Episode Details

Connect with Dawn Sipley:

Email: dawn@sipleythebest.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawnsipley/

Website: https://www.sipleythebest.com/

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturers' Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Dawn Sipley. With nearly 20 years in HR, nine of those in business ownership, Dawn understands the pressures of entrepreneurship. She began her professional career after graduating from UCF with her business degree in 2004. Since then, she has supported hundreds of companies in central Florida with their hiring needs, either as a corporate recruiter staffing company or consultant. During those years and staffing, the concept of Sipley the Best was born. Dawn, welcome to the show.

Dawn Sipley: Thank you so much for having me today.

Lisa Ryan: Please tell us about your background and the behind-the-scenes of why you focused your career in recruiting and staffing and doing what you're doing.

Dawn Sipley: God had a funny way of bringing me to this market. I thought HR was all about onboarding and new hire paperwork, benefits, and payroll when I was younger. I had no idea. There was this whole human resources human side. I started off in the retail world slowly got into technology recruitment, which led me to the staffing world. I figured out that many people were terrible at hiring in the staffing world, which I found curious because I had a natural talent for it. That's what led me to get into consulting rather than doing it for people. I teach them how to do it and do it well.

Lisa Ryan: So, what are some tips you like to share with people? As discussed before the show, job boards are dead, so people have to be more creative when recruiting. What are some of the things that you're seeing and you're helping others to do?

Dawn Sipley: One big thing is pivoting their marketing messaging to attract new talent. For 70 years, marketing has been used to acquire new customers. Now it needs to be used to obtain new employees. One of the main reasons people leave a position is because they don't feel appreciated or heard. So they are highlighting employee of the month on your social media, talking about your organization's culture, and highlighting the different activities you do to connect and engage with your employees.

Your younger generation of employees are looking at social media and that's how they're identifying potential employers. Using your marketing vehicle to attract new talent is an amazingly thoughtful and productive way to bring in qualified applications and resumes.

Lisa Ryan: So that sounds like that may work in the corporate workplace because, of course, those people are on social media all the time. But if you're talking about manufacturing and the trades, is that working for them too?

Dawn Sipley: It is. HR teams are more and more moving into a marketing role, and less of a let's just posting on the job board and wait for resumes to come in. The job boards are dead in this market. You can post, and you can boost, and you can do those things, but unfortunately, with the technology that we have, they control those algorithms. They won't put your job ad in front of eyeballs unless you're paying money. You don't have control over that, but you do have control over your Facebook, tick-tock, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram - all of those things. Your HR department needs to have a marketing line to it.

Lisa Ryan: So does this entire bringing in like a full-time social media person, or how would you do that in a way that makes the most of your time and your effort when it comes to social media? We could go down that rabbit hole and watch cat videos for the next six hour