What a recent recruitment challenge taught us about the value of understanding people before trying to reach them.
When an organization is struggling to fill positions, the natural response is usually to get the opportunity in front of more people. Broaden the audience, increase the advertising, generate more applications. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that approach. Sometimes more exposure is exactly what’s needed.
But what happens when the problem isn’t a lack of applicants? What if the bigger challenge is finding people who are genuinely suited for the work?
It’s a question we’ve spent a good deal of time thinking about through our work with the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice (SCDJJ). Recruiting for an organization like SCDJJ presents some interesting challenges. The work is important, but it isn’t for everyone. Certain positions demand sound judgment, patience, emotional resilience, and the ability to handle difficult situations. And while attracting candidates is important, finding people who understand the demands of the job and are prepared to make a career of it is an entirely different challenge.
That reality led us to look at recruitment a little differently.
One example came through our work on recruitment for SCDJJ’s Juvenile Detention Complex. The positions called for people with a particular set of skills and experience. Security awareness, professional judgment, an understanding of procedures, and the ability to remain composed under pressure were all important.
We could have approached the assignment by targeting people interested in law enforcement, criminal justice, public service, or simply finding a new job. Those audiences certainly had relevance. But as we considered what the positions actually required, another group became particularly interesting to us: People who were already doing this kind of work.
Experienced detention officers, especially those with relevant certifications, represented a very different recruitment opportunity. They already understood the environment. They knew what a difficult shift could look like, what it meant to maintain order, and how quickly circumstances could change. Rather than trying to convince someone they might be suited for the profession, we could focus on people who had already demonstrated many of the qualities the job required.
That may sound obvious in hindsight. But it’s an important distinction, particularly when you consider how much recruitment advertising is built around reaching people who might be interested in a particular type of work.
Of course, identifying an experienced detention officer is one thing. Convincing that person to consider another employer is something else entirely.
And that’s where the audience insight became especially interesting.
Someone considering detention work for the first time may be thinking about training, job security, benefits, or the opportunity to begin a career. An experienced officer has a different set of considerations. They’re not necessarily looking to start over. They may be thinking about whether their experience will be recognized, whether a change would offer something better, or whether leaving a familiar environment is worth the risk.
Those are two very different conversations.
An experienced professional probably doesn’t need an advertisement challenging them to find out whether they have what it takes. They’ve already been doing the work. A more relevant message recognizes that experience and gives them a reason to consider where it might take them next.
This is something I think we sometimes overlook in marketing. We spend considerable time identifying who we want to reach, but perhaps not enough time understanding what’s going on in their lives when we’re trying to reach them.
Demographics and targeting data are useful. They’re essential to developing an effective media strategy. But knowing someone’s age, location, or employment category doesn’t necessarily tell us what would make them consider changing jobs. It doesn’t tell us what they value about their current position, what frustrates them, or what they might be reluctant to give up. And those are the things that often determine whether someone actually responds.
For SCDJJ, this thinking helped us focus the recruitment strategy on the suitability of candidates, not simply the number of applications we could generate. It influenced how we considered the audience, the messages most relevant to them, and the importance of presenting the opportunity in a way that respected both their experience and the realities of the work.
There’s a practical reason for taking this approach, too; recruitment has a cost well beyond the advertising.