Finding, recruiting, and hiring employees, especially in the manufacturing sector, is more than just putting job vacancies on job boards or in industry trade journals.

These days, candidates are more choosy about where they want to work. Candidates want to work for companies that seem interesting, are doing meaningful work, and have different professional opportunities.

One way you can show these different opportunities and benefits is through marketing. Show your company in a positive light and demonstrate what makes your company or products/services better than other options.

When you’re marketing your company, you’re not just marketing it to customers, you’re trying to reach new employees as well. After all, marketing your company puts your brand message in front of everyone, including the people who think, “I’d like to work there.”

Here are just four ways you can use marketing to help you with recruiting and hiring new employees.

1. Show Day-to-Day Company Life

What is the atmosphere around your office? Do people enjoy being there? Do you have a great break room or kitchen? State-of-the-art conference rooms? A workout facility? What about the back offices or the factory floor? 

If you’ve got some cool things to show off, then show them off.

• Be sure to let your employees participate in this too. Ask them to contribute articles to the company blog.
• Record lunch and learn sessions and share them on YouTube.
• Maybe let some of your employees start blogs and podcasts about their job or your industry.

Not only does that share knowledge with potential customers, but it also lets job candidates know that you’re a forward-thinking company that is willing to use different technologies to promote the company. Plus, this could help people decide they want to apply for any openings, just to be a part of that kind of organization.

2. Spread the Good News

Your company is probably already doing some cool stuff in the community whether your employees volunteer, attend major events, or support local charities. This is all information that should be shared on social media.

Encourage your employees to share their community involvement on their social networks, and then re-share it on your own. Let customers, partners, and potential candidates see what you’re doing to support your local community.

If your job candidates are community-minded, this could make them want to be a part of it. Also, if your company receives any awards or is named to special lists, like Best Place to Work, be sure to play that up a lot on social media.

3. Identify Potential Candidates

If you can’t attend trade shows or can’t find local candidates to fill your positions, social networks like LinkedIn or Facebook can help you find candidates with the qualifications and education you need.

One way to find potential candidates is to do a search on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook, especially if you’re recruiting for hard-to-fill positions, like certain types of computer programming, engineering, or skilled tradespeople. There are LinkedIn discussion groups, industry-related hashtags, and even forum discussions for particular industries and job types. You’re able to see what your candidates have to say about certain topics, how they deal with certain issues, and ascertain whether they would be a good fit for your company’s environment.

4. Benefit From Trade Shows

If you’re looking for an engineer, where’s the best place to find them in real life? If you attend a lot of trade shows, there’s a good chance your next hire is already there working for a related company. You could network with that someone in hopes they might be interested in a future position or you might even meet some of the new college grads who are attending the show in the hopes of finding a job.

If you’re recruiting at trade shows, send out an email to the likely candidates. You can sometimes obtain the email list of registered attendees from show organizers. Reach out to candidates after the show and ask them to submit a résumé, or if you already have their resume beforehand, schedule an interview to meet with them during the conference.

5. Let Employees Help

Your employees could be your company’s best-recruiting asset. Word-of-mouth is always the most effective marketing tactic.

Employees can help market your company using their social media channels to post openings in a professional way. This might not work for every company, but with a little guidance on what’s allowed and not allowed, they can reach networks of candidates you might have missed otherwise.

Plus, your employees probably know people who have similar jobs to them and would be able to identify viable candidates for you. These are people they went to school with, people they’re in professional associations with, and colleagues they’ve worked with in the past. 

Who could be better to vet a qualified candidate than the people that actually know them?

The Key to Being Effective

These are no means are these the only ways marketing tactics can be used to help with your hiring needs.

In fact, the very first step should be to develop a formal strategy. Such a strategy should utilize at least some research about who you are trying to reach, where are they at online, and what messages will gain their attention. This approach will help determine what tactics will likely be the most effective in attracting qualified candidates.

Taking the time to put together a plan might seem like an added task, especially when you need to hire people now. However, the alternative can be wasting time and resources with unqualified candidates or ones who leave the company less than a year later.

With the right strategy and tools, you could not only weed out poor-quality applicants upfront, but you can also build a pipeline of candidates to contact when new positions become available.

Ron Mattocks
Ron Mattocks was born and raised in rural, Pennsylvania before joining the Army after high school. After serving as Infantry captain, he next worked as an executive at a Fortune 500 real estate and development company. Eventually, Ron switched to marketing, later consulting for companies such as GMC, ConAgra, Mattel, and others. Ron is also a published author and contributor to publications such as The Huffington Post, Disney's Babble, and the TODAY Show. In 2017 Ron co-founded Bull Moose Marketing where he is the VP of Client Strategies. He is also the Board VP of the Crawford County Historical Society and serves on the board for the Crawford County Planning Commission.