HR Search Marketing

Minnesota Recruiters Conference #15 - SEO Presentation Followup

2011-11-12T23:25:00.010-06:00

Last Tuesday I spoke at the Minnesota Recruiters conference hosted by General Mills. My presentation was on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but more specifically around the algorithm updates made this year and the impact those changes will have on recruitment SEO strategies. There were three talking points that I received feedback on and wanted to address those areas in further detail here.

ONE - I started my presentation talking about the basic SEO methodology around most of the job optimization/microsite products you see on the market today. Each strategy may be a little different but for the most part there are three main components involved.

This methodology so far has been very successful. When you do a search for a company’s job title, the word “job” and the job location (i.e. technical support analyst job Minnesota) you’ll often find company listings appear in the search results right along with the job boards and aggregators.

This is due to the jobs being optimized and made available to search engines. (job optimization) Having this time of visibility is great for companies because they have the opportunity to drive some of the career related search traffic directly back to their website.

I then went on to say how the latest search engine algorithm updates also known as the Google Panda updates. (Learn more about Google Panda from SEOMoz) Search Engines are now using social signals and visitor usage data when evaluating websites which means we need to start thinking about recruitment SEO strategies in a more holistic way.

If we do not adapt our strategies, it’s only a matter of time when we’ll start to lose traction.

During this part of my presentation I called out two job optimization/SEO microsite vendors to help the audience better associate what I was talking about. I choose the two vendors based on industry popularity. Looking back, I should not have called out anyone specifically but because I did, I want to ensure that my message was not misinterpreted. I was in no way insinuating that either company mentioned was doing SEO incorrectly, based on my screenshot of search results above, it’s pretty clear that the SEO techniques used is having a positive effect.

My main takeaway was that search engines have made significant changes to their algorithms and that anyone in any industry who wants to have search engine visibility needs to embrace this change and start thinking about SEO in a different light.

TWO - I also talked in more detail about how search engines are using user behavior data to evaluate the quality of a website. Some of the areas looked at includes things like:

• Time spent on your site

• Number of return visitors

• Number of page views

• Bounce rate – landing on your home page but not going further

What this means to anyone investing in SEO is that, they should be reviewing the data in their analytics account and analyzing how visitors are interacting with their site and content pages. I brought up the importance of not relying solely on reports that agencies provide as often the data is consolidated.

As someone that has worked for agencies in many different industries for most of my career, I can say that providing consolidated reporting to clients is a common practice. There is so much data available that reports are often customized to tell a meaningful story. However now that search engines are placing such an importance on user interaction, it is essential that you have access to all data points available. I want to make sure this was not misinterpreted as the reporting provided by third parties is inaccurate.

THREE - The last talking point I wanted to address was my comment on source of hire data. There was a rather technical question asked by an audience member around optimizing internal site search. Site search allows users to search for content on your website, it also helps you understand visitor behavior in a whole new level. You’ll see site search used most commonly on ecommerce websites such as BestBuy.com. (below)

My response to this person was that I've not had much experience in this area as unfortunately most of the recruiting industry is not there yet; there are more important data points to tackle first. As an example many organizations still struggle with being able to accurately measure true source of hire.

To expand slightly on my response, in perfect world for each hire, you would be able to track every touch point including things like:

• What content was viewed & when

• What job boards were visited

• All social media interactions

As an example, you might be able to track that the hire came from a Google organic search and therefore SEO is likely taking the credit. However prior to the Google search, the candidate saw a Yahoo banner ad in their email, checked out your company Facebook page and had an online chat conversation with one of your recruiter’s. In this scenario is it really accurate to give SEO 100% of the credit? Not in my book.

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I hope this clears up any confusion there may have been around some of the topics I covered. SEO can be very complex, especially since things change at the speed of light or so it seems. I’m always glad to answers any questions that may come up so feel free to email me.

For those that were not able to attend but are interested in viewing the presentation, here it is below.

Mn recruiters-seo-deck-nov-11

View more presentations from Nicole Bodem

Senior PeopleSoft Developer Job Minneapolis Minnesota, MN

2011-11-04T14:19:00.009-05:00

In the spirit of getting Minnesotans back to work I'm going to be cross posting some job openings that are currently being recruited for in the Twin Cities metro area.

If you're an experienced PeopleSoft Developer looking for a new opportunity in the downtown Minneapolis area check out the following job opening. If it sounds like something you may be interested in and are qualified for, send your resume to: paul@hirecastconsulting.com
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Job Title: Senior PeopleSoft Developer
Job Category: IT / Software
Job Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota - MN

Job Summary: As a Senior PeopleSoft Developer you will be responsible for the design and development of modifications to packaged software and/or custom solutions developed to support specific business needs. You will work closely with business analysts and/or key users, assessing business needs and determining/implementing information technology solutions.

The Main focus is on the maintenance and enhancement of PeopleSoft’s HCM TAMS, Benefits, and Payroll, as well as Finance and Student Financials modules.

All PeopleSoft Developer candidates must have skill in converting specifications and procedures of moderate to high complexity into application and program solutions. Be able to writesand communicate highly complex program specifications and have excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Job Responsibilities:

As a senior PeopleSoft developer you will be responsible for the following:

• Perform analysis, conceptual design, development (coding) and implementation of modifications to purchased applications or custom programs to enhance value to business. Provide expert support of the development after implementation. Apply business and systems knowledge throughout process.

• Participate in the technical design and coding of interfaces, data conversions, reports, and customizations providing the required functionality not supplied by the package.

• Collaborate with internal users, staff members, and information technology colleagues to define detailed customer requirements and system interfaces while assessing value in modification to delivered software versus building new functionality. Translate requirements into technical design solutions.

• Provide technical expertise to team members and mentors junior team members.

• Provide 3rd level production support

• Participate in creating feasibility studies and needs assessments.

• Provide technical information, support and training to internal customers to assist them in performing and improving their daily work processes.

Job Qualifications:

In order to be considered for the Senior PeopleSoft Developer job opportunity you must meet the following qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree from a four year college or university in Computer Science, or equivalent combination of education and experience in area of expertise

• Four (4) or more years experience in application analysis, design, software development, systems implementation and package integration.

• Experience with PeopleSoft HCM HR TAMS and Benefits, Finance, and Student Finance Solutions.

• Experience with PeopleTools, PeopleCode, Application Engine, Component Interfaces, Integration Broker, Equations, SQR.

• Experience with Oracle, SQL databases, and some Java and/or JavaScript.

Job Keywords: peoplesoft developer job, people soft developer career, senior peoplesoft developer job minneapolis, minneapolis minnesota peoplesoft developer job, downtown minneapolis peoplesoft job opportunity.

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If you're interested in speaking about this or other IT job opportunities in Minnesota send your resume or inquiry to:

Paul DeBettignies - VP Recruiting
HireCast Consulting, LLC
paul@hirecastconsulting.com

SEO Contest Ranking Results for Blind Purple Kangaroo

2011-10-26T10:34:00.001-05:00

Blind Purple Kangaroo SEO Contest Results

Drum roll please.............It's been less than 24 hours since the Blind Purple Kangaroo blog post was published and here we are ranking #1 and #2.

