When the talent pool is as tight as the current construction market, the aim of any great company is to ensure that every suitable candidate is in their recruitment funnel.
Too many companies work under the false assumption that the influencing only starts when a candidate meets a hiring manager. Some might consider a step back and suggest that the first contact with a recruiter might be when the job starts to be “sold.” That is progress (as many still do not see their recruiters in this way), but in my view the recruitment process starts way, way before that. Maybe even years before….
When any potential candidate checks out your website or reads a post from a member of your HR team, they are piecing together a mental picture in their mind. When they attend a conference and talk to an employee who is incentivised to refer them, the conversation might be that little bit richer. When they watch videos and read presentations about what you are doing to develop your people, they will peek behind the curtain of your people led organisation. If done with a consistent message, such influencing can have a powerful effect, especially if your competitors are (typically) not doing much.
Also, the cyclical nature of the construction industry means that recruitment activity tends to follow a feast and famine pattern. If a downturn rears its head, all recruitment and employer branding activity will be curtailed, but I would argue that the drip-drip nature of recruitment marketing needs to remain constant because the upturn will come along before you know it. The suggestions in this blog don’t cost a lot of money – they simply require an investment of time (something you will have plenty of in the fallow years, and something that is a priority in the busy years).
I suppose that the crux of the matter is this:
Are you sure that you are ensuring that the very best people come to that first interview?
If not, then you need to level up your recruitment marketing.
There are many ways to approach candidate attraction, but here are five ideas that every construction company should adopt if they want to secure and retain the best people:
Create a careers page. You can’t underestimate the sinking feeling that a potential new employee gets when they visit your website, or the LinkedIn profiles of their future HR team and they see that there is nothing there. Your website and LinkedIn presence is your window onto the job market and if there is little quality activity, you are sending a very clear message about how you value attracting the very best people.
Make friends with marketing. Marketing does not come naturally to many HR people, and social media is changing at a blistering pace, so it probably makes sense to learn from your marketing colleagues about which approaches may work best to cut through the noise. As technology improves to take over the “efficiency” parts of the process,
recruitment departments are becoming more human. They will have more time to dedicate to getting to know their candidates, but it is important to choose the right medium for the message.
Share things to help people. One of the golden rules of recruitment marketing is to add value to people and refrain from “selling” your company. If you are constantly droning on about how great you are, when the time comes for a move, your messages will simply be background noise. If your recruitment marketing has a positive and helpful personality, future candidates will consistently engage with pleasure.
Curate as well as create. The creative process does not need to be a cradle to grave operation. There is some much fantastic content out there, and thanks to “selective” social algorithms, far from all of it will be seen on its first posting. I would recommend deciding on a few broad subjects that you wish to post around, and you can schedule regular updates and reposts with a tool such as Hootsuite. Even sharing something that someone else has written shows that you care. Doing nothing doesn’t show anything.
Decide on a process and stick to it. This one is possibly the most important of all. Let’s be honest, putting out social media posts and regularly updating your website will never be at the top of a talent acquisition professional’s priorities. If you have a mindset that every piece of content could be a touch point with a potential future candidate (even if they come to you years down the line), you will see the value in making marketing part of your daily recruitment routine.
When companies are fighting for the same talent, they have to try to gain every competitive advantage. Making a step change in your people attraction will ensure that you get the very best people walking through your doors for those interviews.
Searching for an opportunity in the construction industry? Or are you a hiring manager in search of the top talent in the market today? Contact James Gray’s Engineering’s team of industry experts to start the conversation. getus@jamesgrayengineering.com
