Once you’ve recognized that you’re not going to get the recruiting results that you want by doing the same thing you’ve always done, you need to communicate how a new approach - recruitment marketing - is going to serve your company and meet your business goals. You’ve never done recruitment marketing before, so you’ve never had a budget for it. Even though everyone knows something has to change, you’ve got to help people get over their feelings that change is the bigger risk than staying stuck.

HR professionals aren’t the only people thinking about recruiting. Recruiting is on the minds of business owners and executives who are tasked with implementing business strategy because they know that their ability to meet their business goals depends in large part on their ability to attract and retain the right talent.

If you have been involved with hiring for your company, you probably know how this scene plays out. You have a position to fill, and you post the job. Applicants come in and you screen the candidates to get a shortlist, and so on. You end up with a hire that may or may not be a good fit. Time will tell, and hopefully you don’t find yourself filling the same job again in a few months or even a year or two down the road.

No one has to tell you that it’s difficult to find the workers you need. That’s stating the obvious. A low unemployment economy, however, isn’t the only challenge that you need to overcome in order to swing that situation around. Chances are good that if you’re still doing recruiting the way you’ve always done it, that your process is broken. The time to fix it is now and here’s why.

Imagine for a moment that you went to a lake, launched your boat, and started to fish without knowing if the body of water was an environment where fish could thrive. Your results will be hit or miss. You could be super lucky and get a bite with every cast. You could go through the whole day without a single nibble. Maybe you have a bit of success and you bring in a few fish in return for the investment of your time, your equipment and the energy you expended to plan your day and get there.

I was recently introduced to “Jobs Theory” and decided to learn more about it so I have started reading the book, “Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice” by Clayton Christensen. Before I even finished the book, I liked how the author distilled the purpose of business down to a very basic level. Of course, I have applied it to the work that I do as a marketing professional and here’s my insight: marketing does the job of developing and sustaining relationships.

Have you ever made lasagna from scratch? It’s laborious but worth the effort. It’s what I make for my family when I want to love on them with food. Different people have different versions of the recipe, but the basic ingredients of pasta, tomato sauce, seasonings and cheeses mixed with egg remains the same. Once I had homemade lasagna that a friend made with boiled eggs in it. She had the right ingredients in her dish but she cooked them up in a way that changed the results.