Blind Purple Kangaroo – An SEO Contest between Friends

2011-10-26T00:56:00.008-05:00

Purple Kangaroo

Today I got a call from a good friend of mine, Paul DeBettignies; our conversations always go a million different directions as we take turns interrupting each other with our ADHD minds. One of the things we got to talking about today was around SEO and specifically SEO Rankings. In my opinion, many recruiting SEO vendors boast their SEO products and top client search engine rankings but upon review, the majority of these top rankings are for obscure keyword phrases.

Example: ‘Lead Engineer Real Time Embedded Electronics Controls Job’ aka ‘The Blind Purple Kangaroo’.

This type of keyword phrase is pretty useless and effortless to achieve. That approach is not SEO and it’s certainly not adding value for the client.

Achieving SEO Ranking for Blind Purple Kangaroo is Simple

Paul and I decided to have a little SEO Ranking contest amongst ourselves. Our goal is to see just how little SEO work needs to be done to achieve a top ranking for useless words like Blind Purple Kangaroo and in the spirit of competitiveness, to see which one of us is able to do it first.

Purple Kangaroos Don’t Really Exist – But Red Kangaroos Do!

One of the places I want to visit in my lifetime is Australia; one of my many reasons for wanting to visit the land down under is because I’ve always had a fascination with kangaroos. Other than in books such as the Purple Kangaroo by Michael Ian Black, purple kangaroos don’t really exist. However, according to Wikipedia, Red kangaroos do.

SEO Tactics Used to optimize this post for the Phrase: Blind Purple Kangaroo

When building relevancy for any keyword phrase repetition is important and there are a few key areas within a page that search engines deem important. Below find the steps I took to optimize this post for the phrase ‘Blind Purple Kangaroo’

• Included in Title - Blind Purple Kangaroo – An SEO Contest between Friends

• Included within headers - How to Achieve SEO Ranking for Blind Purple Kangaroo

• Repeated throughout the text content - in this case, it’s actually over-optimized

• Mentioned in the image file name – Purple-Kangeroo.jpg

• Used within the image caption– Purple Kangaroo

• Used within link anchor text - Purple Kangaroo Book by Michael Ian Black

• Used in the tagging section - This is similiar to the meta keywords tags

• Mentioned in the blog post URL - /blind-purple-kangaroo-seo-contest.html

• I linked to this post from my LinkedIn Account - Under the websites section

The SEO tactics mentioned above are pretty basic and some even considered old school. Creating and optimizing this post took me less than 10 minutes to do. Now let’s see how long it takes Google to index and rank it.

Is SEO Destroying Your Employment Brand?

2011-09-12T11:28:00.001-05:00

In the last few years, a lot of emphasis has been placed on the importance of corporate career site visibility. So much so, dozens of vendors have popped up promising that their solutions will unlock the door to top search engine rankings. With millions of job related searches conducted monthly on Google alone it only makes sense that organizations would want to adjust their recruitment marketing strategies in order to reach this audience, but could you be destroying your employment brand in the process?

Introducing SEO 3.0

Search engines have a simple goal: to give people the most relevant answers to their questions as quickly as possible. Achieving this goal requires constant tuning of their algorithms. Many of the changes made are usually so subtle that very few people notice them. However, two announcements made this year have forever changed the SEO industry and how recruitment strategists should market employment brands online.

• Google announced they are starting to factor social signals into their organic algorithm. This means that social media and community engagement will have a significant impact on organic search engine visibility.

• A major algorithm update (Panda/Farmer) was pushed. This update is geared towards finding and filtering low quality sites and sites designed solely for SEO purposes. This is an ongoing update scheduled to run every 5 weeks or so.

What Defines a Low Quality Website?

The signals that identify low quality sites are unknown but from what the SEO industry has seen so far some of the considerations seem to include: link to content ratio, over optimization and duplicate content. It’s also important to note that Google has said publicly that even if you have a great site, if you have some pages that are low quality within that site, they can drag down the rankings of the website as a whole.

The big unanswered question right now is if you have low-value content on a sub-domain (careers.companydomain.com) and it gets hit with the Panda filter, is your main domain (company.com) now at risk by association?

It’s a real possibility, if you think about it, part of the benefit of using a sub-domain is that some of the trust established on the main domain carriers over, so why would it not work the other way around? Again, it has yet to be proven with data but it’s definitely something to be aware of. When it comes to something as important as SEO, "outsource it and forget about it" should not be an option. In the eyes of Google and other search engines ultimately, the company is responsible for the actions of SEO vendors.

What this means for Recruitment SEO

In the past recruitment SEO tactics included the classic elements such as developing quality content, making it accessible to search engines, doing keyword research, including those keywords strategically and then building a few links. SEO strategists didn’t have to think much about the experience of the career site or whether you were helping to develop a brand that people are going to love, share, reward and trust. Now we do. Search Engine visibility in the 3.0 world will mean paying attention to things like:

• Usage Data (CTRs, bounce rate, time on site)
• Brand Metrics (brand search volume, SM presence & brand mentions)
• Social Metrics (FB shares, comments, likes, tweets)

Virtually everything you do on the web with your career website can now impact SEO.

The Way Forward

As we move into 2012 it’s not whether you’ll invest in SEO, it’s how. Career website optimization has become too overblown for its own good. The recent changes are clear indicators that it is time to get back to basics, be true to your employment brand and provide content that will resonate with potential candidates while not adding to the clutter.

Job Search Tips, Strategies & Insider Secrets

2011-08-29T11:15:00.010-05:00

The internet has changed a lot about our world including how we look for jobs. Gone are the days of simply being able to rely on traditional job search methods to find opportunities.

If you’re one of the 13.9 million people looking for work, you must go beyond submitting your resume, here’s why.

• Resume Volume - On average, companies receive 100’s or more resumes for every job posting. These candidates are competing for the same job and have a similar if not better skillset than you have. That said, you can imagine how easy it is to get lost in the resume shuffle.

• Resume Screening – Ever wonder where your resume goes once you submit it online? If you’re thinking it goes straight to the hiring manager’s email, think again. Each time you submit a resume online, chances are high that it will sit inside the company’s applicant tracking system (think database) until you are either screened in or screened out.

Most applicant tracking systems have what’s called a resume-scoring engine. This engine basically compares your resume to the job description, looking for keyword matches between words used in the job description and words used in your resume and returns a score between 0 and 10.

i.e. If the company is looking for an online marketing manager that has experience working with global brands and holds an MBA don’t expect your resume to score well if you’ve never held a marketing manager role, don’t have global experience and don’t have an MBA.

Job Search Tips

If you're a job seeker and are reading this blog post, you already have a competitive edge as most don’t realize what’s happening behind the scenes with their resumes. So instead of being frustrated with your job search and feeling bad about not getting an interview for that marketing manager job you thought you were more than qualified for use this information to your advantage and start kicking serious butt!

Customized Your Resume – You never want to rely on one standard resume. Especially now that you understand how resume screening works. Customize your resume and cover letter to fit the position you're applying for. Use the job description as your guide. You certainly don't want to lie just to make your resume more relevant but, where applicable mimic the buzzwords used.

