Fresh Baked Bread or Stale Saltines?

Think back to the last time you had a great meal....     I´m talking a home-style, comfort food, good for the soul, stick to your ribs, kind of meal.  Chances are, the night started with a warm greeting from a hostess, a comfortable table, and a basket of the most delicious, fresh baked bread you ever had.   And now, when you reminisce about the experience, don´t you always go back to the thought, "Oh...and I LOVE their bread.".  It´s that bread that brings you back time and time again.

Good restaurateurs are a smart crowd.  They know that first impressions and great product presentation are critical to their success.  

We can all learn a lot from our neighborhood restaurant.    Our success as recruiters, like a restaurant´s success, is often dependent on that first impression.     A poorly branded or stale employment website is great if we´re trying to dissuade the best online candidates from knocking on our door.   And those of us relying on 10 year old marketing propaganda to "pump up" our online job postings may be doing more harm than good. 

Today´s candidates are too savvy for a standard job posting.  Remember, they´re the MTV generation....raised with PC´s in their bedrooms and cell phones in their pockets.  Many have never even heard the awful sound of a modem chirping away as it connects to the Internet.  

This new generation of candidates is not just job hunters, they´re job predators.  And they´re the most prolific consumers of Internet information out there.  They race from job posting to job posting until something "tasty" catches their eye.  Your challenge, as a modern online recruiter, is to slow them down, connect with their need to consume, and compel them to learn more about your company. 

Your job is to offer them that basket of bread and invite them inside.

One of the hottest new solutions to help corporate recruiters present their companies when recruiting online is STREAMING VIDEO.  It´s not a new technology, but is one that has only recently caught on with the mainstream.  And it´s time you considered it for the essential tool that it is.

Imagine one of our Generation "Y" job candidates cruising through the endless expanse of job postings.   Monster.... click, click...Hotjobs...click, click....Careerbuilder...click, click, click.     They park themselves on that hard-to-fill job profile of yours for only seconds, not even reading more than a couple lines of content, and then they move on to the next.  Click, click, click.   In 10 seconds, they´ve seen 5 jobs.  In 30 seconds, they´ve passed over 15 great companies, including yours.      Now they hit your main competitor´s job posting and "hey, what´s this...some sort of video?".      

Curious, they click the button.   "Cool, it is a video."    The trap is set; they´ve tasted the bread.  For the next 3 minutes, they´ll be taken on a guided career tour of all that the company has to offer.  They´ll hear from employees, experience the culture, see the resources, and learn about the benefits.  If they´re a fit, they´ll be left feeling comfortable and compelled to apply.  If not, off they´ll go to find a seat at the local sub shop or the $100-a-plate fancy French place in the city.   Point is, if they come to you, they´ll be educated on your business, motivated at the opportunity, and suited to your unique culture.

  Companies like MadDash E-Media have been finding tremendous success helping their corporate clients connect to this new generation of job candidates in this way.  They´ve helped clients as large as Fortune 500 powerhouses and as small as your community hospital.

And today´s solution is designed with your unique HR needs in mind.  Where once, producing a video was very time consuming and intimidating for an HR Manager, now they are fast, efficient, fun, and take very little effort by the client.   Often, they´re bundled with additional functionality like handout CD´s, DVD´s for lobbies and job fairs, and even recruitment television commercials.   They take only a couple of days at the client site and a few short weeks to get up and running.   What´s more, they´re priced very competitively.   It´s a brand new way of approaching video production and it´s perfectly suited for our already constrained budgets.

So, take a good look at your company´s recruitment "menu".  Are you welcoming your "customers" into your establishment?  Are you greeting them with a friendly, comfortable atmosphere and putting fresh bread on the table?

Or are they simply getting a box of stale Saltines?

About MadDash E-Media:  

MadDash E-Media (www.maddash.net) is a national Human Resource focused digital media company.  They provide a wide range of video-based recruitment and orientation solutions that are designed for delivery on the web and within PC-based applications.  Their core service, CareerDash, is a turnkey recruitment solution that includes a 3 minute "About Us" recruitment video, placement on the web(including job boards), and handout CD´s.   It is priced at $899/month, with no hidden costs or upfront fees.

Shannon Price is a Managing Partner for the 5 year old firm.  As a former hiring manager for a Fortune 500 technology company, his extensive recruitment and internet experience has been realized in this innovative service company.  He currently works with MadDash´s more than 100 clients across the country to provide the most effective streaming recruitment video solution in the industry. 

For more information, visit the website at www.maddash.net or call, toll free 1-866-MadDash(623-3274)