Recruiting strategy needs to be more than just job postings

Job postings can play an important role in finding candidates for specific types of jobs, however, when recruiting in highly competitive markets and for individuals with specific skill sets, it requires much more than a job posting. While I'm no recruiting expert, I've researched, experienced and learned a lot about the field over the past few years because of my involvement in GotVMail's recruiting process. As a result, I've learned a lot about what it takes to find the right candidates.

There are a lot of components to a good recruiting strategy: employment branding, authentic relationships, networking, process, among others, but for this post I am going to focus on creative sourcing techniques found "in the wild" that will put your company in front of the best off-market or "passive candidates."

Here are some examples I have seen that are really creative, ones I'll use to re-formulate our first concept, which will launch soon.

• Red 5 Studios - "Golden ticket"
  In 2007, Red 5 Studios was starting out and wanted to build an amazing team to develop online games. The company identified 100 of the best candidates with the exact skills they needed and sent them a package with a set of five nested boxes and a personalized iPod Shuffle. This generated a great response from prospective candidates, a load of media coverage, and is still referenced on their company website as generating great new candidates because of the enormous buzz it created.
• Fog Creek Software - "Get them in college"
  Joel Spolsky is well known for writing about his views on software, but an Inc. column he wrote in 2007 provides great insight into his process for finding the best college interns and paying them to work on production code and cool things in a true audition for a larger role (aka, a job with Joel after graduation). What I found particularly striking was Spolsky's description of how the company rolls out the red carpet for these interns, and makes sure the experience is amazing.

• Google - "Problem solving billboard"
  Remember how in the movie "Good Will Hunting" the MIT professor leaves a math problem on the blackboard in the hallway outside his classroom, and the janitor, played by Matt Damon, solves it in the middle of the night after washing the floors? This is a great example of a how effective a tactic like the one Google has used a number of times can be: ask for solutions to problems only people with the certain skills can solve, in a very public place. For example, in 2004, Google created a billboard that displayed a problem, and directed people to a website. Once on the website, visitors were then directed to an even harder problem. This was a clever way for Google to find people smart enough to solve such problems, and therefore, qualify them to work for Google.
• TokBox - "TokBox wants Yahoo's best"
  Yahoo announced a layoff of 1,500 people and quick-thinking TokBox, which recently raised money,decided this was an opportunity to get some of the best talent. They parked a taco truck outside of Yahoo to give out free tacos and job applications. This got some attention for sure-- maybe even the unwanted type from Yahoo security (!).

In our current economy, tons of people are looking for jobs. However, some of the best people are still employed, so you want to target that group as well. Creative recruiting becomes more important than ever if you have a staffing need that isn't being met by the traditional job posting. Here at GotVMail, we're trying to come up with a campaign that matches our culture and the type of people we want based in part on the aforementioned examples.

Have you seen a great recruiting campaign like the ones above? I'd like to know about it. Post your comments.