Referrals – According to the 2010 career crossroads source of hire report referrals are the number one source of external hires. Who do you know? Who do your contacts know? Your best shot at having real eyeballs view your resume is by being referred. If you don’t have an “in” to the company, be creative and get one.

Create a LinkedIn Profile – Many employers, recruiters and HR professionals use LinkedIn as their go-to resource for more information about a candidate. Without a profile, you’re missing out on a critical opportunity to showcase your experience.

What Does Google Say About You? – It’s a fact, employers Google candidates, so make sure what they find is presenting you in the best light. You have to start thinking of yourself as a brand and use the internet to promote yourself. Creating a personal brand is something that takes time but you can start by ensuring you have SEO-optimized profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Secondly, consider starting a blog and buying your personal domain name.

Do you have job search tips that you'd like to share? Help get people back to work and post them below.

"He or she who gets hired is not necessarily the one who can do that job best; but, the one who knows the most about how to get hired" – Richard Lathrop

SEO Microsites – Are You Losing Your Competitive Edge?

2011-08-05T14:10:00.005-05:00

A microsite is a smaller, purpose built website that works separately from your main website. Microsites became popular in the recruitment industry a few years back as a way to break a company’s job postings out of ATS jail.

It’s no big secret that job seekers are using Google to find jobs. Prior to the emergence of the SEO microsite, when a job related search was conducted on Google, the candidate was inundated with results from the job boards and job board aggregators.

The initial pitch around recruitment microsites was to reduce job board spend and drive traffic directly to your career website. Although SEO career sites have evolved, their main goal is still the same - search engine visibility for your jobs. The problem is, you could be losing your competitive edge.

Lets Look at the Basic Components of SEO

There are 100's of elements involved within an SEO strategy but the 3 key drivers of success fall into the following buckets.

Accessibility - Can the search engines get to the content and job postings?

Content - Does the site provide engaging & unique content that includes words and phrases a candidate would use to search?

Trust & Value - How old is the domain name?, how many websites are linking to it? Does the website provide a quality experience for the user?

Digging Into The Content - Content is king in the eyes of the search engines and the more you have of it the better. However, that content needs to be unique and valuable to your audience. When a candidate arrives on the microsite from a search engine results page, they’re not going to know or care that the site was designed solely for SEO visibility. That said, they expect to see content around what you have to offer them such as benefits, training etc. Rather than provide this content in a unique way, one of the below strategies is generally utilized.

Content is Copied – Content around benefits, diversity etc. is scraped from the existing corporate career site and added to the SEO microsite. This method actually creates duplicate content and search engines frown upon content being available on multiple websites. Generally, you won’t get SEO credit and quit often the search engines will penalize you with decreased visibility.

Linking to Content – Instead of pulling the content into the SEO microsite, buttons are created on the microsite for benefits, diversity etc. but when a visitor clicks on the button, they’re taken to the corresponding page within the corporate careers website. This strategy is not good for a few reasons.

It takes visitors away from the microsite or at the very least distracts users by opening a new window.

You’re not building up the content & trust of the SEO microsite. If the SEO microsite is not seen as providing value, it will be difficult to drive organic traffic.

Trust & Value – Microsites are built outside of the main corporate domain which means you have to invest time and resources in building up the domain that the microsite resides on. The way to establish trust is by developing a strategy to get quality and topically related sites to link to the microsite. The time involved in this is dependent on the domain strategy used but the majority of the time you’ll have some work to do and it's not fun.

Stop Looking For An Easy Way Out — There Isn't One!

I can't lie; the microsite strategy does work for a limited time. Why wouldn’t it, you’re making something that was once invisible, visible - of course you’ll see some traction. But be warned the recruitment SEO market is getting much more competitive and the search engine algorithms are getting more sophisticated. If everyone is doing the same thing, there is no competitive edge.

At the end of the day, the best investment you can make is incorporating SEO best practices into your own corporate careers site. You have no content worries, the domain is already established and highly trsuted, you don't have to worry about diluting your brand or confusing potential candidates. Choose the road less traveled, you'll get so much more for your money.

Minnesota Recruiters Event - Be Passionate, Be Social, Be Searchable

2011-04-16T20:43:00.001-05:00

After a 12 month absence from the MN recruiter’s events due to traveling, a new job and life in general I was glad to get back into the swing of things. It was nice to catch up with the regulars and even nicer to meet some of the new folks.

The Minnesota Recruiter’s events always draw some amazing speakers who are willing to share what they know selflessly. The lineup included:

• Amy Langer, Co-founder of Salo, Oberon and NumberWorks

• Jim Durbin, Managing Principal of Social Media Talent

• Craig Fisher, VP of Sales for AJAX Social Media & Managing Principal of Social Media Talent

The recurring theme was summed up perfectly by David Gee of staffing talk “Be passionate, social and searchable”

About the Presentations

Amy’s presentation inspired the audience and left them thinking about their contribution to the organizations they work for in a slightly different way. Her main message was to do what you love, because then it doesn’t feel like work.

Jim Durbin described recruiters as being naturally “social rockstars”. He talked about the next wave in social being about building the experience across all company touch points and how recruiters can help lead the way as centers of excellence.

As a recruitment SEO geek, it was Craig Fishers presentation on LinkedIn Profile optimization that I was most excited to hear. I was pretty familiar with the content he covered as I follow his blog regularly. Amongst other things, he talked about the behavioral science behind profile pictures. For women, his advice was to have a picture where you are smiling and looking at the camera and that everyone should keep it consistent with their story and field they work in. (IE: creative people might want a photo that’s a bit more creative)

When he started to talk about SEO, I actually put my blackberry down (which is normally super glued to my hand) Craig gave the audience some good advice (that I agree with) around leveraging anchor text in links and adding keywords, especially location based keywords to your profile. But, he did mention one tip that I have a difference in opinion on.

Slideshare Presentations on Your LinkedIn Profile will NOT help with SEO

Craig’s advice was to create a keyword rich job description in Slideshare and said that once displayed the keywords used in Slideshare will help your LinkedIn Profile Ranking.

My Argument

Granted services like Slideshare allow you to add more depth and dimension to your LinkedIn Presence and enable a person to present additional content that demonstrates value but it will not increase the ranking of your profile within the search engines or within LinkedIn for that matter.

The algorithms that search engines and platforms like LinkedIn use to determine relevancy can only read text. Flash, Images and text embedded within images (if not HTML) are invisible to them. Meaning any keywords embedded inside images or flash elements are invisible and therefore can’t help with building relevancy or ranking.

I’m going to use Craig’s LinkedIn Profile – because it’s a great example of an SEO-optimized profile and because I don’t have the Slideshare application on my LinkedIn page.

The Slideshare thumbnails on the main page are actually images. Once you click on one of the images you are taken to a different page then the main profile page. A quick view of the source code on that page indicates that the embedded Slideshare presentation is Flash based.

Should You Leverage Slideshare?

Absolutely!! But don’t count on the keywords embedded within Slideshare helping your profile rank in search engines or the LinkedIn platform itself.

