Fishing where the fish are.

To find today's job seekers, hiring managers must retool their recruiting efforts and use a multi-pronged advertising plan.

Finding and retaining talent consistently top the short list of the most pressing challenges facing the apartment industry. As such, these concerns should be a business priority for industry professionals. After all, how can companies grow their service-oriented businesses without growing their talent pools?

Many apartment companies are evaluating and updating their recruiting business models to match the behavior of today's job seeker. Companies have recognized the rapidly growing need to find the talent necessary to meet industry growth prospects, as evidenced by the fact that the National Apartment Association Education Institute (NAAEI) was able to solicit morn than $5 million to address those needs in less than a year.

NAAEI has been tasked with promoting the industry as a viable career path for students coming out of high school and college. Additionally, apartment companies must focus their recruiting efforts on industries that have seen their job bases dwindle over the past 10 years and train those workers for the always-expanding job bases necessary to manage U.S. rental housing.

Where Job Seekers Look

Where does the job seeker go to find his or her next job? The most recent statistics from the Department of Labor show the civilian labor force to number approximately 150 million--including the 7.1 million who are unemployed. Those are some interesting statistics when juxtaposed with the number of visitors to career services and development sites on the Internet. According to a recent report from comScore Media Metrix, visitors to career services and development sites totaled almost 50 million in January 2006. That means that during that month, roughly one-third of the entire workforce visited a career-related site--mid those numbers are growing.

A Pew Research study in 2005 estimated the average number of daily searches of online job postings at morn than 4 million. So for every unemployed job seeker there are at least six morn candidates who am evaluating career alternatives every month. In other words, the mysterious "passive" candidate also is surfing the net for a possible career move.

Today's job seeker relies on the Internet to conduct research and to investigate opportunities in the marketplace. (See Table 1.) Therefore, it is necessary for apartment recruiters to use the Internet as a prominent feature in their recruiting toolboxes.

How to Find Job Candidates

To find today's job seekers, hiring managers must retool their recruiting efforts and use a multi-pronged advertising plan.

First, managers must determine which Web sites reach their target audiences. To do that, give several job sites a test drive, and don't just take a quick spin around the block. Different sites might do well with different skill sets and positions. Also, sites often are geographically focused; while one may do well in the Sunbelt, it might not be as successful in the Midwest, for example.

The biggest challenge for a hiring manager is tracking where the job seeker found the listing. Not unlike tracking sources of renters, it can be a cumbersome process to accurately track the reason a candidate applied for the job. Accurate reporting of source data is vital to developing a recruiting plan.

Rule No. 1 for tracking the source: Don't believe the applicant. Two recent surveys highlight the applicant's unreliability when it comes to articulating the source. A recent survey studied applicants who completed a form from a drop down box on a Web site where they had found a job lead and had subsequently clicked the "apply" button. When asked how they heard about the job, more than 80 percent could not accurately select the Web site. Additionally, a major general employment site recently surveyed a number of job seekers hired by client companies based on applications submitted through the site's system, and again, 80 percent failed to properly identify how they had found the job.

At a recent conference in Chicago, the International Association of Employment Websites (IAEWS) discussed possible solutions to this problem. The association and its members are taking the lead to develop better tools to integrate with various applicant-tracking systems. One suggestion is for companies to use tracking cookies in all job ads and require recruiters and hiring managers to conduct surveys of sites and other resources applicants used to find out about the opportunity.

To attract job applicants, most staffing companies typically use at least one general-purpose job site, at least one niche site focused on the industry or specific profession, a geographically focused niche site and career centers dedicated to the trade association or professional society for the industry. Also, most companies publish all of their open positions on their corporate Web sites.

These tools--along with a stable pool of applicants coming from employee referrals, job fairs, personnel services and print advertising--should allow apartment managers to keep pace with current demands. However, as demographics continue to shift, hiring managers continually will have to adjust the balance and location of their recruitment advertising. In a recent survey of employers and recruiters, the median number of sites used by most companies exceeds five; more than 90 percent of the employers classified Internet job postings as an effective tool; and the median number of hires from the Internet now exceeds 30 percent of all sources. (See Table 2.)

