When I hear the word Blast, I think of an explosion that hits everything in site. Sure, you may be “targeting” your Blast, but it is probably with as much precision as a someone with a grenade launcher would. The general thought behind this being: “well, close is good enough”.

But is it really good enough?

I recently spoke with a recruiting manager at a Fortune 500 company that recruits sales professionals across that country. He told me that their hiring process is very selective, and that candidates must have at least a year of outside sales experience to qualify. He also informed me that they use a software program to “scrape” candidates from the job boards and “blast” thousands of emails each day. When he told about the broad search string that they use (basically “sales” with a few NOTs), it was clear to me that this was a true Email Blast hitting tons of unqualified candidates.

While this approach may save some time on the front end, consider:

• How many unqualified candidates are in these campaigns (retail sales reps/admins for a sales manager/etc)?
• How much time will their recruiters spend following up with unqualified candidates who apply?
• How many bad candidate experiences did they create for people who could be current/potential customers?
• How many legitimately qualified candidates did not apply because they were not enticed by the generic email?

Even though it takes a little more work upfront, CareerPlug believes that the best results happen when you limit the campaign to the qualified candidates that you would want to interview. This allows you to:

1. Attract more qualified candidates by focusing your message and truly engaging your target audience.
2. Save your recruiters’ time and make it easy for them to identify candidates who are worth additional attention.
3. Avoid wasting the time of candidates who are not qualified for this position. Remember, they may be your customers.

In summary, save the blasts for cannons and space shuttles, and please keep them out of your email campaigns.

Here’s the original post and my response:
Original Post:
I have a friend who has a 90-day deadline to fill 150 positions based on a government contract in her new position with a healthcare company. The contract is based on 150 hires (100 call/claim and various support staff, 25 nurses and 25 other mgmt/supervisory roles.) Does anyone know where she should start? She has done recruiting before, but not this many positions at the same time. I told her I would ask this experienced and talented group!

My Response:
Sheila,

I would recommend that your friend approach this challenge from a marketing perspective.

For each position type, she should develop a strategy to:
1) Build multiple channels to generate candidate leads.

2) Drive these candidates to a website where they can explore the opportunity, assess their candidacy, and register for a hiring event.

3) Conduct hiring events that streamline the process for reviewing a high volume of applicants.

Here are the lead generation channels that I would consider:
– Job postings on major/niche boards (+ craigslist)
– Email campaigns to candidates within job board databases
– Post on the job search engines (Indeed, SimplyHired)
– Pay-per-click ads on Google
– Employee referrals (if applicable)
– PR (local news will certainly cover this)
*Note – she may need a different approach for the nurses since the active candidate market for them is relatively weak

As for the landing page website (or microsite), it should be simple, yet informative. As part of the application form, she may want to include some pre-screen questions (“Do you have at least 2 years of call center experience?”) and an option to register for a specific hiring event. We use personalized microsites for our outbound email campaigns and general microsites for our inbound candidates – both work really well.

With the hiring events, I would try to get as much done there as possible (including phone simulations and computer literacy tests for call center candidates). Beware that if you publicize the event on the local media (instead of directing viewers to a website), you may get an overwhelming turnout which could result in negative press.

Please feel free to have your friend contact me if she would like some additional advice on high-volume recruiting.

Good luck!
Clint

Here’s a preview of topics we plan to cover (and those we’ll avoid).

Things we care about:

• Candidate sourcing and recruitment marketing trends
• Recruitment process outsourcing best practices – specifically Selective RPO
• Cool recruiting websites and technologies
• Applying a Sales/Marketing perspective to recruiting
• Recruiter productivity
• High-impact, cost-effective recruiting strategies
• Perspectives from industry leaders/innovators
• Motivational/Optimistic stories

Not so much:

• Recruiting gossip
• Pessimistic sentiment
• Old school, “What can you do for us?” recruiting