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Thanks to Paul DeBettignies for putting on another amazing event and to the 2011 event sponsors, Staffing Talk, Oberon and Monster for helping to make them possible.

Recruitment SEO is Like Getting in Shape - It Won't happen Overnight

2011-02-10T16:28:00.000-06:00

I saw a UK blog post comparing SEO to the gym and thought to myself, So true!

SEO is a lot like going to the gym and getting back in shape. A recruitment SEO strategist is like a websites personal trainer. Your job is to get a career website into shape. The more fit the website is to begin with, the less work you have to do and the quicker you'll see results. If your career site has been sitting around doing nothing, you're obviously going to have to do more work and results will take longer.

Every Career Site Has Images....Don't Forget to Optimize them.

2011-02-01T12:06:00.004-06:00

Traditionally, search engine optimization was focused on developing sites that were technically SEO-friendly, writing compelling & meaningful content and building trust through links but these tactics alone are no longer enough on their own. Search results have added videos, news, images and social media updates into the mix.

Companies looking to increase their search engine visibility now need to look to Digital Asset Optimization (DAO). The goal of DAO is to extend the reach of your audio, video and image content beyond the borders of your career site so that you can connect with more candidates and improve employment brand awareness.

Start with Your Career Site Images

Every career site has them, but the benefit in optimizing them for image search is often overlooked. Recruiters and hiring managers are not the only ones turning to Google for background information. Candidates use the web all the time to learn more about the companies they’re interested in. For example, let’s say a candidate does a search for “company name employee volunteer programs” and instead of finding the typical benefits page finds images of your employees smiling and working together at a habitat for humanity project.

3 Image Optimization Tips

Image Format – There are many different image formats, but to get the most out of your image optimization efforts its best to stick with either Jpg or Gif formats.

Descriptive File Names - Make sure that your image file names are descriptive and contain keywords where it makes sense. Search engines are unable to “see” images, using descriptive file names not only allows you to associate keywords with images but helps search engines understand what the image is about.

Don’t Forget The Image Alt Text - Ensure all images have image alt text. Image alt is important from a web accessibility standpoint but accessibility aside; there is also an SEO benefit to alt text. Good alt text would include the words used in the file name (minus the hyphens) if possible. Most importantly, text should describe the image or theme of the image and be no longer then a sentence.

Do you have any tips to add? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Google Instant – What Does it Mean for Recruitment SEO

2010-11-02T13:43:00.004-05:00

Back in September Google unveiled a new product called Google Instant, an AJAX-powered search result enhancement that basically predicts a users' search queries. Once Google Instant Search is activated, you'll see a range of possible search results as soon as you start typing.

The announcement of Google Instant, like any new search engine product launch or algorithm update has caused real buzz in the recruitment SEO community. Some, in fact, are worried it will make SEO irrelevant.

I personally am not impressed with Google instant, after a few days I shut it off as it got overly annoying. My prediction is Instant will die just like Google Buzz did

Search Prediction is not a new concept; Yahoo had instant search back in 2005. To avoid “risk” they launched in on a second property, known as AllTheWeb.

Does Google Instant SEO Irrelevant?

Nope – and those that feel differently, in my opinion, have a fundamental misunderstanding of what SEO is all about.

According to Google, the factors they use to determine search relevance have not changed. Despite what is suggested by Google Instant – the results are still controlled by the same algorithm. Meaning whether a searcher uses instant or not, it won’t affect the results that are displayed.

Sure, users might tweak their search queries slightly but they aren’t going to completely abandon what they were looking for in the first place. Example: If you were looking for IT jobs in Minnesota, you won’t suddenly be interested in IT Jobs in Montana just because it’s something Google suggests.

What Does This Mean for Your Career Website?

• Keep an eye on your analytics – Campaign success is determined through data. That said; you should always be tracking how visitors are finding your career site as well as what they’re doing once they get there. Play close attention to new search terms people might be using to get to your career site or drops in traffic for other keywords.

• Give your visitors what they want - SEO isn’t about creating landing pages for every keyword phrase you’d like visibility for. It’s about creating an engaging, content rich career site that addresses the needs of your candidates.

• Keyword Research Never Ends – Keyword research is an ongoing process. Searchers’ behaviors are always evolving and the recruitment industry is always changing. The suggestion from Google instant gives marketers another tool to use when conducting keyword research. You don’t know estimated search traffic but one has to assume if Google’s suggesting it, it’s a good phrase to use.

Recruitment SEO is an ever evolving and exciting field. In order to stay competitive one must welcome change and adapt strategies accordingly.

Digital Asset Optimization is the new SEO

2010-09-26T20:21:00.007-05:00

I think we’ve all heard the expression, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” which is great advice for any industry; including Search Engine Optimization. Most people understand SEO as being a tactic used to increase a career sites visibility within the search engines. While true, SEO encompasses so much more.

Anything meant for the web can be optimized using SEO techniques this includes but is not limited to PDF’s, Images, Videos, News, Press Releases, Blog Posts and even Social Media Profiles and Status Updates.

Have Your Noticed a Change in the Search Engine Results?

You many have noticed a change in the search engine results. No longer are you just seeing results from websites. Videos, images, news, blogs and local listings have all been incorporated into the organic search engines results. This change gives organizations multiple ways to increase their brand visibility within the search engines as well as own a greater portion of the search share.

SEO is Not Enough

Times are changing. As more organizations witness the value SEO brings to recruiting and incorporates strategies into their online marketing mix, the more competitive the landscape will get. SEO is not going to be enough, basic concepts will still be critical, just not by themselves.

Companies seeking long term search engine success in the ever- evolving search engine results will need to take an inventory of all their digital assets and devise a monetization strategy. Digital asset optimization or DAO matches digital assets with channels of online distribution.

Digital asset optimization not only provides more opportunity to reach candidates. But it enables you to maximize the ROI of assets you’ve already invested in. Making what you already own work better for you is really what digital asset optimization is all about.

SEO Microsites - 5 Things You’re Not Being Told

2010-07-14T15:32:00.020-05:00

I’ve never been a big fan of building microsites for the sole purpose of SEO success. Don’t get me wrong, if your current career site is all done in Flash or if it has other technical barriers preventing search engines from accessing your content, a microsite can be helpful for temporary gains within the search engines results.

Think if a microsite as the technology that breaks a company’s content and jobs out of applicant tracking system (ATS) jail. Due to some earlier successes, service providers seem to be popping up all over the place.

Microsites May Not be the Answer

Does a microsite give you the best chance of improving your search engine
performance? Nope. Today’s SEO “productized” career site solutions only
tackle the technology side of SEO. They are missing the boat on the
human side of SEO which often delivers higher impact results. That aside,
there are other considerations involved.

