The National Weather Service (NWS), an arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), had experienced significant difficulty recruiting qualified candidates to fill the Director’s position of its National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), a Senior Executive Service (SES) position responsible for the oversight and operational aspects for all nine National Weather Centers within the NCEP.
NWS had posted the position on USAJobs for 60 days without any additional advertising support. The posting did not yield any qualified applicants. Because of the urgency to fill this critical SES position, NWS sought help in identifying qualified candidates and guiding them through the complicated application process.
MarCom Group Solution: Innovation & Precision
To find qualified candidates for the NWS position, MarCom Group developed a candidate sourcing strategy in collaboration with the COO of the NWS and HR support experts at our partner, Your Recruiting Company Incorporated (YRCI).
With this information and perspective, MarCom Group implemented its six-part sourcing and marketing communications strategy:
Part 1: Identify Sources of Talent
Part 2: Devise a Marketing Communications Strategy
Part 3: Select Media to Reach Targeted Professionals
Part 4: Develop Creative, Messaging, Ads
Part 5: Build a Campaign Microsite Where All Advertising Is Linked
Part 6: Evaluate Responses, Optimize Ad Deliveries
A Successful Campaign
Our 45-day outreach initiative included digital banner ads and personalized emails that were delivered to qualified candidates in private industry, academia, and other government organizations. We also posted job announcements on the job boards of respected professional associations.
This kind of precise communication delivered impressive results, and the job was filled with a highly qualified candidate:
2,149 Candidate Inquiries
22 Applications
3 Qualified Candidates
A key to the success was an NWS-branded microsite to which all advertising, job postings, and emails were linked. It provided candidates with detailed information about duties and qualifications, direct links to the USAJobs announcement, and contact information to a YRCI HR consultant to help candidates through the SES application process.
ClientNational Weather Service (NWS)