Beyond Survey Reveals That Midsize Companies Struggle to Find The Sweet Spot in Recruitment

Red Branch Media, a marketing agency that works predominantly in the HR technology field, and Beyond, The Career Network, today announced results of a national survey of midsize businesses which revealed their biggest recruitment marketing challenges.

The “Recruitment Sweet Spot” survey includes human resource professionals in midsize businesses who shared their thoughts on budgetary challenges, recruitment strategies and employer branding. Twenty-four percent of midsize companies said they lack budgets for advertising, 28% said they lack budgets for compensation negotiation and 18% said they can’t afford a recruiting staff.

“We were surprised at what we found from the survey, particularly as it related to cost,” said Maren Hogan, CEO of Red Branch Media. “HR Practitioners and recruiters are being squeezed by rising costs and are unhappy with the results they are getting from larger job boards--even though there appears to be very little movement away from these job boards. Even more shocking was the dissatisfaction the vast majority reported with everything from candidate quality to ease of use.”

According to the recruitment marketing survey results, mid-size companies are becoming less reliant on job boards, with 92% of HR Pros who participated in the survey revealing that they rely upon social media recruitment to supplement traditional recruitment efforts. In fact, social media is where these midsize companies said they feel most comfortable communicating their employer brand. A lack of confidence in traditional recruitment channels explains why 50% of companies plan to invest more in social media for their recruitment needs.

Three of the biggest struggles midsize businesses face when recruiting talent are: writing effective job descriptions (27%), keeping messaging consistent across all recruitment levels (24%), and accurately representing their employer brand (22%). According to midsize businesses, however, job boards continue to be a great source of quality hires, second only to employee referrals.

“While a budget can certainly help small and midsize businesses compete with industry giants, a strong employer brand could be more crucial than money,” said Joe Weinlick, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Beyond. “Companies need to get better at selling their brand to potential candidates, and they have the tools, considering that it is not uncommon for an HR department to place more ads than marketing. The fact that only 6% of midsize business respondents said that a weak employer brand is their biggest recruitment challenge—yet they still struggle to hire—suggests that employers need to make big changes to their recruitment process.”

For more information about the survey results and analysis, download the PDF.

About Red Branch Media
Red Branch Media is a full-service B2B marketing agency, catering to HR Technology companies and specializing in employer branding with targeted skills in web development, client communications, content creation, management and distribution, public relations, graphic design & branding, social media management, email marketing, strategy and SEO. We know integrated marketing strategy, and we’re proud of it. See what we can do.

About Beyond
Beyond, The Career Network, helps millions of professionals find jobs and advance their careers, while also serving as the premier destination for companies in need of top talent. Founded in 1998, Beyond gives its members a central location to search for millions of jobs and engage with original and curated career content from over 1,400 sources. Beyond’s network of 500+ talent communities use integrated social features to help members discover relevant career news, advice and resources. Beyond was included in Inc. Magazine’s ‘Inc. 500’ list and is a Safeguard Scientifics, Inc. (NYSE: SFE) portfolio company. For more information, please visit: http://www.Beyond.com.

Red Branch Media
4383 Nicholas Street
Suite #203
Omaha, NE 68131

Beyond
1060 First Ave, Suite 100
King of Prussia, PA 19406

Press Contact:
Maren Hogan
Press@redbranchmedia.com
(402) 577-0760

This release was published on openPR.