Reverse marketing can significantly improve the chances of employment for people with disability. With reverse marketing, you actively market particular job seekers to potential employers, rather than have employers request job seekers with specific skills.
By adopting a proactive approach and making the initial contact with employers, the level of perceived risk to employers is reduced and employers are saved time and the financial costs of advertising and recruiting.
How to approach employers?
It is useful (but not essential) to approach an employer with which your service has a pre-existing relationship, for example:
- an employer who has previously employed a job seeker from your employment service
- an employer you have met by attending local employer meetings.
When a job seeker is referred from a service that an employer trusts, it increases their confidence in hiring that job seeker and helps the employer answer the question 'is this the type of person I want on my team?'
Another method that has proven to be successful involves providing job seekers with profiles of several potential employers, including information about the types of jobs and staff profiles at those companies. Job seekers can then select companies that match their interests and the type of work environment they like. These initial selections can assist in reverse marketing and ensure that job matching is appropriate.
Resources for employers
There are a range of resources that have been designed to help you engage employers and speak with them about the benefits to their business of employing people with disability. The resources include employer experiences, fact sheets and other useful information, see: