Fliers Away

Don't know where to find employees these days? Do what restaurants and dry cleaners have been doing for years: Distribute fliers.

Bulk advertising is one of the latest techniques for finding workers. That's what UPS has been doing since January. The "brown giant" has distributed 292,000 fliers in the greater Chicago area in hopes of recruiting part-time workers. "We needed to look for an innovative way to reach passive job seekers," says UPS' Rob Klage. UPS looked at the ZIP codes of its current workers and distributed fliers to those areas. The results--100 interviews and 36 hires--were so encouraging, UPS plans to continue exploring this recruitment method.

And unlike many other recruitment methods employed by the big guys, distributing fliers is just as easy for small businesses. So what are you waiting for?

Ellen Paris is a Washington, DC, writer and former Forbes magazine staff writer.

This article was originally published in the December 1999 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Fliers Away.