In today’s fast paced world, people have become extremely choosy about the profession they intend to pursue. Even companies have become quite specific and direct about what they need in a suitable candidate. India is a country where excelling in academics and acquiring skills is highly regarded and crucial for every normal household. Everyone is looking for a job but tapping the talent of the right candidate or rather finding the right candidate often becomes a pain for most recruiters. So here we have performed an in-depth analysis on using the appropriate platform for finding the right candidate.
The increasing dominance of the Internet across the world including India, of course, often makes companies consider newspaper as an outdated platform for recruiting candidates. But the truth is that there are still many major organisations that rely heavily on Newspaper ads in order to reach out to the best and the right candidate. There are several advantages that Newspaper Recruitment Advertising possesses over Recruitment through online job portals. In order to establish the effectiveness of Newspaper Recruitment advertising and to evaluate the extent to which it has helped advertisers recruit the most suitable candidates, we have performed a survey and analysed the advantages of Newspaper Advertising for recruitment compared to other platforms.
Analysing the advantages of Recruitment Advertising with Newspapers
Newspapers have been an age old platform for recruiting candidates for different positions across different sectors. Below are the advantages associated with recruitment advertising through Newspapers:
1) Reach Target (or relevant) Audience: One of the most common criteria to leverage maximum responses out of a Newspaper Recruitment ad is to analyse the relevance of the platform for a specific kind of job. Not all kinds of jobs get relevant responses through an online job portal. All government job recruitments are done through newspaper advertisements. Posting their job requirements in a local or a national newspaper is the first and foremost step taken for any kind of recruitment in the public sector organisations. Starting from helpers to executive to senior managers, all are hired through newspaper ads under the government. Knowing this, job seekers interested in Government jobs always know where to look for them ensuring the relevance of the responses. Even major recruitment drives conducted by recognized organisations or MNC are always advertised in a newspaper rather than being posted on online portals.
When we spoke to a recruiter from a public sector bank, he simply told us, “We never put up our job postings on any online portals. It is difficult to describe the job profile online; we cannot specify the qualifications required in detail, we also cannot gauge the seriousness of the applicant through these online portals as we have to contact these applicants after they have applied. Often these applications appear quite random and completely irrelevant. It only lengthens the process for us and increases the work load for public sector recruiters.”
Even for Direct Sales Profile jobs, advertisers prefer to advertise only in newspapers, bringing us to our next advantage of newspaper advertising.
2) Targeting Specific Locations: In case of specific kinds of jobs such as sales oriented profiles, location is of primary importance. Almost all recruiters offering sales specific positions look for local candidates who have proper knowledge of their location. Newspapers are best equipped when it comes to local recruitment advertisements. News dailies are circulated across multiple regions and also published in different languages including both Regional and English. Applicants interested in sales profile often prefer placements within the city to utilize their knowledge about the whereabouts of the city. Regional newspapers or English newspapers which are more popular in specific regions have proven to be highly effective mediums for headhunting sales representatives.
When we asked a recruiter from a reputed Insurance Company, the reason behind advertising the job opening in a newspaper, he said, “ The only reason I chose to advertise in a local English newspaper of Kolkata is that we needed only local candidates from the city who knew the city well and could travel short distances within the city without any hesitation.”
Almost all sales profile recruiters have specified the same reason for advertising in Newspapers, specifically popular regional newspapers with a wide circulation like Anandabazar Patrika and The Telegraph in Kolkata, Hindustan Times and Hindustan in Delhi, Hindu and Dina Thanthi in Chennai etc.
3) Flexibility in Ad Content & Graphics: In case of newspaper ads, as an advertiser, you can always decide on the size, position and content of your recruitment ad and the combination that suits your budget. For small or medium budget recruitment ads, text ads or classified display are suitable options. The text ads are simple run online ads whereas the classified display ads have room for company logos, images custom designs.
