Globalization through the internet has made competition for every company fiercer than ever before. Even finding creative talent for your team has become challenging and laborious. As with every aspect of your business, creative recruitment nowadays also need strategizing.

On-demand graphic design service Penji takes pride in our team of graphic designers from the top 2% of the industry. Our rigorous creative recruitment process ensures that you get only the best designs. In this article, we’ll show you a few ways to help you find the best and most reliable talents for your creative team.

Creative Recruitment Statistics You Need to Know

Before we get to the creative recruitment strategies, let’s take a look at some statistics. Capitalize on these recruitment stats to help you manage the hiring game with confidence and success:

  • According to Solutions-Driven, each vacancy costs an average company as much as $500 per day. This is due to productivity loss when a role remains unfilled.
  • Career site, Zety, tells us that on average, a corporate job offer attracts as many as 250 resumes. It would take up a large amount of time for you or your HR staff to go through all that. What’s unfortunate is that there’s no guarantee that the best candidate for the job is among those.
  • A Talent Now survey found out that the top candidates stay available for only an average of ten days before they get hired. This means that you can’t take your sweet time when searching for the right person. When you see a potential fit, move swiftly.
  • The same survey also tells us that 73% of candidates are passive job seekers. This means these people are currently employed but wouldn’t actively apply for a job. It’s sad because these might be the exact people you’re looking for. So this begs the question, how do you lure them to your side?
  • Research from Glassdoor tells us that companies that invest in employer branding are three times more likely to hire quality staffing. You don’t have to envy Google, Facebook, or Apple for this. A solid company branding can help project professionalism and stability that attract quality hires.

Related Post: The 6 Assets For Your Brand Identity You Can’t Go Without

These data will show you that creative recruitment needs careful planning. It’s no longer about posting your job ad and waiting for the applications to flood in. With so many companies for creatives to choose from, you need to get ahead of the rest.

Recruiting Campaign Examples for Hiring Creatives

Creative recruitment nowadays is a far cry from say, a decade ago. With information at the tips of our fingers, employers can find talent anywhere and everywhere. And it’s the same for creatives. They can easily find places to work for and some even switch companies as easily, too. 

This dilemma has led to many businesses resorting to various campaign strategies just to find the ideal creative people. Here are a few examples that you can take inspiration from:

Go Social

To find the best creatives for your team, go where they mostly “hang out.” Find the social media platform where you’ll likely find them. Take a cue from banking giant, Goldman Sachs, when they used Spotify to look for people to join their workforce.

creative recruitment

They were targeting to hire millennials and the digital music service is “spot on”. Not only did they make an impact, but the campaign also did more for the bank’s image than expected. The move veered the company away from the stereotypical image of a bank—stiff, standoffish, and constrained.

Do the Unexpected

Take a leaf from Jung von Matt’s book. They are an advertising agency based in Germany that did the unexpected when they hired creatives. And they used the tool, Lorem Ipsum, used by graphic designers to create placeholder text.

creative recruitment

They added a job description and the link to it on the text generator tool. It generated around 220,000 visits to the career website when the designers copied the announcement into their work. 

Host a Creative Recruitment Party

If an event hosting in your office isn’t possible, you can always go online. Host a creative recruitment party for people who are interested in joining your company. Give them a virtual tour of your workplace to give them an idea of what happens in your office.

You can create titles such as “Career Opportunity Day” or “Mass Hiring Party” and post them on all your social media accounts. Have your hiring staff ready for conducting impromptu interviews. This environment provides a comfortable atmosphere for applicants who are on the nervous side. They can clinch that job at the comforts of their homes.

Play Hide and Seek

Apple hid a job advertisement for an engineer on its website. Placing your want ads in hidden messages can create the buzz you need to get quality hires effectively. You’ll see who pays keen attention to details which is a trait that’s very desirable in creative recruitment.

creative recruitment

Another great example of hidden job announcements is from IKEA Australia. The furniture company placed “career-assembling instructions” on every pack of products they sold. They did this to invite applicants from their customer base. 

creative recruitment

The campaign resulted in more than four thousand applications and around 280 new hires. It almost costs free as the instructions were delivered by the customers themselves. 

Do the Impossible

It’s no puzzle that a top ad agency would have nothing but top talents. The bigger question is, how do they find them? Ogilvy & Mather deviated from the norm by asking people to sell them a brick. In their “The World’s Greatest Salesperson” campaign to find people for their sales team, the agency launched a video on YouTube. 

creative recruitment

Dedicating a YouTube channel specifically for the campaign, the agency gave the top contenders a chance to pitch at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. The winner then received a paid fellowship with the agency good for three months.

