The issue of skills shortages has been with us for quite a long time. Most companies are simply unable to find suitable employees for the relevant positions, and the applicant market seems to have been exhausted. This is why medium-sized companies in particular are currently desperately looking for staff. 🙏🏽

Are you affected by this too? 🤔

In order to attract more applications, you need to increase your visibility and become better known, as potential employees won 't come across your careers page by chance. You're probably wondering how you can draw attention to yourself, as traditional channels such as a job portal, the job center or the regional newspaper are now only partially successful, making it increasingly difficult for companies to reach the right applicants. 📣

Does that sound familiar? 🤨

Then you are like many others. The shortage of skilled workers is noticeable in many sectors and too few skilled workers also means fewer orders being accepted, as there is no capacity available. 

But why does this shortage exist at all?

One reason for this is demographic change, which is causing the number of new recruits to fall sharply. Women are having fewer children than in the past because they are striving for more, both professionally and financially, want to maintain their independence or simply do not want to have children and no longer feel compelled by society to do so. This is why more and more women are deciding against starting a family or are only realizing this at a late stage. 💃

In addition, the attractiveness of some job profiles is decreasing. For generations Y and Z, a certain work-life balance is very important. Gen Y includes everyone born between 1980 and 1995, and Gen Z includes everyone born between 1995 and 2010. Both generations want to enjoy their work, see a purpose in their work and be exposed to less physical strain. This is why plant mechanics, for example, are difficult to find, as they have to work fixed hours, often in shifts and have to perform physically demanding work. 🏭

This situation is a burden for many companies. Some positions remain unfilled for years because there are simply not enough skilled staff. A study by Hays shows that 40% of respondents see the shortage of skilled workers as a long-term situation. That's a lot!

The question now is how to find qualified employees despite the ongoing shortage and most companies have probably already tried many ways. When applications do come in, they are often inadequate because the applicants are not qualified enough or the application is not convincing. 

Have you ever asked yourself whether you are reaching the right target group via these channels? 👥

This is because different channels allow you to achieve greater reach and address different target groups. If you are looking for trainees, for example, it would make more sense to use social media. This may sound a little difficult at first, as many people probably only know ads as advertising - but it also works with job ads. 

But how does it work? How do I use social media correctly and generate interesting content even though I had nothing to do with it before? 💻

Don't worry! Because Viet Pham Tuan answers all these questions in our interview with Fritz. Viet and his business partner Norbert Nagy are the founders and managing directors of Social Natives. Together, they have been supporting medium-sized companies with between 50 and 500 employees in their recruitment efforts since 2017. They are now represented at 3 locations and employ 45 people. Viet explains what is important when recruiting and the benefits of social ads. He is an expert in the field of recruiting, as he has been successfully working in this area for a long time. 💪🏽

Finding qualified applicants is a major challenge in these times. 

But don't panic! You don't have to go through this alone, because social natives support employers by creating videos for you and your company. They place these on social media and place advertisements. In this way, they manage to find employees for you from a wide range of sectors such as production, industry, trades, care and IT. With their support, you can find new talent very quickly! 🎪

Viet uses Memberspot internally for the onboarding and training of his employees - this has enabled him to get them up to speed quickly. He also offers his customers a coaching service, showing them how they can take this task into their own hands. In the online course, they receive step-by-step instructions for greater visibility and more applications. 👀

So if you are just starting out with your company, you have the opportunity to get involved yourself and position yourself as an attractive employer. To do this, you can make an image film and place ads on social networks. Conversely, this means that you have to invest a lot of time. ⏰

→ But it pays off!

Because if you have more employees, you can take on more orders and thus scale your company.

There are many ways to find employees. Viet gives you some tips on how to increase your visibility and attract the right applicants. 🎣

Watch the interview with Viet here:

What challenges do medium-sized companies face?

