has any positive or negative impacts on your diversity recruiting.
| If you only do one thing – Start by interviewing some of your recent hires. Ask them to identify their frequently visited alternative sites where they would’ve noticed a job posting (if it was present). If they mention several non-job board sites like TikTok. Take that as an indication that you should expand your job postings to include these frequently visited sites. |
Final Thoughts
It’s a huge mistake to rely completely on the job postings that you place on the major job boards to gain the interest of your best recruiting prospects. Instead, consider that by your recruiting targets, some of your job announcements/postings should also be placed on the frequently visited alternative sites. To increase the chance that they will be noticed and acted upon. However, it is extremely difficult to find out where potential applicants (that you don’t even know) spend most of their time. The fallback option is to realize that the places where these target recruits can be reached “mirror” the places that are currently frequented by your own current employees.
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