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Recruitment in the cement industry: attracting new talent

World Cement,


Turnover can be extremely costly for any industry or organisation. For the cement sector, it can be a deciding factor in achieving a profitable year. When facing challenging conditions, one of the measures management may consider taking is to reduce the number of employees – our most valuable resource. During an employers’ job market, attracting suitable candidates may seem easy but during an employees’ job market it is always difficult. Attracting and retaining top talent is key to reducing turnover, increasing employee morale and generally proving that an organisation does, in fact, consider its human resources to be its most valuable asset. This article will explore some of the factors that are key to attracting top talent in the cement industry.

Marketing

When it comes to recruitment, the cement sector does not always present itself to its best advantage. As an industry, we have reduced our presence on college campuses. We cannot afford to be unknown if we want to encourage talented candidates to apply for careers in the cement industry. A key recommendation is to begin a marketing campaign targeting top engineering colleges. This should include paid internships and entry-level exploratory Engineer-In-Training positions.

Social media

When considering how to recruit young talent, generational tendencies should also be taken into account. Social media and text messaging should be used to reach this new generation of graduates. Both social media and building an employer brand are important areas to consider. My consulting work with start-up companies has given me a unique perspective on employer branding. It is more than a well thought out career page on your website, a few tweets or even a Facebook fan page. In marketing the cement industry online, we have to think about our target audience. The sector’s engineer candidate audience rarely “hangs out” on Facebook. As discussed previously, most do not even have LinkedIn accounts. We have to know where these potential candidates spend time online and make sure that we have content worthy of their very limited time. This requires a well thought out, ongoing marketing campaign explaining why a potential employee would want to work for a particular company. Questions to consider include: What is it like to work at your organisation; How do you differ from other companies; Can you prove through your own internal recommendations that your organisation does value employees? Furthermore, do your current employees refer anyone to you as a good prospect to hire? If not, then it is a good idea to find out why they don’t.

Diversity

Now that we have our well organised career web page, are utilising social media effectively and have a good college campus presence, we can step this up a notch by also making certain that we are advertising our open positions on all of the appropriate career areas for attracting a diverse range of candidates. For example, the AIRS Diversity Resource is a one-stop area for recruiter training and it provides a monthly resource report to help you find top diversity sites.


Written by Robin Harpe, Cemcon International, Inc., USA.

Click here to view the next article from Robin Harpe on ways to retain top talent in the cement sector.

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcement.com/special-reports/15052014/recruitment_in_the_cement_industry_attracting_new_talent_200/

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