Your company is getting more and more orders and you want to expand your team. This allows you to scale up and keep growing - but the shortage of skilled workers is slowing you down. As a medium-sized company, the situation is nerve-wracking for you. You want to serve lots of customers who have a need, but you don't have enough employees to meet demand, which means you're losing money. 💰

Your challenges are therefore as follows:

Skills shortage in Germany

Medium-sized companies are the engine of the economy. They and smaller companies make up 99.5% of the German private sector and are extremely important for economic development and prosperity. 🚗

According to the German Economic Institute, the 12-month average number of unfilled vacancies from July 2021 to July 2022 is 537,923. This figure refers to vacancies that could not be filled purely mathematically due to a lack of qualified jobseekers.

The Tagesspiegel reports that there is currently a shortage of around 80,000 to 100,000 drivers, according to the spokesperson of the German Road Haulage, Logistics and Disposal Association (BGL), as of July 2022. This means that too few truck drivers mean that important raw materials, for example, cannot be brought to the production site and supply chains are interrupted. As a result, the production process comes to a standstill and even goes so far that important staple foods are missing from supermarket shelves. ⚙️

The corona crisis is also not entirely innocent of the situation. Many companies have had to lay off good specialists who no longer want to return to their old jobs because they have gained a foothold in other sectors.🦶🏽

In the restaurant and hotel industry alone, 390,000 employees had to start a new job in 2020. This was reported by the Federal Employment Agency. Most of them were placed in logistics, sales and company administration. Many young people also do not want to do an apprenticeship in these areas. It seems that training is not "in vogue" among young people at the moment. 📉

But why is this the case and what alternative do they choose instead?

Fewer and fewer trainees

Many training places could not be filled in various areas. As of 2022, 38,000 training places remained unfilled, and that was only in Baden-Württemberg. This was published by the Baden-Württemberg State Ministry.

According to a study by automotive supplier Continental, only 27% of the young people surveyed (aged 16-22) stated that they were aiming for an apprenticeship. 

→ But why is that? 

Nowadays, young people have higher expectations of employers. They consider the salary to be too meagre and there is often a lack of appreciation in many training institutions. Apprentices also often have to do work that usually has nothing to do with their training and is therefore not enjoyable. 😶

Furthermore, people are often told that you can't advance in your career without a degree, that you don't have a work-life balance or flexible working hours. 

But that is not correct. Even employees with training can advance through professional experience and possibly further training, thus opening up more opportunities to improve their work-life balance and salary.

Young people are our future, so important professions must be made attractive to them. The image of training should be improved in terms of appreciation, as the new generation has different requirements.

Change in the generation

The vacant training places are also a consequence of demographic change. Women are having fewer and fewer children and are deciding not to have a family or are planning to do so much later. It is becoming increasingly common for women not to have a child until they are 30. 

This mainly relates to Generation Y and Z. Generation X, on the other hand, which includes everyone born between 1965 and 1979, was primarily concerned with money, security and prosperity. At first glance, it didn't matter whether work was fun or not. They were influenced by the Cold War and lived in fear that war would break out again. This was particularly true of those born at the beginning of the era. They therefore had different expectations than today's generations. We should therefore focus all the more on Gen Y and Z, as this is the only way to train and recruit a valuable and motivated workforce. 🎯

The visibility of my company

In the current situation, medium-sized companies are finding it difficult to find qualified team members. Many employers are unknown to jobseekers, as they do not come across the careers page by chance. Job portals such as Stepstone or Indeed and the employment agency are not suitable for some positions, and headhunters and recruitment agencies are not always popular. 👥

Employers receive few applications, which are usually not very convincing - the new employee must also be a good fit for the company and the team. For these reasons, some companies have advertised positions that have been vacant for two years. The only way to solve this is to increase awareness.

Social natives have also recognized these major challenges that so many companies are facing and are therefore helping SMEs to find qualified personnel. They shoot videos, create content, optimize your job description and place social ads. 

You've probably heard of social ads, but what exactly are they and what are their benefits? 💰

What are social ads?

Social (media) ads are digital ads that are placed on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. They therefore include all advertising measures on popular social platforms, allowing you to increase your reach and find potential customers for your product. This is because customers are targeted who have already searched for something similar but have not yet come across you. 

The same applies if you want to recruit employees. This ad should not look like an advertisement, otherwise your target group may be put off by it and not click on it. That's why the ad needs to look appealing and serious so that applicants enter your funnel. You've probably already come across the word funnel, but what does it mean?