Renting vs. Owning - Investing in a microsite is similar to renting your home rather owning. When working with today’s career microsites if you decide to leave that particular vendor, the technology that enabled your job content from being found goes with them, leaving you to start all over again. In that respect I guess you could say you’re basically renting your organic job traffic.
Multiple Career Sites - Additional career sites does not necessarily mean you’ll be increasing your visibility, in most cases it’s actually the opposite, more sites to manage and update means you have to split your time & already limited resources across two sites. In my opinion it’s better to concentrate on building one world class career site.
Brand Identity and Audience Engagement Can Suffer - You spend significant corporate energy building positive brand perception and awareness. Brand awareness has a search impact as well. Multiple career sites, especially if developed on a domain other than your companies such as: (www.computer-networking-jobs.com) can be extremely confusing to potential job seekers.

The argument “for” this type of strategy is that it gives you the opportunity to leverage keywords in the domain. While I agree that search engines do take keywords in the URL into account and it is a tactic I actively use, unless the domain has some age/trust to it, the benefit to a site can be negligible. Most microsites are built using newly registered URL’s. A new URL has to put in its time, like every other website – There’s really no short cut to speeding up the process.
Duplicate Content Considerations –Most microsites are sold with a pitch around creating a search engine friendly site that matches the same look and feel of the current company brand. In addition to leveraging your existing design elements, the content from your corporate career site is pulled over and placed within your new microsite. This means you have the same content across multiple websites and search engines frown upon that. Search engines like unique, engaging and fresh content, the more of it the better. Depending on how much content is actually copied over you are at the risk of incurring a search engine penalty.
Building Search Engine Trust through Linkbuilding - A big part of ranking well in search engines continues to be the strength of the external links to the site and not any old link either, but that’s another post altogether. If you maintain multiple sites, then you are diluting that external link value. If five people link to your main site and five people link to your microsite, each site is competing for rankings against the rest of the web with those five links. Instead, you could have one site competing with ten links. Linkbuilding is the most time consuming and frustrating part of SEO, which is why many companies choose not to do it. More sites makes this very important task that much more challenging.z

In Closing

Scenarios will always come up where a microsite strategy may make the most sense, especially if it is being built to accomplish a goal other than SEO. However 95% of the time if the sites goal is specifically to increase SEO visibility, you’ll get your best ROI by investing in your own corporate website. Your employment brand stays in tack; you can leverage the search engine trust from your corporate website URL and last but not least, most SEO work completed stays with you.

HOT TOPIC: Social Media, Think You Don't Need It, Think Again

2010-06-03T18:22:00.003-05:00

I think this image tells a pretty powerful story all on it's own.

Source = Hitwise, top 20 sites and search engines.

The Importance of Increasing Career Website Engagement

2010-05-27T14:26:00.003-05:00

Candidate engagement is a phrase that we hear routinely when it comes to recruiting and corporate career websites. But now more than ever it’s important that employers embrace new tools, technologies and media to build engagement levels. Why?

Google Now Uses “User Engagement” in their Ranking Algorithm

SEO geeks like me that analyze the search engine results day in and day out are starting to see signs of importance placed on “user engagement”. Google wants to know the real quality of a page from the perspective of the target audience it was designed for. By watching what users are doing on sites, a search engine can assign a value to things visitors do and don’t do. Armed with that kind of information they can gauge the value of a website.

What Engagement Metrics Are Tracked?

I am sure that there are more metrics being tracked but as far as the world of SEO can tell. Google is paying special attention to:

• Voting
• Commenting
• Length of stay on a particular page
• Bounce rate
• The Quality of sites linking to you

What Now?

Google’s main goal is to display high quality results that are relevant for their users search queries. One way they measure quality is by watching how people surf the web. They judge what people like and don’t like via voting, commenting, time spent on site, bounce rate and the quality of sites linking to your career site.

Your goal is to create engaging content that candidates will want to read, watch, listen to and interact with via voting, commenting, subscribing downloading and more! At the end of the day, the more you can get visitors to interact with your brand and website, the more “bonus” points you’ll get in the land of SEO and ranking algorithms.

Recruitment SEO Tactics That Are Total BS

2010-04-28T19:16:00.004-05:00

I don’t think anyone would argue that when the SEO industry was born (Over a decade ago) it was easy to achieve search engine visibility with tactics that are now considered questionable. As search engines evolved many of these tactics became outdated and basically useless in determining search engine relevancy. Sadly, so called SEO experts are still indorsing these as legitimate SEO tactics and selling these outdated tactics to companies for big bucks. There are a lot of outdated SEO tactics around that are still being used today, below are a list of the four most common.

Most Commonly Used Outdated SEO Tactics

Say “No” to Keyword Stuffing - Back in the 1990’s search engines were not as smart and sophisticated as they are today. The more times a keyword appeared on the page the better visibility that page would have. That said, people would aggressively repeat keywords within the content. If as a reader you can point out the SEO optimizing it’s often a sign that it’s been over optimized.

Blog Comment Spamming – Have you ever read a blog post and then saw a comment completely out of topic such as “nice post, we sell orange trinkets” This is blog comment spamming. Thanks to the “no follow link tags” Most of the time search engines don’t count these type of links anyway but they especially won’t count them if your comment is not considered as adding value to the post. If you write thought-provoking comments you are more likely to naturally generate editorial links that will count towards building search engine trust.

Search Engine Submission – I still can’t get over of the number of companies that charge for “search engine submission” You don’t need to manually submit your website to the search engines in order for them to find your website. Search engines will find and index your content all on their own. Paying a company for search engine submission is worthless. If you still want to submit your website, do it on your own – it takes 3 seconds and its free – below are the links.

Meta Keywords Tag – There was a time when the meta keywords tag held a lot of weight when determining search engine relevancy. However site owners, webmasters and SEO’s that were into “gaming” the system abused this tag by including keywords that words that were highly searched (Brittney Spears, Sex, etc.) but had nothing to do with the content of their websites. Consequently, most search engines ignore this tag altogether. While still best practice to include relevant keywords in this area it is certainly not an element that will make or break your SEO strategy.

At the end of the day today’s successful SEO strategies include, linkbuilding, social media, user experience and digital media components. It’s an organic process that happens continually over the lifecycle of your career website. Because of this, it’s impossible to achieve search engine visibility in the long term with a plug and play strategy. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Career Site Bounce Rate - What You Need to Know

2010-04-11T12:25:00.007-05:00

A common question I often get asked is “why is my website bounce rate so high and what can I do to improve it?”

Well, let’s first start by defining what bounce rate means and why it’s important. The bounce rate is a statistic you can pull from within your website analytics program. Bounce rate describes a percentage of website visitors that leave your website directly from the page they entered without clicking through to any other page on your website. For example if your career site bounce rate was 50% it would mean that half of the people coming to your career site are leaving without clicking though to any other pages.

The reason why bounce rate is important is because it’s a metric commonly used to measure visitor engagement. High bounce rate can often equal low visitor engagement. Below are some elements that might be contributing to your career sites high bounce rate

Does your career site appear in Search Engine Results pages for irrelevant keywords? Appearing for irrelevant keywords is a common flaw of a PPC campaign not being properly managed or set up, but it can also affect organic listings. If your website is ranking for poorly-chosen keywords, visitors clicking through expecting to find something specific will be disappointed when they look at the page that doesn't reveal what they were looking for.

