The irony of the automation market’s dependence on
highly skilled humans is not lost on today’s employers. Finding that
needle-in-a-haystack engineer or technician seems to get harder with each
passing year. As the technology demanded by facilities managers becomes more
refined, so too must employers’ recruiting efforts.
Among the secrets to finding quality people are
persistent focus and smart marketing.
Straight to the Candidate Nerve Center
Many frustrated building automation companies have
fallen victim to the siren call of broad-market online recruitment services.
Discouraged by a lack of qualified candidates actively seeking jobs, they
figure, “The more people I reach, the better my chances of finding the perfect
fit, right?”
Wrong. And here’s why.
While it’s true that blasting a job opening out to an entire globe of
jobseekers will yield a massive amount of resumes, it’s also true that very few
will even come close to meeting your company’s needs. The man hours it takes to
sift through stacks of unqualified applications isn’t just irritating; in
today’s efficiency-first environment, it’s costly.
Niche services like BirdDog
(see below), on the other hand, provide an intensely targeted approach to
recruiting. By creating online job postings and consumable content tailored for
a specific sect of the job-seeking market, these niche services deliver news of
your open positions right to the virtual doorsteps of the most qualified
candidates.
With niche talent acquisition, hiring managers are able to effectively
slice-and-dice audience segments to promote their open positions – as well as
their employment brand – to the most relevant job candidates. Who, in-turn, can
easily submit their resumes.
What’s more, today’s niche recruitment services go beyond the “online job
board” model and offer candidate sourcing and scoring services for BAS-industry
hiring managers with too little time or staff to produce the all-important
candidate “short list.”
Complicating matters for some BAS employers are the regulatory responsibilities
they have to their communities and the federal government. Municipal and
federal projects come with rules governing equal opportunity and affirmative
action plans. Niche services like BirdDogJobs have built-in programs that
ensure BAS employers are making (and can prove they are making) a good faith
effort to attract and hire a diverse workforce – something that becomes very
challenging when hunting for employees from inside such a small pool.
Becoming an ‘Always On’ Company
We have a term in the industry that describes how smart companies approach
their talent search. It’s called “Always-On Recruiting.” What this means is
that a company is always building its talent bench, even when it does not have
a current job opening. The advantages of this are many. But most importantly,
having your own pool of pre-qualified and interested candidates cuts down on
the stress and the necessary resources of filling those inevitable last-minute
staff openings.
In addition to working with the type of niche talent services described above,
BAS companies that run an always-on recruiting program have mastered the art of
marketing.
These companies don’t simply wait for their ideal candidate to stumble across
their listing in the want ads or on a static website. They’re proactively going
after top talent with consistent networking.
There are two low-cost, high-return ways always-on recruiters are networking.
First, they have given their company career webpage a makeover, and second,
they are connecting with potential candidates through tools like social
media.
Company Career Page
You’ve seen the tab on nearly every BAS company’s website. It’s usually found
along the top of the page, and it reads something like “Jobs” or “Careers.”
Likely a lot of thought was given to this tab. But what most companies don’t
realize is that the majority of people interested in the content of this page
will never even click on it. That’s because jobseekers typically find their way
to a company’s career page through a search engine, like Google, or from an
online job board linking back to the career page.
This means the company career page is very often the first impression a
prospective employee will have of a company.
Understanding the importance of the company career page is the first step
toward achieving your goal, namely to represent the company as an attractive
employer with respect for its employees, clients and community.
Social
Media
Social media is the fastest growing communication outlet, allowing companies to
meet potential employees right where they are. And, with tools like LinkedIn,
Twitter and Facebook, the messages a company sends out – anything from a link
to its most recent project successes to a job opening – is only delivered to
those people who have opted-in to receive them. This means your marketing messages
are less likely to fall on deaf ears.
Because these tools are real-time applications, hiring managers can instantly
customize and advertise their open positions in a way that attracts exactly the
type of candidate they are looking for – more effectively and economically than
their counterparts who are still relying on traditional advertising methods.
Of course, BAS companies should understand that launching a social media effort
is a promise to their target audiences that they will deliver brand-spanking
new information frequently. Why else would a job-seeker want to “follow,”
“like” or “connect with” a BAS company?
With economic and legislative pressures forcing building automation experts
toward continuous systems improvement, finding top talent has never been more
important. The companies that develop sound recruitment strategies built on a
niche focus and smart marketing have the best chance at finding tomorrow’s
leaders today.
Doug can be reached at dmitchell@birddogjobs.com.
More articles like this can be found at http://blog.birddogjobs.com.
How BirdDog Tracks Down the Best
With talent stretched so thin in the BAS sector, you
need every advantage you can find. The BirdDog CAMS system saves pain,
paperwork and stress.
Our “always-on recruiting” solution is called CAMS (Candidate Acquisition &
Management System). CAMS provides a powerful suite of tools -- all from one
simple dashboard.
From here, hiring managers can complete each of the
following.
- Post jobs to our family of niche job boards.
- Cross-post automatically to
40+ engineering job boards and associations, including ASHRAE, NSPE and
ESCN. This creates wide exposure to qualified candidates in one post. - Manage submitted applications
by scoring them, assigning next activities and reporting on your new
candidate pool, making your hiring “paper trail” completely paperless. - Build a bench of qualified
candidates that you can come back to when new openings arrive. Why start
your search over again every time? - Alert job seekers with a
click when you have new openings. It’s easy to upload your own Personal
Outreach Lists, which can include your social networking or email
contacts. - Mitigate risk by having
archived documentation of your applications, notes and hiring process,
including diversity information, which is automatically captured and
tracked. - Cultivate a rich flow of
talent through a customized company career page. Let your managed career
page do the talking for you, get ranked in the search engines and show off
your firm’s qualities. - Manage your Candidate
Sourcing Results. We’ve had great success with our first partner in the
BAS sector, BuildingLogix, which has used our FASTrack Source and Score
program to hyper-accelerate the candidate acquisition process. Simply
login to your CAMS dashboard and schedule interviews with the best
candidates.
Explore BirdDog today through live or recorded
webinars, videos, or a brief chat with our team. We have a BSME Employer
Specialist on staff who can develop the right solution for your needs.
Just visit www.BirdDogJobs.com/Employers
to learn more or give us a call at 888.482.7021.
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