What is a funnel? 

The "funnel" literally means "funnel". Now the question arises as to what a funnel has to do with your company. 

If you think about it figuratively, you get a lot of potential customers into your funnel through your ads, for example. Once you have completed an order, you have gained a customer, who figuratively runs through the funnel and comes out at the bottom. However, if they lose interest, they jump out of your funnel again. The aim of the funnel is to turn a prospective customer into a valuable customer. 🏁

In our case, we want to attract new employees, i.e. we want to turn job seekers and potential candidates into our employees.

The funnel is based on the AIDA model. This marketing strategy describes the advertising effect on our customer or potential employee. 

Our example is about recruiting employees:

Awareness: With our ad, we want to attract the attention of potential employees. 🚨

Interest: The job advertisement should arouse the employee's interest. 🧐

Desire: The description of the advertisement should turn the jobseeker into an applicant. His professional wishes and requirements should be fulfilled so that he applies. 🤩

Action: Our short application form provides us with specific information from the employee. It should be as short as possible so that the potential employee wants to send their application and doesn't have to put in too much effort. 📝

The applications received are reviewed and sorted. If a suitable application is received, the potential employee can now be contacted and asked for further documents if necessary.

The funnel also shows at which point the potential employee has lost interest and measures can be taken to optimize it. The funnel is suitable for all sectors, even in sectors with a high shortage of skilled workers.

Social media also reaches employees who are not actively looking but are open to new ideas. These candidates end up in your funnel based on their search behavior and history. Algorithms are used to collect and sort huge amounts of data from various platforms. In this way, your social ads are displayed to potential applicants based on their interests. But social ads also have other advantages.☝🏽

Advantages of social ads

Whether job portals or the employment agency, these options can also attract applicants. But for some target groups, companies or specific jobs, these methods are not successful. This is where social ads come into play.

1. Passive candidates achieve 📢

A big advantage of ads is that you also address passive candidates , unlike job portals or the employment agency. They only address people who are actively looking for a job. However, many people with a permanent position are open to better offers or would like to quit their job soon because they no longer like it or the working atmosphere is not right. With social natives, you have the opportunity to reach 80% of the talent that fits your company. 🤸

2. Increase visibility 👓

Paid advertisements on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok make it possible to achieve greater visibility. You can use this attention for job advertisements and thus generate applications. It's best to pick up your target group where they are. With an apprenticeship, you usually want to reach young people. The best way to find them is via Instagram or TikTok. 

As TikTok is very popular at the moment, you can reach a lot of people quickly without investing a lot of money and you can also get a lot of views. Viet managed to generate 27,000 views with a TikTok video, which helped his client recruit three new trainees. You can't reach all potential employees on TikTok, so the question arises as to where else you can get applications. 📃

Can I find all target groups online?

Every target group can be reached via social media - whether young or old. Facebook is usually used to reach the older generations, but they are now also represented on Instagram or LinkedIn. A job advertisement via social ads therefore usually reaches the right people. ⛳

However, you can't reach everyone this way, because not everyone is on social media these days either. Viet's experience shows that a small proportion of his customers are also skeptical about it. These customers do not use the platforms and assume that nobody would click on the ad and that it is not worthwhile. But Viet's experience and figures prove the opposite. As a small company, you are still open to this and probably want to know how you can take this into your own hands. Viet shares his step-by-step guide with you.

Step-by-step instructions  

Would you like to find new employees, but realize that you are currently having little to no success via a "normal" job portal such as Stepstone? 

You probably use these channels because other companies do the same. However, it is important to stand out from other companies. 

Have you already thought about how your company looks to your target group? A good image is essential for attracting new employees and customers, which is why you should also focus on employer branding. This strategic measure is used to radiate attractiveness as an employer. The message of your company is packaged by your employees and managers in a video, for example. This comes across as authentic and gives potential employees a positive first impression. 📖

However, new employees need a different message than your customers, but the process of selling a product is almost identical to the process of attracting new employees. 

You don't believe that? Then read on!

