Client Success: Improving Seasonal Recruitment Through Social and Display Advertising

Recruiters across every industry are facing constant struggles to recruit qualified applicants and fill essential roles within the organizations they serve. The challenges of this ongoing labor shortage are even more pronounced for businesses that rely on seasonal labor to keep up with periodic surges in demand.

Shipping and supply chain businesses face a particular need for seasonal help during and around the holiday season. When one local distribution center was tasked with attracting applicants to fill 250 seasonal positions within the company, its recruitment leaders knew it couldn’t rely on past recruitment strategies to reel in new hires amid this competitive job market.

To face and overcome these new recruiting challenges, the company contacted Cox Media for help in advertising its hiring opportunities.

The Goal

Seasonal hiring faces unique challenges from the recruitment and hiring practices used at businesses with more consistent year-round payrolls. In addition to the significant volume of roles to fill—all striking the company at once—recruiters are also under pressure to deliver these hires quickly, when the company’s need for seasonal help is at its highest.

For the distribution center, its ability to hire seasonal staff had a direct impact on its daily operations and its workload capacity. Labor shortages would put the company at risk of delayed distribution and fulfillment, decreased customer satisfaction, and lost revenues—both now and in the future.

For this reason, the local distribution center needed a recruitment advertising strategy that could be quickly implemented, and which was also cost-effective to support advertising at scale. The client was eager to drum up as much awareness as possible among potential job-seekers within a 40-mile radius, maximizing its ad impressions to deliver as many applicants as possible.

The Solution

After consulting with the client to understand their needs and advertising goals, Cox Media developed an advertising strategy focused on using social media advertising to build brand awareness, and display banner ads to drive engagement with the company’s job listings.

These ads were targeted to local college students and job-seekers within commuting distance of the distribution center. Ad messaging was also developed to highlight the key benefits of these seasonal roles, including high hourly wages, product discounts, and even paid bus passes to defray the cost of their daily commute.

The Results

At the end of its recruitment ad campaign, the local distribution center reported the following performance results:

• More than 172,000 total ad impressions;
• 266 direct clicks on social and display ads;
• A total CTR of .15 percent
• Successful hiring for all 250 open positions

By embracing a targeted recruitment ad strategy, our client was able to fill all of its open positions despite an ongoing labor shortage. Based on this success and its annual need for seasonal help, the client has already reached out for help with future recruitment efforts.

Struggling to fill open positions within your company? Contact Cox Media today to find out how we can help you meet your hiring goals.