CONTRIBUTING MEMBER:
AARON HOCKEL, PARTNER & VICE PRESIDENT OF DIGITAL MARKETING,
ALTAVISTA STRATEGIC PARTNERS
It’s no secret that the past few years have presented several hiring challenges for commercial and residential painting businesses. Overcoming these challenges is critical to maintaining and growing any contracting company. This is why a digital recruiting plan is so important.
Online recruiting campaigns can be used to hire:
· Interior/Exterior Painters
· Licensed Tradesmen
· Job Supervisors
· Superintendents
· Estimators
· Project Managers
· Business Developers
· Accounting/Administration Staff
By creating a robust online recruiting strategy, your painting business will be able to attract quality candidates and build a pipeline of applicants, while avoiding labor shortages and saving money, time and resources.
What is a Digital Recruiting Strategy?
A digital recruitment strategy is a long-term plan that uses digital marketing tactics to drive qualified applicants to your painting business. This goes well beyond posting on job boards or Craigslist. It leverages powerful tools like social media, Google Search Ads, retargeting display ads, geo-fencing ads, and email marketing. Using these platforms, the digital recruiting plan promotes your company’s hiring to the right audience and ultimately generates a pipeline of qualified candidates.
With an online recruiting plan in place, contractors can focus on growing their business, knowing they will have a consistent flow of qualified candidates.
Creating a Recruitment Strategy
There are several marketing components that can make up a recruitment strategy depending on your company’s goals and timeline. Here are some of the top digital recruiting strategies painting contractors can use to address hiring issues:
Creating a Careers Page on Your Website
Once your painting business has decided to fully invest in a detailed digital recruitment strategy, the best place to start is your own website. Research shows that more people are using Google to search for career opportunities and fewer people are using job boards. This means candidates are more likely to end up and apply directly through your website than ever before. Your company’s website will give applicants a feel for what your company has to offer and what they can expect when working for you.
It is important to highlight you are actively hiring for your most critical positions. Whether you need to hire interior painters, an office manager, or drywallers, be sure they are clearly listed on your website, as well as information regarding each position. Make sure it is easy to apply, works well on mobile devices and includes a function where candidates can upload their resumes.
Set Yourself Apart from Your Competitors
Your careers page doesn’t just highlight your open positions. It should also answer the question, "Why should a potential employee leave their current position or accept a position with your company over a competitor?"
Understand what’s most important to your employees and make it stand out to candidates. Armed with that information, shout it out on your careers page. This can include things like competitive wages, career advancement, employee benefits and other perks of working for your company.
If possible, include testimonials from current employees. Video testimonials are the most impactful. If video testimonials are not viable, try to include pictures of employees next to their testimonials.
Geo-Fencing Potential New Hires
Do you know exactly where your next great hire is working? Going to trade school? Picking up supplies? Wouldn’t it be great to show them ads for your open positions? With geo-fencing ad technology, this is entirely possible.
Geo-fencing ads reach users on mobile devices within very specific geographic boundaries. Contractors can incorporate this technology into their digital recruitment strategy to promote career opportunities to specific users.
Using this technology, commercial painting contractors could run ads targeting competitors’ offices and warehouses.
All of these ads would send traffic back to the careers on the webpage, which is set up to highlight corporate benefits and encourage visitors to apply for open positions.
Reach Candidates While They Are Searching
Remember, research says more people are searching for Google on job boards than ever before. As a result, Google Search Ads (also called PPC or Pay-Per-Click ads) are a great campaign to include in a digital recruiting campaign.
Using Google Search Ads, contractors can use to put their career opportunities at the top of the search results. When someone searches “Painting Contractors Hiring Near Me”, ads populate about career opportunities at your painting business at the very top of the page.
When someone clicks on the ad, it can send them to the careers page or a landing page about a specific job opening. Even better, contractors only pay when someone clicks on the ad. These ads can also be scaled up as hiring needs increase to accommodate growth.
Retargeting Display Ads
If you’ve ever checked the price of a Delta flight or Marriot hotel room online, chances are you’ve been retargeted. Painting contractors, just like these major brands, can use retargeting ads to stay in front of potential candidates. Display ads are cost-effective visual ads that follow people around the internet. They can promote that you are hiring and highlight reasons to accept a position with your contracting business.
There are two ways to incorporate them into a digital recruiting plan. First, anyone who visits the careers section of the website can be retargeted with ads. This is very powerful when combined with Google Search Ads and geo-fencing ads. The other way is through search retargeting. If someone searches “Sherwin Williams Warehouse Nearby”, Google can track the search, and start showing them ads even if they don’t visit your website!
Get The Word Out on Social Media
Another important piece of any digital recruiting strategy is social media. It can be used to rapidly spread the word about open positions at your company.
The best way to do this is to post job openings on Facebook and LinkedIn. First, create a job post shared on the company’s page. Next, have employees share the post with their networks. This will greatly expand the reach of the post and hit the feeds of users not currently connected to the company pages.
Painting contractors can take this a step further and offer a referral bonus to employees if they recommend someone who ends up getting hired.
Make sure all of the posts are linked to the careers page or job-specific page on the website. Not only does this generate website traffic, but it also feeds into the retargeting audience, keeping your career ads in front of interested applicants.
Build A Database of Potential Candidates
For higher-level positions, building a database of potential candidates is a great digital recruiting tactic. This type of campaign is perfect for organizations consistently hiring for high-level positions such as accounting, project management, estimating, sales and finance.
The basic idea is to build a database of potential hires currently working at other companies. These can be direct competitors or other similar fields. For example, a commercial painter could build a database of business developers working at painting, roofing, or plumbing companies since the required skills generally crossover between industries.
Once assembled, contractors can use email database marketing to let candidates know they would be interested in hiring them. As always, these emails should include links to the careers section on the website.
Launching A Digital Recruiting Campaign
Getting a digital recruiting plan off the ground should always start with the careers section of the website. A great careers page is the foundation of any successful online recruiting plan. Once that is done, there is a solid foundation to build on. Using that foundation, small steps can include posting on Facebook and LinkedIn and asking employees to share the posts.
Creating a solid, long-term recruitment strategy tailored to your contracting business’ goals is critically important. While hiring a recruiter or staffing agency can be costly, AltaVista offers digital recruiting campaigns specifically designed for painting contractors looking to hire tradesmen.
About the contributor
A contractor marketing expert, Aaron Hockel has presented on a wide range of marketing topics at major trade shows and conferences, including the International Roofing Expo, International Sign Expo, IFMA’s World Workplace and the American Fence Association’s FenceTech, among others.
A full-service marketing agency and certified Google Partner, AltaVista’s expertise is working with commercial and residential contractors to grow and scale their businesses using targeted email marketing and digital advertising campaigns. Supporting more than 300 customers in 40 states, AltaVista helps turn searches into customers and interaction into leads.
Contact AltaVista to learn more about the company’s digital marketing and other services.
