Forty percent of contractors reported that they turned down jobs this year because they don't employ enough skilled blue-collar workers. In North Carolina, there are twice as many job openings for truck drivers as there are qualified candidates.
Overall, half of all local employers say they are having difficulty hiring enough blue-collar employees to fulfill the increasing demand from customers.
According to the North Carolina Works Commission, a significant reason why the recruitment efforts of many companies are failing is that they still depend on strategies from a time when qualified candidates were plentiful.
These failing strategies include posting on job boards like Monster and Indeed; publishing employment ads in local newspapers; and pleading on social media pages. Some small business owners are still depending on help-wanted signs.
What many business owners have discovered is that the best way to recruit blue-collar workers is by advertising on Fayetteville radio stations.
Last week, for instance, 94% of all local blue-collar workers tuned-in to a Fayetteville radio station. This is significantly more than watched local TV, read a local newspaper, and logged-on to Spotify or Pandora.
Of particular interest to employers is that recruitment advertising on Fayetteville radio reaches more blue collar workers each week than those who visit an online job board over the course of an entire month.
According to Nielsen, only about 23.5% of Fayetteville adults plan to look for a new job over the next 12 months or are currently unemployed and seeking a job right now. This small portion of the population, though, is responsible for the majority of visitors to online job boards.
The type of people that job boards don't reach, however, are what recruiters call "passive job seekers."
According to the Society For Human Resource Management passive job seekers are "individuals who are currently employed and not actively looking for a new job, but who may be open to a good career opportunity if one came along."
The SHRM website goes on to explain that "many employers target passive job seekers because they are looking for candidates who have positive employment records and who are satisfied with and successful in their work. Employers often target passive job seekers because of the lack of qualified job candidates to fill critical roles. Locating, wooing, and successfully luring passive job seekers are critical for organizations to remain competitive in a tight labor market.
Part of the reason Fayetteville small business owners are so successful finding qualified blue collar candidates with radio advertising is that 94% of these type of workers listen to local stations every week. They are not surfing the internet for job postings.
Statistics and percentages aside, perhaps the most convincing testament to the power of recruiting on local radio is that the largest online job site was also the sixth largest radio advertiser last week. The website Indeed ran as many commercials as McDonald's, Progressive, Walmart, and Geico.
I guess Indeed knows where to advertise for blue collar workers.