Does your career site offer a clean design and user friendly interface? Presentation is important. If your career site design is cluttered, incorporates dark color backgrounds or lots of blinky text or flash animations it can make visitors feel uncomfortable, and distract them from clicking further into your website. Chances are if your career site includes some of the mentioned elements above, you’re likely to have a high bounce rate.

Is your career site navigation clean and easily understandable? Navigational issues are one of the key factors that contribute to the bounce rate. If you want your visitors to move around your website provide them with a clear intuitive navigational structure.

Does your career site content add value to the visitor? Make sure your website content adds value to your visitors. In addition, ensure that the content and information flow is good enough to carry your visitors from one page to the other. If you have great content but visitors can’t find it or your career site puts up barriers to entry such as “set up an account” or "subscribe to our email list” before they can access the content, this may be adding to your high bounce rate.

Resume Optimization - Help recruiters & employers searching Google find you!

2010-03-18T11:46:00.004-05:00

When people think of search engine optimization (SEO) they often think of ensuring a company’s website is visible within the major search engines like Google. This same strategy can be applied to your resume. By using a few simple techniques you can dramatically increases your chances of being found by recruiters and employers and hired. Below are 9 tips to ensure your resume is optimized for visibility.

9 tips to optimize your resume visibility

Use full and abbreviated words in your resume - For example, if you are a human resource professional include both HR and human resource in the body of your resume.
Include keyword variations within your resume - For example rather than just using the word developer on your resume, include words like programmer, programming and engineer as well. If you are familiar with C# and VB great, but don’t forget to add the word .net
Include keywords within your file name – Rather naming your file simply resume.doc use John-Dow-Web-Developer-Resume.doc instead.
Don't Forget Geographical Terms – You never know what geographical terms a recruiter may use to run their search so be sure to include all variations for example - MA, Mass, Massachusetts.
Refresh your resume – Everyone likes fresh new content, every few weeks alter your resume just slightly, change your title, add a few keywords ext. By keeping your content “fresh” you will enjoy increased visibility within a company’s database queue as well as job boards and search engines.
Don’t forget the reader - While it is important to optimize your resume, be sure to use keywords in a way that makes sense to the human reader, simply adding in a bunch of keywords won’t make a good first impression, finding the balance is key here.
Formatting matters – You only have precious seconds to get a recruiters attention. That said you want to make sure your information is presented in a way that is easily scalable. Break up large chucks of content with heading tags and use bullet points to denote individual skills.
Create a keywords Summary section – This is similar to tagging a blog post. In the keywords summary section you want to include additional terms that relate to your skill set. You don't want a laundry list, you're looking for 8-10 additional terms at most. As an example if you were ac accountant you would want to do something like this.

Resume keywords: general ledger, AP/AR, payroll, reconciliations, accounting, acct.

How do you know what keywords are important to include?

Review terminology within job postings that are in line with the type of position you’re interested in.

Keep yourself up-todate with the latest buzzwords in your field.

Check out TheLadders.com which lists the 100 top recruiter search words.

Scanning software has come a long way BUT….

Don’t forget a text only version– Often companies use a parsing technology when identifying qualifying information within a candidates resume. Word processors like Ms Word includes proprietary tagging/formatting that can compromise the readability when uploaded into an organizations database. That said it’s helpful to save a version of your resume in plain text such as a notepad file.

Disclaimer: I am not a recruiter but an interactive marketing strategist specializing in SEO as it relates to the recruitment industry. Recruiters, feel free to post additional tips.

Are You Wasting Recruitment Marketing Dollars? Possibly.....

2010-02-16T16:58:00.010-06:00

Those of you that know me know that I am a big proponent of networking, being I am a people person in general; it’s something that comes easy to me. I meet people at volunteer events, on the bus, at my kid’s high school events etc.

Lately due to the bad economy and many people out of work, I don’t get much passed my name and what I do for a living before the conversation turns to their job search experience. I can’t tell you how many times in the past few months I’ve heard something similar to the following “I must have applied to 30 positions online and have not heard anything, it’s frustrating”

Ever Wonder Why Employee Referral is Your Biggest Source of Hire?

I’m going out on a limb here but I’m going to say, it’s much easier! Having a direct contact to the company or hiring manager pretty much ensures your resume will at least be looked at vs. applying through a company’s ATS system and risking that your resume not “pop” for the various search parameters recruiters are typing in. Companies could really be missing out on a lot of “A” players this way. “A” players they’ve spent money on to get to their career sites in the first place.

A lot of Money is spent on Acquiring New Candidates

Companies are starting to invest heavily in digital media mediums like SEO, SEM and Social Media, which is great, don’t get me wrong, I like having a job. It’s just that with all the recent talk about companies needing to move their recruiting spend around to make it work more effectively, I personally believe that should involve looking at more than just new tactics. What about looking into candidate experience or figuring out how to leverage your 10,000 names already in your ATS system as your passive candidate pipeline?

Meet the “Candidate Relationship Manager”

The candidate relationship manager is different from a recruiter. They are there to be a liaison for your candidates, help to ensure their applicant experience was positive, and ensure that they feel communicated with vs. left in the black hole of death. After all, these candidates own part of your employment brand.

• The candidate relationship manager could follow-up with new hires regarding their applicant experience – Improvement starts by listening.

• Before spending 10k posting your new marketing manager role to the job boards, the candidate relationship manager could review the candidates that applied for a similar position a month ago.

• The software engineer that had 3 years of experience when applying 2 years ago for a job requiring 5 years, now fits the requirements. Why pay money to re-attract him/her – you already have their information and the candidate relationship manager could bring this to your attention.

Having been in the industry for the past 3 years working on media plans and helping to evaluate where recruitment money should be allocated it just seems like there is a HUGE opportunity being missed and that opportunity could save organizations a lot of money.

Am I completely missing the boat here? Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

______________________

2-18-2010 Additional comments

Many people have emailed me asking for specifics around what people have told me regarding their applicant/candidate experience so I thought I would share the top bullet points here.

1. People say the process takes to long. Many have said that one single online application can take 45 minutes if they take their time and fill everything out.

2. People are confused as to why when they upload their resume do they have to manually enter in their past 10 years of work experience anyway.

3. I never know if my information was received because I don't receive a confirmation email.

4. If there is more then one job posted for a company that I am interested in and qualified for, why do I have to submit two separate online applications.

5. I interviewed once but never heard back, it would have been nice to receive an email saying "thanks" but "no thanks"

Facebook Advertising - The Affordable Recruitment PPC Option

2010-01-24T23:15:00.004-06:00

A few weeks ago Compete.com released its monthly traffic analysis for the month of December. Based on the new stats, Facebook’s U.S. traffic has jumped to 132 million unique visitors (up from 128m reported in November) These numbers don’t come as a surprised to most being that these days everyone seems to have a Facebook page.

For advertisers, Facebook has become a very affordable candidate attraction alternative to the higher priced clicks available on search engines like Google and Yahoo. As with any advertising platform, there are some things that might be helpful to know before jumping in. After all, Google, Yahoo and Facebook make PPC advertising easy for a reason, it generates revenue. The less you know about campaign optimization, the more money they make.

