Effective Recruitment Campaigns

Effective recruitment campaigns begin by identifying the needs of a company. Are you wanting to attract a more diverse workforce, such as women, minorities, veterans, or the disabled? Do you need more college students to breathe some new life into old methods? Or maybe you are actively seeking older workers who have more experience. Whatever your needs, it's important to have an recruitment campaign established.

First and foremost, developing a recruitment plan should be a team effort. Board members, executive team members and co-workers need to be invited to share their insights and ideas in the development of a recruitment plan. Everyone's ideas should be addressed and compiled into an all-inclusive plan.

The plan is a way for your business to analyze people and skills, identify skill gaps, focus on employees who may potentially leave, and devise future leadership pathways.

Since you'll be selling opportunities to targeted individuals, you'll want to pick out the strongest characteristics of your company - those that would entice others to join. Are you a startup with big goals? A established firm that prides itself in a lauded legacy? A company that actively hires diverse individuals? Or maybe you specialize in a sought-after product, you have wonderful company perks, or you go out of your way to reward employees for hard work. These 'perks' should be included in the recruitment campaign as a way to attract candidates.

Other things a company shouldn't forget when developing a plan of attack include writing fresh job descriptions for each position, identifying areas where more talent is needed, identifying succession initiatives, creating an outreach plan, identifying areas to recruit within, including colleges, universities, cities, and job fairs, establishing processes for handling applications, interviewing candidates and selecting and placing new members, devising a welcome letter and policy manual, and establishing processes for conducting required criminal history and background checks.

For some of these, you'll need a vendor. Often companies subcontract out there background and screening processes to other companies that complete these for additional fees. Also you may want to employ the use of an applicant tracking system, which is software that allows you to store all applicants' information, including their demographics, desired job title, and application.

Other things to consider when developing a recruitment plan include defining the specific jobs that must be done to meet those needs and the skill sets, identifying the types of people that might want to take on these jobs, where you would be most likely to find them and how you can best connect with them and characteristics required to do those jobs.

You may also consider determine the organization’s overall needs in relationship to the realization of its vision, consider how you will approach the candidate to ensure that when one accepts a role on the board that he/she meets the responsibility at the level you require, and specifying your expectations of those you will recruit to the board.

Each year you should revisit your recruitment plan and update it, since company needs will constantly change. It's always good to continually evaluate the plan and decide which areas need improvement.