Lillian gambles on recruitment

Rye, NY-based gifts cataloger Lillian Vernon isn’t relying on Lady Luck when it comes to recruiting employees for its Las Vegas call center. Instead, the company printed an ink-jetted help-wanted ad on about 27,000 catalogs that dropped in November to the Las Vegas area.

“It was a low-cost and highly targeted way to reach people who were familiar with our company and love our products,” says spokesman David Hochberg. The company also ink-jetted messages on local catalogs advertising opportunities in its retail outlets and its distribution center in Virginia.

This isn’t the first time that the $264.1 million Lillian Vernon has taken a creative recruitment tactic. In the summer of 1998, the cataloger hired an airplane – complete with a trailing banner – to fly over sunbathers in Virginia Beach, VA, to advertise available positions in its local distribution center.