Attracting Top Talent in Today’s Manufacturing Landscape: Strategies for Success

The manufacturing industry has been squaring off with one of its toughest hurdles yet: the skills gap. According to recent data, hundreds of thousands of positions remain unfilled, and projections indicate that millions more will need to be filled in the coming decade. This talent gap presents a major challenge for manufacturers looking to maintain and grow their operations.The battle ahead will be even harder with the incoming labor force associating manufacturing with increased outsourcing, automation, and AI. 

Understanding the Current Landscape

• The Talent Gap: The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported hundreds of thousands of unfilled manufacturing positions, a number expected to grow significantly by 2034. This underscores the urgent need for manufacturers to rethink their recruitment strategies.
• Evolving Candidate Expectations: Today’s candidates, especially younger generations, prioritize company culture, values, and community involvement. They seek employers who offer growth opportunities, a positive work environment, and a sense of purpose.

How can manufacturers combat this skills gap and find the next generation of laborers? 

Living in a digital world, traditional hiring tactics like newspaper ads and job fairs just aren’t as effective as they used to be. We now need to get in front of both customers and prospective employees by going where they are: Online. Applicants want to be able to find your business, learn about your organization, and easily apply for a position from their laptop or mobile device.

With a strong online presence and digital strategy, you can showcase to prospective employees that a career in manufacturing can be rewarding, and start receiving applications.

But before you get started, there is one BIG thing to pay attention to – your internal values and culture.

Building a Strong Company Culture

Think about the values and advantages you pitch to potential customers. How do you define them and come up with a competitive edge? Even more importantly, how do you ensure that you’re not just “talking the talk”, but actually walking the walk? Customers expect you to live up to those standards that you’ve pitched, and therefore they become something you eat, sleep and breath.

That same mindset has to be applied to your potential employees. Many companies, regardless of industry, tend to overlook this. Especially smaller or mid-sized companies with little to no HR department, don’t have the dedication to identifying what makes employees stay, or what makes them leave. 

As Michael Jackson would say, you have to look at the man in the mirror. Do you have a great track record for keeping employees motivated and sticking around? Great! Figure out why that is and use it to your advantage.

On the other hand, is your track record to churn and burn employees, in a costly cycle of recruitment and training? There are companies that are so accustomed to this, they anticipate it in their accounting and expenses, and have given up on thinking about a better way. 

If that’s the case, then you need to look inward. Do you want your company to be a place where employees build a career? Do you want to build an environment of loyalty and trust? Then we strongly recommend starting there with a consultant, (we know a great one, here!) who can help you figure out what your gaps are and start rebuilding from the inside out.

In the meantime, here are some things you can do on your own to start this process:

• Define Your Values: Clearly define your company’s core values and communicate them to potential employees.
• Employee Feedback: Conduct stay interviews and gather feedback from current employees to understand what they value and what motivates them.
• Transparent Communication: Foster open communication and create a culture where employees feel valued and heard.
• Highlight Employee Growth: Emphasize employee development programs and opportunities for career advancement.

Modernizing Your Website

Ok, now you can start your promotional efforts! Where do we recommend starting? The cornerstone of your brand – your website. 

Your company’s website is often the first point of contact for potential employees. It’s crucial to create a compelling online presence that showcases your employer brand.

• Dedicated Careers Section: Create a dedicated section on your website that highlights your company culture, employee benefits, and growth opportunities. Don’t just list job postings; tell your company story.
• Showcase Your Culture: Share employee testimonials, photos of company events, and videos that capture your company’s values and work environment.
• Highlight Community Involvement: Emphasize your company’s commitment to giving back to the community. This is increasingly important to today’s job seekers.
• Website Alternatives: If your website lacks a robust careers section, consider using landing page tools like Unbounce or Instapage to create dedicated recruitment pages.

You’ll also want to know if your career page is optimized for mobile. As the rate of applications coming in from mobile devices rises, it’s  vital that both your career page and application forms are mobile-friendly. If you’re unsure, Google offers a free Mobile-Friendly Test.

Simply drop in your URL and let the tool do the rest.

Pro-tip: 60% of job seekers will abandon your online job application form because of length or complexity. Reduce the time it takes to apply to five minutes or less by limiting the number of questions in your online application, and ensure that candidates can upload their resume from a mobile device or on any web browser.

Boost Your SEO

We are asked pretty regularly if SEO matters when it comes to recruitment strategies, especially in the new world of AI and autogenerated search results. Today, SEO is still a key channel for users not just looking for service or equipment solutions, but also for job openings. 

Update Content, Title Tags, & Meta Descriptions

Do you have unique and optimized title tags and meta descriptions? Title tags are displayed on search engine results pages as the clickable headline for a result and are meant to be an accurate description of the page’s content. A great title tag consists of effective keyword usage, branding of your organization, and should try to be maintained to 50-60 recommended characters. Your meta description serves the function of advertising copy below the clickable headline that summarizes your content. It should be readable, compelling, and limited to the recommended 150-300 characters to improve your SEO and increase the click-through rate of your page.

Add Schema

If you search the simple phrase “Manufacturing jobs Milwaukee”, you’ll notice Google’s Job Posting Section that will typically list the top three postings. By adding job posting structured data to your careers page, your positions will be eligible to appear in this section of the Google results page. For optimal positioning, you can integrate with Google by using a third-party job site, like Glassdoor or ZipRecruiter.

Strategic Promotion and Advertising

Paid campaigns allow you to show your ads to your ideal target candidates. You can define your targeting options by keyword (words or phrases your audience would be using to search for employment in manufacturing), by audience (groups of people who have interests, intents, and demographics that align with your ideal candidate), or even through remarketing (showing your ads to candidates who visited your careers page but did not complete an application). By narrowing down your audience to fit your position needs, you’re not only investing your budget on an audience that matters to you, but you’re ultimately leading to better conversions and interactions from the users that see your ads.

Facebook and LinkedIn ads are key for businesses looking to target customers based on specific demographics, but manufacturers can also leverage this to pursue new talent. As a manufacturer looking to close your skill gap, you can narrow down your search by targeting candidates by:

• Education completed
• Current employer
• Job title
• Industry interest
• People who like your page
• Friends of people who like your page
• Website custom audiences (People who visit your website or a specific URL)
• And much more!

Keep in mind that Facebook restricts users from targeting by age, gender, zip code, and certain custom audiences.

Here are some additional ideas for running paid campaigns: 

• Google for Jobs: Ensure your job postings are visible on Google for Jobs by optimizing your website or using an ATS that supports this feature.
• LinkedIn Job Postings: Utilize LinkedIn’s free job posting option or invest in paid advertising for targeted reach.
• Paid Search Advertising: Run targeted paid search campaigns using relevant job search keywords.
• Remarketing: Retarget website visitors who viewed your career pages but didn’t apply.

Digital Marketing Works for Manufacturers

We’ve seen digital marketing do incredible things for growing revenue, and it can do the same for finding new employees. The most important part is the first step – identifying your company values and messaging, what makes your company an awesome place to work (or changing things if it, well, isn’t). Fostering a positive company culture is paramount for both attracting and retaining skilled employees. 

From there, manufacturers must cultivate a robust online presence, using a mix of relevant channels to their audience whether thats social media platforms and/or paid channels. By integrating these strategies, manufacturers can effectively build a strong, future-proof workforce.

Our audit projects aren’t just for leads – we can also hone in on building a comprehensive current state assessment and future roadmap for building a robust recruitment campaign. If that’s a leap you’re ready to take, let’s talk!