1: ATTENTION
HOW TO MAKE SURE YOUR ADVERTS ARE SEEN BY THE RIGHT CANDIDATES…
…AND PLENTY OF THEM!
Maximising attention is the first and most important factor in ensuring good advert response. There is no point creating wonderful content if too few people read it.
ACTIVE JOB SEEKERS vs PASSIVE JOB SEEKERS
In a normal market it is estimated that 20% of candidates are actively looking for a new role. The remaining 80% are passive job seekers. Passive job seekers are not actively looking but should they come across an ‘ideal’ opportunity, they could be tempted.
Job adverts are aimed at, and are only seen by, 20% of the total market. The few candidates that there are have plenty of choice and employers are competing for the same talent, pushing salaries up. There is a much larger, less tapped and less competitive passive audience.
GENERIC vs SPECIALISED JOB BOARDS
Active job-seekers use on-line job boards to find opportunities. The well-known job boards have to be generic to maximise sales.
Passive job-seekers, by definition are not actively looking for opportunities. Their attention is caught more subtly. This is why TV advertising is so successful and why specialised, information rich, websites are so good at introducing opportunities to a passive audience.
Adverts will get a better response by appealing to the wider, passive audience (as well as the active) but they need to be seen, they need to be where the passive audience is going.
A SPECIALISED BIM JOB BOARD
With a library of BIM career centric information and regular articles, dbe.careers/job board has become the go-to website for anyone wanting to make the most of their career in digital construction. It attracts a broad and focussed BIM community, some are active job-seekers, some passive. With the BIM Job Board on the same site and links directly from articles to related opportunities, opportunities can be ‘discovered’ by the passive as well as searched for by the active.
Hence adverts scrolling on the right hand side of articles like this one…
TIMING
Although placing your adverts in the right place is the most important factor, good timing is also highly effective.
It is entirely logical that advertising when more people are visiting a site will attract more attention. Traditionally, more people look to change jobs after the summer break in September and after the Christmas break in January. These are good times to advertise.
Every quarter, when we publish the BIM salary guide, site traffic increases by over 500%. Look at the ‘number of visitors’ graph below to see how volume increased in February, May and August this year.
The BIM salary guide updates are released quarterly.
THE WILLOW CAMPAIGN
Willow were struggling to get good response to their adverts for senior level BIM candidates in Australia and Canada. Together with dbe.careers, Willow created a successful campaign (see referral below) following the AIDCA method:
A: To increase attention, Willow used dbe.careers to reach a more targeted community and the wider BIM audience. They also sponsored the BIM salary guide which had a significant increase in job applications.
More on how the campaign used Interest, Desire, Conviction and Action follows in the next steps.
STEP 2 to ATTRACTING BIM TALENT focuses on ‘Interest‘.
Once you have found your audience you need to make sure you don’t lose them. ‘Interest’ focuses on how to communicate with your ideal candidate, give them a reason to keep reading and apply for your opportunity.
TRY THE BIM JOB BOARD FOR FREE
If you are looking for good BIM talent now and would like to advertise, click here to find out more and trial the BIM Job Board for free.
We are here to help, if you have any questions, please email mike@dbe.careers or call us on 03333 580 442
REFERRALS:
“I have to say some of the applications that have come through have been excellent. We have 5 interviews to arrange for next week with some really strong looking CV’s”
“Having utilised the DBE Careers job board recently for job advertising on behalf of Willow, we received an increased level of candidate activity and applications, and feel the site helped to profile our expansion into regions such as Australia and Canada.
The DBE team were very helpful and professional in advising us on our candidate attraction strategy and in suggesting targeted campaigns for specific countries.”
“Mike’s experience and knowledge helped us approach some challenging briefs more confidently by developing a clear strategy to find the best people.
The dbe website was definitely invaluable to our search and gave us the opportunity to meet some very smart professionals.
I would recommend DBE.CAREERS to any employer looking for the best BIM talent looking for their next career challenge.”