Before you start your ad campaign on Facebook consider the following:

Target Appropriately - It’s no surprise that people using social networks like Facebook divulge a lot of juicy nuggets about themselves in their profiles, which can be a gold mine to advertisers. Facebook gives you the opportunity to choose what audience see’s your ads. For Instance an organizations can target ads based on gender, age, location, college attended, keywords used in profiles and status updates or even companies they are either currently working for or have worked for in the past. (IE: Google recruiting teams can try to entice Yahoo Employees to switch teams)
Testing Payment Methods - Ad prices on Facebook are determined auction style like on search engines. You can choose to pay based on either the number of times people see your ad (cost per impressions or CPM) or the number of times people click on your ad (cost per click or CPC) Many choose the latter however it won’t hurt to test both methods to see which is more cost effective for you. I personally have worked with some campaigns where the CPM model was much more cost effective. Remember Facebook advertising is fairly inexpensive, in fact: you’d be able to get a decent test case with just $20.00.
Be creative with Your Ad Copy - It’s important to make your ads stand out and Facebook only allows you 135 characters to make that happen. Keep in mind your ad will typically run next to two other ads and be mixed in with other Facebook messaging. If your ad copy is considered more traditional it is likely to be ignored. try to push the envelope a little if you can.
Test Different Ad type – Facebook offers a variety of ad types for advertisers but what type works best for recruiting? Are you planning to direct people back to your corporate career site? (website ad) If so that’s a one-time connection, if they choose not to apply for a position at that time, you’ve lost them for good.

Being Facebook is really a platform for building relationships; consider using ads to build fans instead. (page ads) that way you have the opportunity to recruit/re-market to them. It doesn’t hurt to get creative when building your fans either. Consider donating X amount of money to a charity for every new fan obtained during the month of January, It works and sends a great message about your brand.

At the end of the day, the important thing to remember is that most ad platforms make it easy for you to set up campaigns but, simply “setting and forgetting” them is likely to do nothing more than generate more ad revenue. Before investing your recruitment dollars make sure you can invest some time into making your ad campaigns really work for you.

The Best Way To Leave a Job

2010-01-19T10:08:00.003-06:00

Thanks to Resume Builder for providing this article.

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There comes the time when you decide to leave your present job and find a new one and the way you behave in this situation can influence your future career greatly. So no matter how much you hate your boss and co-workers it isn’t a good idea to burn your bridges on the way out. Follow our tips and get to know how to leave your current position without leaving your dignity behind.

1. Talk to your boss - The first person you should inform about your leaving is your boss. Don’t do it via e-mails, come and see him in person. Give a sound reason for your departure: explain you’re leaving because of growth opportunities with the new company (not due to dissatisfaction even if it’s not true). Be polite and emphasize the positive, tell about how the company has benefited you but mention it’s time to move on.

2. Give a proper notice - Though a standard notice period is two weeks, you are welcome to give an additional week or two. It shows your respect to the management and colleagues who can have plans as well. The more time you give the smoother the process of your departure will go.

3. Write a resignation letter - It’s important to provide a resignation letter, try to make it positive and remember that the end goal is to maintain a positive relationship with the employer. Besides, human resources department may need it for the personal data sheet as well.

4. Prepare a transition plan - You know your job better than anyone else and your manager would welcome ideas on how best to recruit a replacement. Create a document which will show what things you do and how you do them. Share the details of your work, any additional responsibilities you take while carrying out your work.

5. Maintain your professional relationships - In today’s commercial world you never know with whom you’ll have business one day. That’s why try to stay on good terms with your colleagues as you depart. Exchange your contact information with your co-workers and take time to keep in touch.

6. Leave a favourable impression - It is the lasting memory management and colleagues will have of you and it says much about your professional character. That’s why even if you had serious problems and conflicts at work your departure is not the time to start sounding off about them. If you have any constructive comments or suggestions you’ll have opportunity to voice them in a professional and calm manner. Focus on the positive aspects of your employment – thank the people who mentored and supported you.

7. Ensure a smooth transition - Think of a person who will follow you and take over your workload. Organize it. Make sure you don’t leave things half completed. Tie all loose ends possible and if there are any unfinished matters give a status report to your boss about them. Make your files and notes easy to understand and locate. Offer candidatures for your replacement among colleagues you know and respect. Offer to train your replacement and if possible be available after you leave to answer questions.

8. Ask for a letter of recommendation - It’s essential for your future career to get a letter of recommendation from your supervisor as you’ll want to include this job on your resume. And as the time passes and people move on, it’s easy to lose track of previous employers.
So now changes lie ahead. You’ll build new relationships and new perspectives will open for you. Be enthusiastic and ready to learn and give your energy and knowledge to a new environment.

Good luck!

"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 seeking entry-level jobs and other career opportunities." at the bottom of every article you accept through the Recruiting Blogswap.

Who's Hiring from the Fortune 500 Vol VI

2009-12-28T09:37:00.003-06:00

"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.
________________________________

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!

2009-12-17T13:00:00.005-06:00

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?

2009-12-09T08:46:00.007-06:00

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!!!

Find Job Leads in the Business Section

2009-11-23T15:18:00.005-06:00

Courtesy of the Recruiting BlogSwap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter. Article by: Lorraine Russo of the Underground Job Network

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I was reading the New York Times this morning and came across an interview with William D. Green, chairman and C.E.O. of Accenture. One of the things that caught my eye in this article was his statement:

“This year…we built a human capital strategy for the future…refreshed our corporate-wide strategy, and I moved my leadership people around into different positions and promoted some new people into leadership roles to infuse energy.”

This statement alone suggests a number of things happening at Accenture:

They are changing the way they attract and retain employees.
People are being moved laterally within the company.
A few folks were promoted
With all these internal changes and employee movement, opportunities could be awaiting you at this global consulting firm.

When you get to know Mr. Green a bit better through this article, you’ll find that he is a plumber’s son who made good. He appears to be a down-to-earth person who looks for qualities in his employees that speak to character and integrity—characteristics that are often challenging to convey on a resume or cover letter.

He also mentions that Accenture “gets two million CVs a year and…hire[s] between 40,000 and 60,000 people...we need people who are analytical, and have common sense, good judgment and the ability to get along with other people.” So if Accenture hires around 40,000 people per year, let’s see what's on their website.

A visit to Accenture's career pages shows HUNDREDS of openings in the US, including quite a few entry level opportunities. Click on the <more> button on the left side of the screen to see all US openings by location. So with what you now about the TYPE of people Accenture likes to hire, how will you describe yourself when applying? As Mr. Green says:

“We’re taking a more scientific approach to how we recruit. We do something called “critical behavior interviewing.” It’s based on the premise that past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior… essentially what we’re looking for is, have you faced any adversity and what did you do about it?

“…It’s what have you learned, what have you demonstrated, what behaviors do you have? Have you shown intuition? Have you shown the ability to synthesize and act? Have you shown the ability to step up and make a choice? How have you dealt with the hand in front of you, played it out?”

