Trends in Recruitment Advertising and How to Leverage Them to Support Your Customers

2024 Job Creation Continues While Unemployment Remains Low

As of the end of April, unemployment has been below 4% for 27 months in a row. This represents the longest period of such a rate since the 1960s. Job creation has cooled a bit in 2024, but experts believe this is normalization rather than an indication of trouble. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, labor demand still surpasses supply. As a result, wages have increased by around 4% for low- and middle-wage workers.

It’s not a rosy story for every vertical, market or company. Layoffs have occurred at many organizations. There’s even a tracker for this, which you can view here. The broadcast industry itself hasn’t been immune to this either. Some prominent companies with recent layoffs include Indeed, Google, Assurance and Wells Fargo.

In contrast to these enterprise companies, reducing staff is good news for small businesses. A survey of small and midsize businesses revealed that the majority (87% of midsize and 65% of small) expect revenue growth.

Other components that impact the labor market are inflation and consumer confidence. Inflation means your money doesn’t go as far, which means wages must increase to align with the cost of living. Consumer confidence is a monthly survey of U.S. consumers regarding their attitudes about the economy and spending habits.

This is the big picture of the U.S. economy and may not represent what’s happening in your area. Many cities and regions are seeing investment in new businesses and infrastructure, while others are struggling to stay competitive.

Health Care Recruitment: The Gap Is Growing

One of the continuing recruitment trends is the shortage of health care workers. By 2025, analysts expect a gap of 200,000 to 450,000 registered nurses and 50,000 to 80,000 doctors.

Senior living facilities are also experiencing critical shortages. The American Health Care Association released its 2024 State of the Sector report, which included these statistics:

• 99% of nursing homes have open jobs, including 89% actively recruiting RNs.
• 94% of facilities said recruiting new staff was difficult.
• 72% of organizations said their current workforce level is lower than pre-pandemic staffing.

A new federal rule also changed the minimum staffing requirements for nursing homes. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid enacted it in response to disproportionate deaths from COVID-19 in long-term care facilities. Organizations must provide an average of at least 3.48 hours of care per resident. That’s become a troubling rule to meet for many facilities, so the urgency to hire has become even greater.

Health care is usually a large employer in almost every city because it’s a universal need. Growing rates of chronic diseases and an aging population mean a greater demand for care. Traditional recruitment advertising won’t fulfill this need, so you’ll need to help customers be more creative. You can propose these tactics.

Geofencing campaigns

You can use location-based targeting in several ways by fencing:

• Where people are studying to become health care professionals (e.g., community colleges, technical schools and four-year colleges)
• Competitor employers

Geographic targeting

In addition to fencing, you can target ZIP codes that are losing health care jobs with display and OTT/CTV. The creative could include incentives to relocate.

Title and education targeting

Another option could be LinkedIn ads focusing on people with certain titles and degrees. This group would likely be passive candidates. They aren’t actively looking but may show interest if the messaging is strong and relevant.

Candidate Trends: What Job Seekers Want

There are people out there looking for a new role. They may want to progress their career in the same industry or try something new. They are currently employed full time and don’t have the energy or patience for long recruitment processes.

Talking to your customers about these shifting expectations matters because many people will abandon long and tedious applications. Others won’t even apply if a company doesn’t disclose a salary range. Also, people care about the company’s culture and will no longer tolerate toxicity and disregard for their well-being.

Recruitment advertising can address these challenges head-on and tell candidates that their experience will be better. Using open and transparent language is essential. State that they can apply in five minutes or some other compelling reason to get people to apply. Also, if they click an ad, it should go straight to the application rather than a careers page.

High-Churn Roles Need a New Perspective

Many of your recruitment advertising customers will be in high-churn industries — restaurants, retail and hospitality. For restaurants alone, the National Restaurant Association projected growth of 200,000 jobs. Hospitality and retail are also growing and can be somewhat seasonal. With high competition for these low-wage jobs, how can local businesses keep staffing at a consistent pace?

There isn’t just one answer to this complex problem. You can recommend some campaigns that can help businesses find a new perspective, such as:

• Wage transparency: This is crucial for any company to attract workers.
• Providing benefits: Ask your customer if full-time or part-time employees qualify for any benefits. If so, make those part of the advertising messaging.
• Reimagining the opportunity: Not all these workers will move on to a new career. If there is an opportunity to advance to management, ads should mention it.
• Encouraging quick placement: Businesses don’t need to have rounds of interviews. It slows down the process, and the most in-demand candidates will move on quickly.
• Storytelling: Using recruitment advertising to tell a story can be very compelling. It should be about the company’s history and why people would want to be part of it.