To win customers, you show what makes your product unique and want to bring it as close as possible to your potential customers, for example by filming a promotional clip. There is also the question of where to place your content in order to reach the right target group . It's no different when recruiting employees - you just want to present your company as a product. 🪄

Social natives therefore use three building blocks to generate applications. Viet revealed them to us.

1. What makes your company special? 

Answer these questions for yourself:

• What makes you attractive as an employer? 😉
• What are your benefits? ➕
• What sets you apart from other companies? 🎭
• What is your employer promise? 🤞🏽
• What values and corporate culture do you want to convey? ⭐

You can compare it to marketing a product, because here too you first have to answer the questions mentioned above.

2. How do I communicate this information to my target group?

Once you have answered all the W questions, all you have to do is package them in good content, i.e. the message is packaged in a video. To stand out from the competition, you should make this message as personal as possible. 

This is where employer branding comes into play: for example, let real employees speak in the videos and turn photos of your employees into content, e.g. by introducing your employees. This makes your company appear authentic and unique, so you need to show exactly what makes your company special. ✨

3. Where do I place my content?

Now it's time to think about where your message should be played out. Because you want to reach your target group, so the question arises: 

On which platform do I increase my visibility? 

Depending on the target group, there are different channels that you have to choose individually depending on the job. If you are looking for apprentices, for example, you probably want to reach young people. You therefore need to play out your content on the platform they are on, i.e. platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. In addition, the message is different depending on the position, because you will get the attention of young people with a different message than that of candidates applying for a management position. ✉️

If possible, don't use job portals, even if everyone else does, and choose a different strategy, such as social ads, to stand out. Show what makes you special as an employer and attractive to your target group, so create content that reflects your company and is interesting for applicants. You should think of recruiting as selling your product. When you advertise a product, you also have a specific strategy, and you can apply this approach to your employee search.
How do I find out what makes me special?

Social recruiting for your company

Every company now offers free drinks and snacks or guarantees that responsibility will be transferred. For this reason, you need to emphasize what makes your company unique, including your employee benefits. This is also known as corporate benefits and refers to the additional services and employee benefits provided by the employer.

Employees therefore receive benefits that go beyond their salary. These can be, for example, fuel vouchers, reimbursement of costs for further training or a 13th salary. However, these benefits are no longer so rare and it is therefore time to present yourself differently in the spotlight. This gave rise to the social recruiting method, but what does it mean for you and your company? 🔦

What is social recruiting?

Social recruiting is a strategy for attracting employees based on social networks and their users. User data is collected by an AI in the same way as when a product is advertised on the internet. As with a product, consumer data is collected and individual advertising is displayed. Potential employees receive the job advertisement, regardless of whether they are actively looking or not. However, social recruiting is not just about ads, everything else requires a lot of work, which is why you can get outside support. 

Social Natives can help you generate more applications and reach employees who are not actively looking for a job but are open to offers. This can also help you to approach employees who are actually dissatisfied with their job but cannot motivate themselves to go job hunting. Social Natives provides you with the following points for a successful job search. 🔎

1. Design of the social ads

It is important that your target group immediately sees what your ad is about, which is why it should stand out from the others. It is advisable to make the ad marketing-effective, but you must strike a balance between advertising and job posting.

If the ad looks too much like an advertisement, potential applicants will be skeptical and probably not click on your ad. The text of the job advertisement must be optimized so that your funnel is addressed and the relevant people jump in.

2. Content marketing

In recent years, advertisements on the Internet have worked very well, which has been sufficient for the funnel, i.e. the generation of applicants, but more and more companies are resorting to this strategy. Due to the countless advertisements, the strategy must now be changed. You should focus more on content marketing and branding. 🌱

Social natives also pursue this strategy. They provide insights into the company culture on Instagram and YouTube and regularly post new content. For example, they introduce their employees. When they receive applications, these are usually of a high quality, as applicants have been following them for a long time and viewing their stories on Instagram. This gives them a big advantage over other companies, as the applicant gets the feeling that they have known the company for a long time even before the first personal contact.

