Finding Candidates When Competition Is Fierce - Onrec Online Recruitment Feature

By Paula Santonocito - US Features Editor, Onrec.com

Truck drivers and nurses may not seem to have a lot in commonóthat is, unless youíre an employer. Hiring managers and recruiters looking for employees in both fields face a similar recruitment environment: open positions, few candidates, and competition from others trying to find and attract the same workers.

Itís a tough combination, and trucking and health care arenít the only industries dealing with the situation. A worker shortage, created or compounded by the first wave of baby boomer retirements, has given rise to significant employment challenges in a number of fields.

But desperate times call for creative initiatives, and accordingly, employers and industry experts are seeking new solutions.

Trucking industry challenges
Itís certainly not an easy time for the trucking industry, which is currently experiencing a considerable shortage of drivers. Whatís more, the American Trucking Associations (ATA), the national trade association for the trucking industry, anticipates that over the long haul the problem will likely get worse. By 2014, ATA projects a shortfall of 111,000 truckers if current demographic trends continue.

Like a lot of industries, trucking is impacted by an aging workforce. Many truck drivers are retiring. A contributing factor has also been the industryís current demographic. Truckers tend to be white men, 35 to 54 years of age, a segment of the overall population that is declining.

To address the worker shortage, ATA has developed a nationwide advertising campaign to attract people who have traditionally been outside the industryís standard demographic. It is striving to recruit women, minorities, military veterans, couples, and individuals who are either semi- or completely retired.

Trucking companies and other organizations looking for truck drivers, meanwhile, have also had to shift their focus and their recruitment strategies.

Nurses needed
Similarly, the health care industry has gotten more creative and more aggressive in dealing with its critical shortage of nurses. And critical it is.

Research from Bernard Hodes Group, a leading provider of integrated talent solutions, finds a large proportion of the nurse workforce is close to retirement and that the rate of retirement is accelerating starting in 2010 through 2020. Add to this the fact that the U.S. government projects 703,000 new registered nurse (RN) positions will be created through 2014 to care for an aging population and youíve got a prescription for a recruitment nightmare.

What about new nurses? Nursing talent is predicated on education and licensure requirements, and there arenít enough people studying to become nurses. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing indicates that enrollment in schools of nursing is not growing fast enough to meet the projected demand for nurses over the next 10 years.

For health care providers, lack of staffing has several implications. According to a recent study of the health care sector from global consultancy Watson Wyatt, health care organizations with insufficient staff are forced to turn away patients, the quality of care decreases at existing facilities, and/or health care organizations canít open new units.

Health care organizations therefore are seeking new ways to stand out from the competition. There are creative recruitment efforts, like the ì100 nurses in 100 daysî campaign conducted recently by Childrenís Healthcare of Atlanta. Although other hospitals have sponsored ì100 nursesî hiring drives, this one was different. The Atlanta-Journal Constitution reports that to get referrals from its staff, the hospital gave away 100 tanks of gas, $100 in groceries, 100 iTunes songs, 100 hours of baby-sitting, and other prizes. The hospital reportedly drew 200 new nurses.

New opportunities online
Health care organizations and trucking companies are also taking advantage of new online recruitment opportunities.

Among these opportunities are solutions from Vertical Alliance Group (VAG), a Texas-based online publisher that provides direct marketing services, primarily focused on lead generation and conversion training, for a variety of businesses in specific niche industries, which include trucking and health care.

Trucking companies like J.B. Hunt, Transport America, and USA Truck are among those advertising for truck drivers at VAGís flagship trucking site, BubbaJunk.com. The company also operates TruckerTrucker.com, for small trucking companies; FullFleet.com, which targets private carrier fleets; 1099Trucker.com, for owner-operators of trucking fleets; and USTruckingSchools.com, which enables private trucking schools to recruit and enroll students in specific geographic regions.

VAG aims to address shortages in the nursing space at NurseUniverse.com, which features opportunities with health care providers throughout the United States.

Vertical Alliance Group delivers its results through a process it calls ìresponse engine marketing.î VAG drives qualified candidates to one of its niche sites using search engines like Google and Yahoo!. Once at a site, candidates are exposed to select company employment opportunities via banner advertising, job postings, and/or profile pages.

VAG doesnít simply sell advertising space to employers. The company provides clients with a full day of training on using its methods. Then, the companyís consulting staff works with clients on an ongoing basis to maximize advertising results.

A different direction
BubbaJunk.com was originally founded in 1999 as a traditional niche job board, but VAG decided to change the model to deliver more targeted results.

According to Jay Wommack, founder, president and CEO of Vertical Alliance Group, traditional niche sites donít work. ìTheir inefficiencies are astronomical,î he says.

Now, instead of blasting job opportunities to the entire online universe, VAG provides exclusive leads for companies in very specific niche markets. ìItís a new age. Itís a new era,î says Wommack.

Although VAG is leveraging the Internet differently, it also recognizes that itís necessary for employers, particularly those in fields with significant worker shortages, to take a different approach. This is the focus of the training sessions VAG holds for client companies.

ìWe teach them in this new era how to be salespeople for their companies. In these high-demand positions they have to be proactive,î Wommack says.

A site visitor to any one of VAGís nearly 40 niche sites that serve about 20 different industries is likely to be struck by the simplicity. The company refers to its sites as ìugly but effective.î

Less is more
Unlike other niche sites in the same space, NurseUniverse.com and BubbaJunk.com are light on content. ìWe link to nursing associations and trucking associations, but our content is our advertising,î says Wommack.

VAG is focused on quality lead generation and rate of closing. Wommack says in contrast with typical closing rates of less than 3 percent at competitive sites, clients should close at least 15 to 30 percent of leads a VAG niche site sends them, and that some employers have even higher closing percentages.

Closing rates are more crucial for employers in fields where candidates are limited. Currently, Wommack sees organizations struggling to find nurses, truckers, plumbers, electricians, and diesel mechanics, among others. And he doesnít see it becoming an employerís market any time soon.

Citing the shift to a service economy and retiring baby boomers, Wommack says, ìItís going to get more and more competitive.î

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Paula Santonocito is a journalist specializing in workforce management issues. She is the author of more than 500 articles on a wide range of topics, including online recruitment, which she has covered since the early days of Web-based employment advertising and candidate sourcing. In addition to serving as features editor of Online Recruitment Magazineís North American edition, she also serves as AIRS News editor, overseeing news content for the global recruitment training and technology solutions company at www.airsdirectory.com. Articles by Paula Santonocito are featured in many global and domestic publications and information outlets, including HRWire, a publication to which she regularly contributes. She can be reached at psantonocito@yahoo.com.