How I hired 30% of my staff without spending a single penny !!
When I was about to submit this article on yourstory, I was expected to share my knowledge about marketing since that’s what my profile says about me. But here I am sharing a bit unexpected, offbeat and unconventional story of successfully running an hiring campaign without spending a dime.
Monday October 24, 2016 , 8 min Read
Back in 2008, I was a complete failure at facing interviews as I only started crawling towards the industry. I did not know how to crack interviews or how to communicate with my employer to get hired. But as failures are the stepping stones to success, gradually I was successful in building my castle over the rock of employment by understanding its true nature.
“There is no lack of job in the market. But, the lack lies within us. (this was my problem at the beginning.)”
Fast forward to 2016, I (Kinda) now not only excel in digital marketing but also play a big time support in hiring!
I know there are a few questions in your mind.
Digital marketing and Recruitment, how’s that possible??
Why did you even hire people, isn't it a HRs’ job?
Won't it deviate your career path?
Well, hold your horses Leonidas ! I can explain :)
The beauty of hiring resides in its challenge to HIRE the rightful HEIR. Neither hiring contributes to my salary nor does it provide me with extra perks or cool designations in my organization.
This is solely Because I love HIRING people. Isn’t it a glorious feeling to have powers which benefit others directly? Sounds like a superhero thing, right?? Hiring gives me the same feeling and frankly I am in love with this feeling!
I would like to remember my first encounter with an HR executive. He tried to keep the meeting as less awkward as possible and I admired him for that. He was the first point of contact for any candidate in his firm and was the most important person at that point. He seemed very helpful to every person surrounding him while performing the heavyweight tasks related to his organization. Moreover, he loved communicating with the candidates (new people) and knew the art of making networks.
Hey, wait a minute!! So, What is an HR recruiter?
He is the first point of contact, He likes to communicate and he is entitled to be a hero figure for everyone.
That’s what I want to be in my company!
Back to the story, I completed an year at my start-up and we were planning to expand in terms of employee count. We’re not dealing with Bangalore, Pune or other metro cities where talents are easily accessible but Jaipur, where we have a major threat for a brain drain in every industry. In such case, it becomes very hard to hire the right talent even if you are ready to pay gold! Since we didn’t have any dedicated HR Dept (Remember we were a startup!), Our CEO Rakesh Soni addressed the team and reached out for some suggestions in regards to add new people in our family (Hiring is ON!!!). Suddenly, volcano erupted in my brain by hearing the word “hiring” and I started knitting ideas for hiring process from that very day.
As traditional hiring approach was not something I was looking for, I wanted to plan something which can be executed on a shoestring budget. I wanted my results to stand out, so I decided to run a hiring campaign which was least expensive yet effective enough to get the right talent pool in the History of Hiring. (at least in my organization :D).
So, let’s dig into the real meat.
Job description- most ignored yet important !
This is where most of the HRs miss out. A great Job Description can definitely make a difference in attracting prospective employees towards your organization.
Job description not only describes the job profile but also explains company’s profile and subconsciously reveals our work-culture and how we treat our employees.
Hence, starting from the prime element of recruitment process, I researched a lot on how to make Job Description interesting.
(Note: Having a good Job description is really important to Bon Voyage your recruitment process.)
As other employers were really aggressive on catching new talent, I really needed to stand out from the crowd to grab attention of my prospects. Since Job description is the first touch point for a candidate, I decided to make some interesting JD’s which looked very cool.
I sharpened the list of crucial Skills and made it very relevant.
I added a location to the listing because I planned it to float countrywide.
Not adding location might result in getting irrelevant responses which you won’t expect.
I mentioned multiple contact details with email ids and URL of our website.
dd something funny, light or creative. (So I added, perks include: Slurp as much as Maggie you can, haha: D)
Below is the good example of what a good job description should look like!
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Social media: The best friend for a modern HR
India tops the list of Facebook users and the count is 195 million. This makes Facebook a good platform to spread the word. Hence, I decided to go social regarding my job postings and focused on FB groups and pages related to Jaipur, development, SEO, startups and media. Once joined, and submitting my job posting on these groups, I received huge responses.
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I have added the list of all groups here. Help yourself ;)
●Jaipur Engineers- 34228 members
●Jaipur Jobs- 6501 members
●Delhi jobs- 12403 members
●Jaipur Startups jobs- 2540 members
●Bangalore startup jobs- 15421 members
●Chandigarh helppost- 61859 members
●Delhi Helpost- 38745 members
●Media jobs daily- 138691 members
P.S. You can also search for new groups.
Note: You can also try posting on Twitter, Google Plus and Pinterest (did not work for me though). I got results with LinkedIn.
Linkedin!
I won’t get into the details (saving that for another article ;), but there are a few things you need to do at Linkedin.
●Your professional headline can be something like the image below. Clearly add a note that you are looking for people! Here is how I optimized my Linkedin profile for the recruitment process.
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●Make sure your profile is properly optimized and mention your current job in detail.
●Join relevant groups just like you do for FB groups.
●Get in touch with your former yet trusted colleagues to find the similar potential candidates for your current business as well.
●Make a list of top startups and IT companies in your areas and visit their Linkedin profiles. Then on the right side (see image below)they have a list of Linkedin profiles which have listed the company as their employer. Just visit them one by one, connect with them, message them asking if they are available ;)
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●Some of the profiles also keep their email ids public. Just drop a mail to them with your Job description
and contact details. They will respond back if interested.
Emailing
I gathered all my email contacts and mailed them the job description, our website along with my contact details. Also asked people to forward the mail to the needy ones.(After All, A friend in need is a friend indeed: D!!!)
Cutting the crap
So unconventional methods worked out and it actually piled up a lot of resumes in my mailbox. And I began eliminating some not so good resumes from some really awesome resumes. I received nearly 500 resumes and trust me, it’s an awesome number in context to Jaipur.
Tackling down these resumes was a tough call and I really got to see varieties of resumes which made me think about the art of writing a perfect resume. Resumes are magnets to attract or repel employers.
Hence, some really interesting resumes attracted me while some others were the complete turn offs..
80 candidates were shortlisted and I decided to move further with them. I took some help from my other team members from dedicated departments according to the job profile and prepared some set of questions for telephonic round. It took me five days and I got my final candidates whom I could invite to my office for an aptitude test and a face to face interview.
Some Out of the Box Methods
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This is an example of Airforce advertisement. These types of ads stand out easily. Though personally I feel, this is way too difficult and time consuming
Coming back to my Hiring campaign, I conducted personal interviews.
And here are the End results !!
●We got huge response and till now I receive 2-3 CVs every week despite of the fact that I don’t do campaigning anymore.
●I made some awesome connections with HRs of many other companies and startups.
●This was a great inspiration for my colleagues at LR who later on started replicating the same process resulting into hiring of more than 50% of staff by employees themselves!!
And the best part is that we achieved these results without burning a hole in our pocket :)
Though finding talents on Facebook and LinkedIn may seem an ancient stuff for many people but there is mass, unaware of this treasure. They have hardly explored these mediums and that is the motivating factor for me to pen down this story. Current market demands skilled workforce and these unconventional methods can lead us to those talents in an effective manner. Hope my words provide a sense of encouragement for you to develop your team.
So, Believe in the statement “If I Can Do, You can Too” and Happy Hiring !!!! :)
