Talent Tectonics

CHAPTER 5Filling Positions and the Experience of Moving into New Roles

A Wealth of Opportunity Without Any Potential

A group of leaders in an aerospace engineering company had received funding to develop a new generation of products and needed to quickly ramp up their project teams. They worked with a recruiter in HR to define the job requirements, posted the positions on their career site, and got ready to interview candidates. But then no one applied. The pay for the roles was competitive and the project involved the kind of innovative, boundary-breaking work many engineers dream about doing. Why was no one interested?

The recruiter began contacting people who were qualified for the role but had not applied. What they learned was few of these potential candidates knew about the company. The company had been around for decades, but its products involved highly specialized components that did not have a broad market. Plus, it was located in a part of the country not known as a hotspot of engineering innovation. The candidates were interested in the kind of work the company was doing, but they did not know the company did this work. Many did not even know the company existed at all.

This prompted the company to begin a recruiting campaign that was run more by their marketing department than HR. The program used web marketing technology to build awareness in the engineering community about who the company was, what they did, and why they were a great place to work. Targeted ...