Are you a business that has organized an open house to recruit employees? Have you been considering trying a recruitment open house as part of your recruitment campaigns? Most of what I read is about open houses have been with much larger companies. These larger companies, such as some large pharmaceutical firms, get a huge response from organizing an open house and they generally have more money to spend on them. For a smaller company — is it worth it? Can you organize a good open house without a lot of money and can you get a good turnout?

Small businesses might consider partnering with a jobs fair in your city or a nearby community or  a career day at the local college or university. Use the time to pre-screen individuals for an invitation to an event set up specifically for them at your company location. You could get an idea of how many people might be interested, test the waters without spending a huge amount of money (it generally doesn’t require much investment to be present at the job fair), and improve your chances of reaching those individuals who are considering job change (or who are entering the job market).

Depending on the response you get, you would be in a better position to decide about spending the extra money. You might consider other forms of partnerships that would allow you to reach numbers of job seekers without having to invest a huge amount of money.

The only other way to insure turnout is to do a great public relations effort (i.e. sending out press releases via PRWeb, and blogging) that includes some angle for the local news (or a trade journal) to pick up and thereby spread the word for you - and you probably want to start that several months in advance.

Here are a couple of other ideas that you might want to try out. 

1. Get your employees involved and award a prize for the most referrals. You can award a prize to the employee who brings the most people to the open house. 
2. Visit the various schools, and depending on what kind of employee you seek, you can “volunteer” to address the class and give them interviewing tips. This can get your company name in front of potential employees without competition from some of the larger companies in your area. Be sure to bring some applications to “discuss” and some literature.

One manufacturing company had a very successful open house. It was hosted in a small town location. This may have helped keep overall costs to a minimum. This company purchased a mailing list, produced a mailer/brochure using basic software, and sent an announcement to the entire zip code (approximately 15,000 households). They also placed a two-column width ad in the local classified section of their local newspaper and had one press release published (sent one to each of the three “locals”). They held three different events, all outside of normal business hours to enable commuters to attend one weekend event. Several of the managers and supervisors were on hand to conduct plant tours and they had a few of them assisting in conducting one minute pre-screening interviews for those candidates who had brought resumes. The company handed out applications and scheduled initial phone interviews as well. Over 300 people attended this open house. The company ended up making three full time hires at the time of the events and is subsequently in the process of hiring at least one other person to begin in a couple of months. Additionally, the company, which did little or no local advertising, built community awareness and goodwill. Total cost ended up being less than $8,000.

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