Your Employment Brand Matters

This morning I found a blog post entitled "employment branding fact or fiction" that was written by Jobs2web's Ken Horst aka The Jobs Guy. If you haven't done so already go check it out, it's sure to fire some great discussions. There were some great comments on his recruitingblogs page but unfortunately it looks like the post was taken down.

The post basically insinuates that employer branding is just a way for recruitment marketing agencies to "schnooker money" from talent managers. (Nice phrasing mark)

It also goes on to state...

"If your talent acquisition leaders are getting caught up in employment
branding conversations with their agency, tell them to get their head
examined. There is no greater undelivered promise than “we can
build your employment
brand!”

There are many undelivered promises in our industry (and others) such as guaranteed search engine rankings for your jobs but that's another blog post topic altogether.

My Thoughts

Granted I am FAR from an employment brand expert but isn't employment branding a key component in effectively hiring and retaining quality employees? Don't all companies want to be known as a "great place to work" in the minds of potential candidates? In my opinion a strong employment brand definitely effects a candidates decisions to accept a job offer.

I know from personal experience it has effected my decisions in the past. I get asked all the time about my past employment experiences.

What's Your Opinion?

I'd love to hear from some of the employment branding experts out there like Lizz Pellet or Ryan Estis.

Hopefully their Google alerts will pick this up and they'll stop by the chime in.

The Importance of Hiring a PPC expert

Search engines like Google and Yahoo make it very easy for anyone to set up a Pay-Per-Click campaign. In fact setting up an account takes under 20 minutes. You simply register, input keywords, type in ad copy, throw in your URL and your off and running. But have you ever asked why search engines make this such as easy process?


Search Engines Want Your Money!


Search engines make it easy because they want your money. Granted, most search engines offer a Pay-Per-Click learning center, like Google's but they know that most people don't have the time to learn how they can make their campaigns more effective. It's like offering a mail in rebate, what percentage of folks actually mail in their rebate forms?


Just Because They Make It Easy Doesn't mean You Shouldn't Hire an Expert

By expert I mean someone that's been doing Pay-Per-Click for a while not someone that has read a few articles on the web and has deemed themselves experts. Or even worse, A company that has simply added it to their services because it's the new buzz.

Do More With Less

With the economy the way it is people need to figure out how they can do more with less, less money that is. One way to do that is by re-evaluating who is doing your PPC. Are you really getting everything out of your PPC campaign, could your campaign be better optimized?

There is more to PPC than Meets the Eye

To avoid wasting $$ on PPC you have to understand how the system works, ensure that your ads are not displaying for irrelevant searches like this:

Get a Closer Look

• Sexy Nurse Jobs
  
• Naughty Nurse Jobs

I love you Monster, but if you can't do PPC for yourself, I am not sure that it should be a service you provide to others

Why SEO is a Good investment in a Down Economy

Those of us fortunate enough to be employed during the economic downturn are probably finding a greater daily workload and having to figure out how they can do more with less, less people that is.

Now some may think doing more with less implies doing a lower quality work with fewer resources, I would simply argue it means finding a way to work smarter, improve efficiencies and make your current investments work harder for you.

What does this have to do with SEO you may ask? SEO is lauded as bring one of the most cost effective forms of online marketing. Most, if not all companies have some form of career website that they’ve invested thousands of dollars in. If people not able to find your website, this investment is not living up to its full potential.

3 Reasons Why Companies Should Turn to SEO

1. Marketing Budgets Go First – In a not so hot economy, the advertising and marketing budgets or organization are generally the first to get cut. Knowing that your competition is reducing their marketing spend is the exact reason why increasing your marketing efforts will give you a great advantage. Research by American Business Press shows that companies that continue to market themselves during a down economy grow faster than companies that do not.
   
   
2. No Travel Budget for tradeshows - People that might generally attend out of town tradeshows to scope out new products and services find that their travel budgets have disappeared and are now having to turn to the internet to do their research. Companies out there that are still in a position to buy, but you need shows up in their search results in order to be given consideration. The way to ensure this is by optimizing your website via SEO.
   
   
3. Maximize Your Current Website Investment - “Buy” Instead of “Rent” – With limited budgets it’s important that you laser focus any current and new initiatives, targeting only those tactics that will give you the very best return on investment. One of those most impactful tools available is SEO. By optimizing your career website, you are no longer renting your job traffic from the job boards; you are investing in a long term solution that will allow you to take ownership of the search engine job seeker traffic that was rightfully yours in the first place.

Companies that adapt to the changing conditions will survive and grow. Your business won’t grow by staying stagnant. Investing in SEO now will give you the best chance at pulling ahead of your competition in the future.