"How to win Them Over

The Internet's greatest asset is also one of its biggest pitfalls when it comes to attracting job candidates. Sifting through the Internet's overflow of available information is often compared to drinking water from a fire hydrant. With all that excess, it is incumbent upon employers to try to deliver a message that will get job seekers' attention. The top-level performers are generally employed and they will need to be convinced of a better opportunity. Hiring managers will not get job seekers' attention by giving them generic ad content and a job description.

1. Ad as Electronic Sales Brochure. Ask some of the company's top performers why they came to work for the company and stress those points in the ad. Tell the job seeker why the company is a great place to work. The marketing department does this with rental ads and property brochures, so use some of that marketing expertise with job ads.

2. Show Them the Money. There is a pay range for every position, and hiring managers need to tell candidates what they can expect to make in the position. Employers can do that by quoting the median wage, the average wage or the starting salary and bonus structure for the job, but job seekers do not want to waste the company's time--and more importantly, job seekers don't want to waste their time--by applying for a job outside of their expected pay range.

3. Tell Them How to Respond. Let job seekers know how to respond and in what format to send their resumes. Give them a couple of options and an alphanumeric job code to use as an identifier. This is also helpful for tracking purposes. Many candidates may not be able to apply the moment they locate the job posting, so it is important to give them options.

4. Acknowledge the Applicant. This is common courtesy. Let candidates know the company has received their applications mad resumes. Hiring managers also should let candidates know what follow-up they can expect. Remember, the company is trying to grow its database of contacts of active and passive job seekers. The No. 1 complaint of job seekers is the lack of follow up from their online applications. Be honest with candidates.

Be a Detective

The bottom line to recruiting is understanding that the Internet is where job seekers go to find information about companies and open positions. NAA's leadership has recognized this need and has developed a Career Center for its members' use. Find out more about the Career Center at www.naahq.org.

At a minimum, to find high-caliber candidates, hiring managers need to look at the search tools the company's recently hired employees used no matter what referral source they disclose. Be a detective. Additionally, monitor the traffic and the candidates who are responding to the company's ads. Pinpoint those sources and invest time, money and effort on these sites. Always be willing to look at alternatives and watch the ever-changing workforce demographics to ensure the company is fishing where the fish are.

John Cullens, CAPS, is the President and Founder of ApartmentCareers.com. ApartmentCareers invested $100, 000 in the "Investing in our Profession" campaign for the NAA Education Institute. Cullens and his team can be reached at 877/856-6668.

Table 1: Job Seekers

How helpful has the Internet been in your
job search?

69.0%   Very helpful
22.3%   Somewhat helpful
 5.6%   No more helpful than other tools
 3.1%   Not helpful

How did you find out about your last job?

34.0%  On an Internet job board
10.0%  Headhunter/personnel service
 9.3%  By networking
 8.7%  Through a referral from an employee of the
       organization
 8.0%  In the print or online edition of a
       newspaper
 3.0%  By starting your own company and creating
       the job
 2.9%  From an ad posted on the employer's
       Web site

How do you expect to find your next job?

69.7%   On an Internet job board
 7.8%   By networking at home or work
 3.9%   Through a call from a headhunter
 3.9%   By sending a resume to the employer
 3.2%   From an ad posted on the employer's Web site
 3.2%   Through a referral from an employee of the
        organization
 1.9%   By networking at social events/venues

How many different employment Web sites do you
visit in an average month?

14.2%   0
14.6%   1
16.2%   2-4
28.4%   5-10
26.7%   10+

Source: WEDDLE's Online Survey of Job Seekers, January June, 2005
Copyright, WEDDLE's LLC, 2005, All Rights Reserved

Table 2: Employers and Recruiters

How many different employment Web sites do you
use for job posting and/or resume searching?

14.0%   0
14.6%   1
14.7%   2-4
56.7%   5+

How helpful has the Internet been in your
recruiting efforts?

26.0%   Very helpful
39.5%   Somewhat helpful
25.1%   No more helpful than
        other tools
 9.4%   Not helpful

What percentage of your new hires is obtained
through an employment Web site?

 4.2%   0
10.8%   1-10%
15.0%   11-20%
 7.2%   21-25%
62.7%   26%+

Source: WEDDLE's Online Survey of Job Seekers, January-June, 2005
Copyright, WEDDLE's LLC, 2005, All Rights Reserved.