For big budget advertisers, display Ads are the best option as they can be sized as per your ad matter / creative content and can be published on specified pages. You can add content you consider necessary for describing details about the job profile as well as expectations from potential candidates.
When we spoke to one of the Major Publication Houses, a spokesperson told us, “Most of the Recruitment Advertisers with a big budget prefer Display Advertisements as it has a much better visibility and scope for creativity and space for work profile related information. Even government job advertisers go for display ads in popular newspapers for positions all over India or even mass recruitment of executives in a specific branch. MNCs opt for display ads and some of these advertisers also go for Recruitment Specific newspaper supplements, published on specific focus days to reach out to a more concentrated and serious audience.”
Such newspapers include Times Ascent by Times of India, Hindu Empower, HT Shine by Hindustan Times and more.
4) Audience Access beyond Technology: It would be quite incorrect to assume that job seekers now look for jobs only through online portals. It would also be incorrect to assume that every job seeker or candidate you are looking for might always have access to the Internet or shall be carrying a smart phone with a net connectivity. There are still many well educated and skilled individuals who either cannot afford a smart phone with Internet or may be too occupied traversing to visit multiple clients. In such situations, a newspaper worth Rs. 1.50-Rs 5.00 maximum is always more handy, accessible and portable. She/he can find a newspaper stand anywhere and even today almost every educated Indian household receives at least one newspaper at home or at work. So with newspaper ads, a recruiter can promote his presence in an offline platform with a wider reach than just an online portal applicable to the more tech savvy applicants. With newspaper ads, you can reach out to a much wider and more versatile audience than through an online job portal.
The following example validates our claim where a Recruitment advertiser working for a security services agency in Gujarat opted for Newspaper advertising to reach out to their target audience. According to him, “In order to reach out to interested security personnel, advertising in a regional language newspaper or a local English newspaper has proved to be much more responsive than posting jobs on online job sites. A security guard may not even know about online job application options, he most certainly may not be as tech savvy as any of the executive level or manager level applicants.”
This fact is applicable in case of many service oriented agencies like electrician services, plumbing services, maid services, nanny services and much more.
5) Targeting Specific Age Group: Newspapers loyalists may be classified according to a specific age-group which ranges from 40-70 and above. This specific age-group falls in the group of avid newspaper readers and many of them are always on the lookout for consultant positions or for top managerial positions. Believe it or not, such job seekers either come through strong networks or through Newspaper Ads. This audience basically comprises of Senior Financial Advisors, Marketing Planning Consultants, Managers, CEOs, COOs and similar professionals who barely access online job portals. Such an audience cannot be approached through an email or an executive level mass email sent to select candidates through an online portal.
Newspaper Ads are the most appropriate way to reach out to these senior position holders. They only rely on the tried and tested method of job search and there aren’t too many reliable options for them other than Networking and Newspaper Advertisements. So for all the head hunters, the job is simplified to a great extent with a subtle and sophisticated job advertisement in a renowned local or national English newspaper like the Times of India or Hindustan Times or even a Hindu.
Most of the head hunters we spoke to, mentioned that “Looking for Senior level consultants, advisors and even a CEO or COO or a General Manager is not an easy task. We have to be very careful as we have to do justice to the position as well as be polite and subtle with the senior profile applicants. Most of them are high profile candidates and we are not nearly as skilled or knowledgeable as they are which is what makes the task really challenging. It is for this reason, we often target popular newspapers and try placing our recruitment ads in the most visible position to at least make them reach out to us. They are busy people and often completely disregard calls from head hunters but a newspaper ad eradicates the need to broach their busy schedules and gives them the space to contact us as per their convenience. Our consultancy always advertises in the newspaper first in case of such hiring.”
So, if you think that you have wasted too much time screening and calling candidates from online job portals, simply publish a Newspaper Ad in an appropriate newspaper with the help of 
for assistance with your newspaper recruitment campaign. Share more details on questions@releasemyad.com or book@releasemyad.com.