These two levers help recruiters enormously, as your ad and your content appeal to your funnel and are therefore also played out to the right people. You need to address several topics that suit you. For example, what your future employees can expect or what working for you is like. 📈

This makes the company transparent to the outside world and gives applicants a good feeling. In the future, more and more medium-sized companies will address this issue and produce content to set themselves apart from the competition.

You can now take it into your own hands, because every employer is different and has its own benefits. You just have to communicate them to the outside world with marketing.
How can I attract more applicants if I now take the reins myself? 🐎

3 tips to help you find the ideal employee

Even as a small company with fewer than 50 employees, you face the challenge of finding new staff. After all, even small companies are not immune to staff shortages, which makes it difficult to expand the company. They lack awareness and have little success in recruiting employees via the usual channels, such as job portals. As a larger company, you face almost the same challenges. 🕵️

But SMEs can also take measures and take the recruiting strategy into their own hands to increase their reach. Because this is the only way someone will come across these companies. It is very rare for someone to come directly to a careers page.
Wondering how the whole thing is supposed to work? 

1. Increase your visibility

It makes sense to place ads to draw attention to yourself. This allows you to increase your visibility and reach potential employees. A big advantage of social ads is that you not only actively target searchers, but also reach passive candidates. 🌍

Your offer will arouse their interest, as they may be dissatisfied with their manager or salary. Once they are interested, you need to take advantage of it quickly.

2. Utilize your visibility quickly 

When the desired people are reached, it is important to act quickly. 

You need to find out how you can build rapport with the new employee. It is best to use a short application form that allows the potential employee to share their interests and skills so that you can quickly assess whether the applicant is suitable. But not only do you save time when reviewing the application, the prospective employee can also quickly click through the form and see whether the company is a good fit for them. 📱

This means that the applicant does not have to prepare documents and send them to the company first and you do not have to read all the applications. Further documents are only requested after the form has been evaluated, which makes the process more efficient for both sides.

3. Applicant management system

By automating the processes in your company, the operational effort is simplified and reduced, and you can also automate the application process. You can do this with an applicant management system that allows you to manage and evaluate applications in one place. 📍

This makes application processes faster and more effective, as everyday tasks such as sending a confirmation of receipt or collecting data from the applicant's CV are automated. The system takes over many processes and supports HR staff in many steps, so it can make sense to integrate such a system into the company. 

These 3 steps sound pretty simple at first, but the difficulty lies in making the company visible. The effort is quite high, because you have to establish your brand and increase your awareness, so potential employees are more likely to convert to you because they already know you. By automating the processes, you can work more effectively and sort out unsuitable applications directly using the application form. 🖨️

The applicant management system can also do this for you, as the system can proceed according to a pattern and sort out the applicant directly if answers or information do not match the pattern. 🤖

Viet's customers are usually at the beginning of the automation of the application process, often all data is stored in an Excel spreadsheet, but this is kept manually and errors are more likely to occur. Automation prevents this, which is why social natives go through the process with their customers step by step. However, they also support customers who already do their own social media recruiting and have already carried out a large part of the automation. In these cases, social natives help optimize ads and get the most out of them.

KPIs of social natives

Now you are faced with the decision of how to attract your new employees. Here's some information about social natives for you. ⚓

They help you to successfully present your brand on social media channels, making you increasingly relevant with the right content on the platforms. They also fine-tune your career page to make it more attractive to applicants. They also optimize advertisements so that you automatically receive high-quality applications. 

Their cost per application generated is between €10 and €100, however most clients are in the €10 to €30 range. This can vary depending on the position, as the higher the shortage, the more difficult it is to find staff. This also increases the effort required to recruit new employees. For example, plant mechanics and site managers are very difficult to find due to the higher qualifications required and the physical demands of the job. 🔧

It is also difficult to lure these employees out of their current companies, as they want to keep their own specialists and are therefore usually already very well paid. On the other hand, call center agents or helpers are easier to find, as these professions are also popular with career starters or career changers. 

How many applicants will be hired in the end?

You're probably wondering how successful social natives are at optimizing companies' strategies and finding the right talent. Their recipe for success is to set your company apart from others and build trust through branding. 🤝🏽

What success do social natives have with their work?

