Baltimore News Journal

In today’s changing world, there tends to be confusion in certain industries when it comes to engaging different groups of people in areas where there is true need. Main Street Recruitment and its President Kristin Conteen, have created a new way to market and reach a skilled workforce.  They understand how to reach the right audience and with the right type of message, which is mission critical at a time when worker shortages are continuing to increase. Main Street Recruitment’s team understands that messaging plays a key role in targeting a skilled labor workforce.

Growing up in a blue-collar community, Conteen intimately understands how to modernize and understand the hardships faced by this group.  While other organizations focus across verticals and professional roles, Main Street is hyper-focused on working with a skilled labor workforce. This is a key differentiator when it comes to messaging, outreach, targeting, and marketing with respect to the recruitment process. In today’s market, talent acquisition challenges are consistently growing, while candidates themselves are in the driver’s seat. 

According to Conteen, “long before the pandemic, blue-collar industries were anticipating a shortage of skilled workers due to retiring baby boomers, and a lack of interest from the last two generations.”  After realizing this, “in 2018, our parent company, Company 119, answered the call by applying digital marketing methods to recruitment advertising.  Over the last several years this service offering has evolved to fully encompass recruitment marketing and an HR technology stack that reaches the right audience, with the right message, on the platforms where they truly spend their time, while also making the application process faster and more efficient for candidates than ever before.” 

While recruitment marketing is traditionally a human resources role, it’s ironic that the messaging is what drives candidates to apply for open positions. Employers cannot fill positions simply by word-of-mouth, newspaper advertising, or “old school” means.  To find the best candidates, employers must deploy more modern tactics and position branding initiatives that are highly targeted.  The race to fill positions with top tier candidates is fierce. There is always a continuous race to stay ahead of the competition, so understanding your staffing needs is critical.  

Conteen believes “the ideal candidate can help you develop the right message and target audience, to reach and convert into candidates, and hopefully your future workforce. If you are not able to predict your staffing needs or develop a robust candidate pipeline, filling a job is going to take longer than ever. There are more jobs than people looking for work, job seekers no longer want to move through the arduous task of a job search and interview process, and it is hard to keep the attention of candidates when your competitors are also knocking at their door.”

Archaic recruiters and recruiting systems will continue to post and utilize traditional job search methodologies.  In doing so, their time to fill a position will consistently increase, often reducing corporate productivity and revenue.  In today’s economy, this simply doesn’t make sense.  At the end of the day, companies must determine whether they are looking to fill a single position or to target a long-term potential pool of candidates to fill their current and future needs.