Related Post: The Ultimate Guide to Find a Graphic Designer

Consider Lateral Hiring

Also known as employee poaching, lateral hiring is the action taken by some companies to hire employees from competing businesses. Volkswagen used this tactic to find mechanics. They sent damaged vehicles to different repair shops across Germany with job ads glued underneath them.

The campaign targeted and cleverly reached the “passive job seekers.” This resulted in hiring quite a number of talents and adding innovation as one of the company traits. If you’re unsure how to get the attention of qualified people from other companies, thinking out of the box helps. 

Chat with the Prospects

You can connect with prospective employees by using technology as what Intel has done. They created a chatbot especially for candidates to answer their questions about the company and learn more about it. You’ll be engaging with them 24/7 so you’re assured that you won’t miss a question from a quality prospect.

creative recruitment

The chatbot, also called the career assistant, has tailored responses that explain answers to the most common questions. It also helps give candidates an idea of what the work culture is at Intel. Additionally, having a chatbot can help you clarify queries of applicants from different time zones.

Create Filters

Dealing with hundreds of resumes can take a huge chunk of your time, not to mention your patience. If only there’s a better way to filter the applications to make hiring easier. In Google’s case, they have found a way to find the best talents without having to check hundreds of CVs.

creative recruitment

They put up a billboard with a mathematical equation on it. The answer led them to a website that gave them this message:

“Nice work. Well done. Mazel tov. You’ve made it to Google Labs and we’re glad you’re here. One thing we learned while building Google is that it’s easier to find what you’re looking for if it comes looking for you. What we’re looking for are the best engineers in the world. And here you are.”

The company got access to mathematical and engineering geniuses instantly. 

Go Over the Top

This may be excessive for most companies, but MGM Grand’s campaign to find new talents is worth mentioning. To fill in the head chef position for their Asian restaurant, the casino gathered staff from their various eateries. They were asked to create a four-course meal using a secret ingredient in under an hour.

creative recruitment

The campaign was inspired by the TV reality show, “Iron Chef.” It proved to be a success. The winner was worth all the hassles that the casino went through as the restaurant’s revenues increased by 400%. 

Penji is the Best Alternative

If this list still doesn’t inspire you to make creative recruitment campaigns of your own, Penji is the best alternative for you. Using our services is as simple as logging in to our dashboard. All you need to do is to send a design request, wait less than 48 hours, and download the project.

We’ve done the hiring process so you won’t have to. Our graphic designers are ready to take on almost all types of designs that you can possibly need. From web design to custom illustrations, we have someone to cover your requirements.

Watch our demo video today to learn more about how Penji can help you avoid the struggles of creative recruitment.

Here are a few of the design categories our designers regularly take on:

  • Digital ads
  • Print ads
  • Logo design
  • Website design
  • App design
  • T-shirt design
  • Social media graphics

Here are some examples of our works:

Social Media Graphics

penji portfolio

Logo Designs

penji portfolio

Custom Illustrations

penji portfolio

Web Designs

penji portfolio

Brand Identity

penji portfolio

Our no-contract/cancel anytime subscription plans allow you to use our services only when you need them. You can cancel anytime the workload gets low. You won’t need to hire additional people during peak seasons. On the other hand, you won’t have to let go of people when the work eases down.

In addition, Penji is also affordable. According to Glassdoor, the average base pay of a graphic designer is $45,677 per year. The rates may slightly be lower when you hire freelancers on a per-project basis. However, hiring freelancers may not be as reliable as you think.

Related Post: Why Hiring a Freelance Web Designer is the WORST Idea

Cases of freelancers abandoning their work for higher-paying projects aren’t uncommon. With Penji, you’ll only be paying our flat monthly rate of as low as $399. Our graphic designers aren’t freelancers. They are our staff and won’t abandon your work. If the designer assigned to you isn’t a good fit, we can always find someone on the team who’s suitable.

Final Thoughts

Creative recruitment is one aspect of a business that many people have trouble dealing with. Traditional methods are slowly becoming passe and you need to come up with ideas to break out of the norm. That’s a great deal of work just to get noticed by the right people.

However, you don’t need to go through all that when you have Penji working for you. Let us be the design assistant that will help you towards growth and success. You’ll get the best designers for the job with only a few clicks of a button.

Sign up for any of Penji’s plans to request your first design project.