According to Viet, you can roughly assume that you will receive 3 good and 2 very good applications out of 10 - the rest will be of poor quality. In order to find the perfect employee, 10 or more interviews are often conducted to hire one person, i.e. with 20 - 30 leads, i.e. applications, you have one hire. 📄

Conversely, this means that with 20 leads at €20 each, you have spent €400 on an applicant. That doesn't sound like a small investment at first, but you have to keep an eye on your opportunity costs for the search for applicants. After all, the time you lose searching for applicants could have been spent on other projects, which can result in significantly higher costs. 💸

From a business perspective, it would therefore be a good decision to hire an external company for the applications. Nevertheless, it is also possible to tackle the issue yourself if you want to implement it in-house with your team. There are various ways to recruit employees, for example, you can do a creative shoot. But what exactly is it and how do I create it?

What can a creative look like? 

First of all, we need to know what a creative is. This is the content of your ad, i.e. the media that is broadcast on social media platforms or on the website, including images, videos, audio and other formats. They serve as advertising media and are intended to bring your topic closer to your target group. 🌐

It's no different when it comes to recruiting, because it's important to understand what your potential employees and customers need, which is why creatives are also interesting for recruiting.

To improve your public image and raise your profile, we recommend making an image film that you can place on your website or on your social media channels. A film gives applicants a good first impression of your company, as you present yourself transparently to them. ✅

What can this creative look like?

It takes a lot of work to make these videos high quality, so it is possible to get outside support, such as from Social Natives, because they produce videos for you. They have a content team, video/photographers, but also employees who specialize exclusively in TikTok videos, for example. They also work with other companies to have videos professionally recorded. 📷

You can also provide insights into your company yourself, but you should definitely keep these points in mind: 

Integrate your employees into your image film. You can interview them like a testimonial and ask questions such as what do you associate with your work or what benefits do you find best. 🎤

Also have a manager speak, so the applicant gets a first impression of their potential boss. Make the video appealing to your applicants and ensure that it is only 60 to 90 seconds long. You will come across as more authentic to employees and customers if you let real people speak. 🗣️

Things you should avoid, however, are scripted videos, as these look very fake very quickly and don't work well. Videos with voice actors don't usually work well either, as they look inauthentic. ❌

You can compare the creation of content for job advertisements with advertising for customers and you certainly know that this is not always so easy. This means that as a recruiter, it makes sense to work together with the marketing department. But why does this not work in many companies?

Marketing and HR department - Why is a connection so important?

Attracting employees is almost the same as attracting customers. 

That's hard to believe, isn't it? 🤩

But it's true! To win customers, you have to respond to their needs and know what your target group expects from you. After all, the applicants are just people to whom you want to introduce a job and not a product. In a way, you want to sell something, but it's the job. 

Customers want to see testimonials from other customers because it gives them a credible evaluation of your product. This also works with applicants, they want to hear testimonials from future colleagues, so you should definitely let your employees speak in your image film. 💬

The marketing department has a good eye for marketing of this kind. But in medium-sized companies, communication and cooperation between the marketing and HR departments is rare. It is therefore time to break down the strict separation of the departments and create a link so that both departments can communicate with and benefit from each other. 🔗

As you can see, as a company you can take a lot into your own hands. By using ads to draw attention to yourself and also address employees who are not looking for a job, you can raise your profile and use this opportunity to find qualified employees. It is important to know which platforms your target group uses in order to reach them. Of course, you can get outside help with this, so you have more time for more important things. ⏱️

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As you can see, there are ways to get staff. Seize the opportunity and soon the applications will be flying in!

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Would you like to find out more?

Then watch the interview with Fritz and Viet!

Viet is an expert in employee recruitment and explains how you can receive meaningful applications despite a shortage of skilled workers. Finding employees via traditional job portals such as Stepstone or Indeed is difficult for employers for some positions and requirements. The market looks rather lean. Many companies have this problem, which is why we invited Viet to share his knowledge and a lot of added value in this interview.

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We hope you enjoyed reading it. 📚
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Best regards

Your Memberspot Team