Who's Hiring from the Fortune 500 Vol VI

"When I asked my accountant if anything could get me out of this mess I am in now he thought for a long time and said, 'Yes, death would help'." - Robert Morley

In this case, I think we all know the current mess we are in. The good news is that things seem to be looking up in the economy. Recent conversations I've had with recruiters seems to support this (the job market is starting to open up). But, it is a long road back, especially for those who are out of work and still looking. That being said, today's post will focus on the Fortune 500 (skipping those companies that have fallen too far to be considered at this point) where there are more than 1,000 job opportunities. Today's list includes Food Ingredients, Retailing, Financial Services, Insurance and home care products.

• Archer Daniels Midland - Ranked 27 on this year's list, AMD produces food ingredients. Their Careers Page has links on the left hand side for Career Opportunities, Diversity, Life at AMD and more. The right hand side of the page has a download (pdf file) for a "make your mark" career information brochure followed by an events calendar link. The Careers Opportunities page has four choices (US, Canada, South America and Europe jobs). When I checked there career opportunities in the US (87), Canada (3) and Europe (9)



• Target - This retailer is ranked 28 on the list. Their main careers page has links to the left hand side for Search Job Openings, Opportunities at Target, Recruiting events and more. There is a larger search section in the center of the page which provides check boxes for filtering followed by a section for Featured Jobs and Campus Recruiting. The link for Resources for Candidates provides a number of resources which are worth a look. There were 787 career opportunities when I checked the site.



• Johnson & Johnson - Number 29 on the list, J&J is known for a number of consumer products, medical products and more. The J&J site is split between Professionals and Students. You must search for jobs by country (rather than across the entire organization). There are additional links for Workforce Diversity, Career Advancement, Shared values and more. There were 309 job opportunities when I checked the site.



• Morgan Stanley - This financial services giant was on the edge (but did not go over) and has since stabilized in the last few months. Ranked 30 on the list, their careers page has links on the left hand side for Careers and company information. This is followed by a map that is interactive (where you can explore the company by location). The center of the page includes a company overview, followed by links for University, Experienced hires and Branch Opportunities. The right hand side of the page has information on Diversity and profiles on several employees. Clicking on the Experienced Level link leads to a full page where jobs must be searched by division where there were 599 career opportunities.
  
  
• State Farm Insurance Cos. - Ranked 31 on this year's list, State Farm is known, of course, for insurance. Their careers page has two main choices center page: Employee and Agent. The left hand side of the page has links for Mission, Career Center, Newsroom and more.

Good luck in your search.
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Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Google's Universal Personalized Search - Don't Sweat it!

Google announced in a blog post recently that they have opened up their personalized search abilities to everyone. Previously, personalized search only affected users who were signed in to their Gmail or other Google properties. If you we’re signed into Google you would see your email address in the upper right corner. Well, now you know longer need to be signed in.

What the Heck Is Personalized Search?

It means that your search engine results are being modified based on your past history of searching. This is the search engines way of trying to deliver the most relevant results to you…

Example: Two people search on the word ”Beetle”, one gets car results, and the other results for a bug or as another example a search for “apple” could yield results for a fruit or a computer

What’s the Bottom Line?

Purely from an SEO standpoint the bottom line is the listings that get the “clicks” will get the BETTER visibility. If a job seeker searches for jobs and almost always clicks on a result from Indeed, Indeed will be deemed more relevant than monster or other (as an example) for that particular user.

It also means that those who may have achieved decent SEO visibility from having a few keywords in place & a trusted domain are going to have to go back and consider a site stickiness and usability strategy.

Having a “sticky” site just means that people are coming to your site, finding it interesting enough to stick around as well as come back for more – this is accomplished with having a great content & interactive strategy. Not only will you need to have information around benefits, culture and what it’s like to work at your organization but you’ll need to incorporate videos, blogs, Flickr, social media and more! It also means paying more attention to a user’s experience.

In reality though, if you are paying for SEO services and are working with a vendor who knows what they’re doing all of the above elements would have already been part of your SEO strategy or at the very least recommended to you.

My advice – don’t worry about it. Work on creating the best site possible. What’s good for users is good for search engines.

Check out Google’s help center for more details on personalized search, how they customize results and how you can turn off personalization. Alternatively, you can learn more by watching the below video.

Buyer Beware - Do You Know Who Your SEO Experts Are?

I’ve been doing SEO and SEM for over 7 years now and I dedicate A LOT of time keeping up to date on best practices. One of the aspects I am most passionate about is educating people on the capabilities of SEO and SEM as well as what they can expect an SEO/SEM strategy to deliver in terms of return on investment.

Each week, I have the opportunity to talk with many organizations and a lot of time they have already done their home work by researching other SEO/SEM providers. Yesterday was one of those days. I spent a few hours on the phone with someone who had already talked to an “SEO Expert” (not in the recruiting space) and was questioning some of the information they we’re given.

It never ceases to amaze me some of the completely inaccurate information these so called SEO experts are giving out to organizations. Today I wanted to share with you a few of these “untruths”

Two SEO Untruths

SEO Untruth - An SEO provider told me that I needed to completely redo my website because it was done in Dreamweaver. They said that Dreamweaver is not good for search engine visibility, is this true?

My response: This is completely untrue. The use of Dreamweaver in itself is not bad for SEO. In fact, Dreamweaver is a very popular web development tool. It also has some really great features.

SEO Untruth – An SEO provider told me that having my job content on my site was “confusing” the search engines, they suggested putting our jobs on a blog instead.

My Response: Not true, in fact, unless you have technical barriers that are preventing search engines from being able to get to your jobs content (which was NOT a factor in this instance) it would not make sense to move the jobs onto an entirely different URL/website. That other website will just be another online property that you’ll have to devote resources to. When it comes to SEO (Where possible) it’s better to concentrate your time and energy on building one awesome online property.

To Their Defense

Granted I did not talk to these experts directly so I don’t know exactly what they meant by "search engines being confused" or "Dreamweaver being bad for SEO". Maybe they were referring to a technical barrier such as the use of frames or drop down menus and didn’t know enough to explain what the real problem was.

In recruitment, SEO and SEM still remain the buzz and probably will for a while. A few weeks back I wrote a white paper entitled "What C level executives need to know about SEO"

This white paper will give you some important questions to ask potential SEO providers as well as what types of responses you should be hearing back. If ever unsure about what you’ve been told, email me. I am more than happy to provide input based on my experience. SEO in the wrong hands can be detrimental. Just read what happen to BMW Germany a few years back.

Happy Holidays!!!