Question
The McKinsey team conducts some analysis that indicates that increasing spending on blanket
advertising (e.g., advertisements/flyers on campus) does not yield any significant increase in
hires.
Q5: Given that increased blanket advertising spending seems to be relatively ineffective,
and the client doesn't want to increase overall costs, what might be some other ideas for
increasing the candidate pool on a specific campus?
A: We are looking for at least a couple of answers like the ones given below:
· Improve/enhance recruiting messages (e.g., understand target candidate group, refocus
message on this group, understand competitive dynamic on campus)
· Utilize referrals (e.g., faculty, alumni)
· Come up with creative ways to target specific departments/clubs of the school
· Rethink advertising spending - while increasing blanket ad spending doesn't seem to
work, advertising might still be the most efficient and effective way to increase the number of
candidates if it is deployed in a more systematic, targeted way
This question is a good one for demonstrating creativity because there's a long list of
possible ideas. Additional insights into how a given idea would be approached and how much it
would cost are helpful.