When Leadership Matters Most, MarCom Group Delivers the Talent

The National Weather Service (NWS) and an arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) needed help finding a new Director for its National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). This critical leadership position had been vacant for some time and though NWS posted the position on USAJOBS for an extended period, it had not yielded any qualified applicants.

A Senior Executive Service (SES) position, the Director of the NCEP is responsible for oversight, budgeting, and operational aspects for nine national weather centers, including the Aviation Weather Center, Climate Prediction Center, Environmental Modeling Center, National Hurricane Center, Ocean Prediction Center, Storm Prediction Center, Space Weather Prediction Center, Weather Prediction Center, and of course, NCEP Central Operations.

MarCom Group’s customized strategic recruitment campaign resulted in 2,149 inquiries on the campaign microsite and 22 applications. A final selection was made from among the three applicants who were determined to be highly qualified, having met both the SES Executive Core Qualifications and the Professional Technical Core Qualifications. The campaign also delivered an increase in brand recognition and awareness due to the wide net cast to attract qualified candidates.

Here's how we did it:

To identify and reach qualified candidates, MarCom Group developed a candidate sourcing strategy in collaboration with the COO of the NWS and our partner in HR support, the experts at Your Recruiting Company Incorporated (YRCI). With a clear situational perspective, MarCom Group developed and implemented a six-part sourcing and marketing communications strategy.

Part 1: Identify Sources of Talent

  • Professional organizations (American Meteorological Society (AMS), National Weather Association (NWA), etc.)
  • Businesses and other private sector groups
  • Academia
  • Public sector and government agencies
  • Sourced databases

Part 2: Select Media to Reach the Targeted Professionals

  • Digital banner ads delivered to mobile devices, laptops, and tablets
  • Advertising (e.g., social media, professional organizations)
  • LinkedIn, job boards (e.g., AMS, NWA)

Part 3: Develop Creative

  • Create an integrated communications campaign
  • Identify messaging themes, key selling points, and headlines
  • Write supporting copy and develop graphics
  • Design advertising materials (digital display banner ads, email templates, etc.)

Part 4: Build a Campaign Microsite to which all advertising is linked

  • Prepare website content that fully explains the NCEP position
  • Design an engaging layout and user experience
  • Launch site on YRCI server

Part 5: Finalize & Implement the Marketing Communications Strategy

  • Select the most promising sources
  • Establish a schedule for campaign launch and follow through
  • Roll out the outreach campaign

Part 6: Evaluate Response & Optimize

  • Tabulate and analyze response rates and identify trends
  • Optimize advertising delivery algorithms
  • Adjust the schedule, sources, or messaging to improve response

Hiring senior level leaders is never an easy task. Let MarCom Group customize your recruitment strategy, considering federal staffing regulations, to identify highly qualified talent available to meet your unique executive and technical hiring needs.

by Morgan Jemerson

A Strong Digital Heartbeat: the Pulse of Success in a Connected World

Faced with the challenge of establishing and maintaining a database of potential job applicants for its multiple professional and wage grade occupational hiring needs, Air Force Civilian Service (AFCS) recruiters turned to MarCom Group for assistance.

The AFCS employment brand and website (both created and maintained by MarCom Group) were proving effective at attracting interest and conveying job information with compelling videos and messaging. AFCS needed a means to store and maintain potential candidates’ contact information and track their job interests for future engagement. After all, a lot of work had gone into collecting lists of prospects at in-person and virtual recruitment events and through advertising and other promotions.

After extensive consultation to identify the full gamut of AFCS career fields and specific occupations and to pin-point locations of job opportunities, we put our technical and creative teams together to develop and design what we referred to as the Recruitment Opportunity Activity (ROA), a web-enabled platform to collect a pool of interested talent to facilitate hiring efficiencies.

Candidates are invited to subscribe on the AFCS website by providing an email address, their current or preferred occupation, and a preferred work location. Additional related information (e.g., career and education level) may also be added to the subscription form, but Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is avoided.

Mining for Candidates: Using machine-learning principles and related technology, recruiters can use the database to search for potential candidates, matching subscribers to open positions based on their occupation and location preferences. Through an easy-to-use interface, recruiters can then contact subscribers by direct email, offering matching job opportunities and a link to the job opening announcement (JOA) on USAJOBS and an opportunity to engage further with the recruiter.

Automated Job Matching: Fueled by a daily API data feed of job announcements from USAJOBS, the system’s algorithm runs every night, comparing data sets, matching subscriber preferences—occupation, location, and/or other criteria—to the latest open JOAs, and triggering the automatic delivery of thousands of emails per week to subscribers with links to open AFCS JOAs. This process is fully automated. Messaging is fully customizable and usable for special announcements such as job fairs, with the possibility of links to event registration forms and more.

Interested in such a system to enhance your organization’s recruitment efforts? Now branded under the name ConnexYou, our system is available to MarCom Group clients. Reach out to us if your organization could benefit from:

  • Automated delivery of personalized emails matching candidates with your open JOAs to keep your organization top-of-mind in their career search.
  • Building pools of occupation and location-specific candidates and recruiter access for data mining and personalized recruiting.
  • Integration on your career website with customized functionality and fully configurable implementation, compliant with section 508, FISMA, and NIST protocols and requirements.
  • Using system data to analyze ROI on current or past recruitment activities to inform future planning and budgeting.

by bpost