“What critical behavior interviewing does is get at people’s character, and you get to see where work fits in their value system, where pride fits in their value system, where making hard decisions or sacrificing fits in their value system. I mean, you sacrifice and you’re a victim, or you sacrifice because it’s the right thing to do and you have pride in it. Huge difference. Simple thing. Huge difference.”

Hopefully the above quotes will give you some insight as to the traits and characteristics of an Accenture employee. Knowing this, take a closer look at your resume...does it read like someone William Green would like to hire? Does it tell the story of what you've accomplished and how you got there? Take a moment and read the NYT article in its entirety here.

Recruitment Social Media - Don't be Left Behind

2009-11-12T20:11:00.003-06:00

A few days back I saw the first ever job posting on Indeed advertising for a “Talent Community Manager”. (Kudos to Deluxe for taking a huge step forward in recruiting and leveraging this opportunity) Using social media for recruitment takes time, technology and people and they “get that”

Considering Facebook alone as over 300 million users, ½ of which log in to their account in a given day it would not be surprised to see other organizations follow their lead and take advantage of this untapped source of finding and engaging candidates.

Being that this is a VERY new type of position to any industry, let alone recruiting I can imagine how finding someone to fill such a position would be challenging.

Social Media Communities – It’s Not a Waste of Time

In addition to the enormous challenge of finding someone who can successfully build, manage and engage members of a community how do you convince the powers that be that social media is more than a big playground? The way I see it, there are a few different ways social media tools can be used in recruiting including;

Finding candidates
Building relationships with potential candidates
Enhancing your employment brand

I don’t think many would argue with the above bullet points but how do you create a business case for allocating resources?

Measuring the ROI of Social Media used as a Recruiting Tool

Measuring the effectiveness of social media is another challenge because it means that people need to shift their way of thinking from quantitative to something more qualitative. That said, below are some ways to measure your social media success:

Career Site Traffic – The more people coming to your career site and specific job postings the more people that are applying for your jobs. A free analytics tool like Google Analytics will help you track referrals. If you are sharing links to specific jobs on Facebook and Twitter, URL shortening tools like Bit.ly and Traceurl can measure click through rates
Influence – The greater influence you have in social media, the bigger your reach and of course audience and the more visibility your organizations employment brand gets. Your Twitter influence can be measured with tools like Twinfluence and Twitter Grader. Facebook has a similar tool that lets you measure the influence of your business pages.
Buzz & Chatter – Are people talking about your organization? What are they saying? With any luck their talking about your career opportunities, what interviewing is like and how great your company culture is. Other important things are how often people are linking to you or mentioning you on Twitter. In addition to the tools mentioned above, you’ll want to use Google alerts to monitor both positive and negative buzz.

Social media is more of a long term investment; results won’t happen overnight. Simply creating a Twitter account and a Facebook business page won’t cut it – You have to take time to get to know people, the RIGHT people, listen, contribute and be transparent.

At the end of the day social media is an opportunity for your organizations to have engaging conversations with potential & current employees. Don’t be left behind.

Feel free to post a comment if you are actively engaging in a social media strategy, I'd love to hear what's working and not working for you!

Three Strategies for Success in Your Job

2009-11-10T13:10:00.004-06:00

You figure you’re in the right job or business. But you’re not fully satisfied. You feel you could be doing a bit better. And things may be set to change in your market or company. What should you be doing now to prepare for such change?

You need a robust strategy for success. Here you would do well to borrow from business. Whether you’re employed by a company or self-employed, think of yourself as a business and adopt one of the tried-and-tested strategies used by business to achieve competitive success.

Envision what the ideal provider of your services would look like in three to five years’ time. Do some brainstorming. You need to think creatively about how your marketplace may change over the next three to five years and how the needs of your employer or customers may be affected. What will the ideal provider of your services look like? To what extent will he or she be different from the ideal provider of today? More qualified? In what? Better trained? In what way? More experienced? In which areas? More skilful? How?
Next, set your sights. To what extent do you wish to become like the ideal provider? You’ll never get there, of course. No one is perfect. You may not want to get there, given the impact this could have on other aspects of your life. But you may want to stretch your sights and narrow the gap. You need to pinpoint your goal.
Finally, adopt one of the three generic strategies for success, detailed below, needed to bridge the gap. The first two are based on generic business strategies. To develop a sustainable competitive advantage, companies generally follow either a differentiation strategy or a low-cost strategy. They either do something distinctive and well, or do more or less the same as others but at lower cost. What they would be well advised not to do is exactly the same as other companies do, the so-called me-too recipe for lack of success. The third is a strategy not recommended for business, but appropriate for individuals in certain circumstances: working on your weaknesses.
Differentiate with the Stand Out! strategy.
You can use this differentiation strategy whether you’re employed or self-employed. Stand Out! is about making what you offer distinctive and different from others in your position. It builds on your strengths and circumvents your weaknesses.

A study by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton found that people’s greatest room for improvement is in the area of their greatest strength. Identify your greatest strengths, and figure out ways to build on them to set yourself apart from others or become special to someone or some group of people (customers, for instance). Think Madonna. Love her or loathe her, her sustained Stand Out! strategy since the 1980s of image reinvention and self-publicity has yielded extraordinary success.
Go low cost, with the easyU! strategy.
If you’re self-employed, your earnings are typically a reflection of your charges on the one hand and your volume of work on the other. Are your rates keeping you from being as busy as you want to be? If you’ve researched the market, as suggested above, you probably have a good idea of what the market can bear. Sometimes, to maximize your exposure in the market, get more clients, and generate more free advertising via word-of-mouth, lowering your rates can be a sound growth strategy. Perhaps you need to make it easy for clients to call you first, before anyone else. (Think Southwest, which found a way to do it cheaper—and stole customers from the rest of the airline industry.)
Improve your competitiveness with the Sharpen Act! strategy.
You may not be able to differentiate sufficiently in your job, and you may not choose to become the lowest cost provider, but you do need to stay in that job. To pre-empt being squeezed out, you need to improve your competitiveness. In the Sharpen Act! strategy, you build on your strengths to the extent that you’re able to in the circumstances, but meanwhile you work on some of the weaknesses that are holding you down. These could, for example, be presentation/public speaking skills, computer skills, appearance, leadership skills, marketing, networking, or organization. Identify one or two and work on raising your capabilities, narrowing the gap with the ideal provider. Who knows, you could even transform a weakness into a strength.

EXAMPLE: Take Debbi - She works in the marketing department of a professional services company. Her brainstorming reveals that the ideal employee a few years’ hence will need to be adept at presenting on her feet. Yet public speaking is one of Debi’s greatest fears. What should she do? She can’t carry on as is. She has either to look elsewhere, or bite the bullet. She joins Toastmasters International. As for thousands of others, worldwide, it transforms her life, and is a huge amount of fun to boot. Her Sharpen Act! strategy enhances, possibly even saves, her job.

Many people feel stuck in their jobs. But they know they could do better, for themselves, for their company. The best way to boost your performance, pay, and job satisfaction is to follow a robust strategy, whether Stand-Out!, easyU!, or Sharpen Act! Such strategies work for companies, and they can for work for you as well.

* * * * *

Vaughan Evans is a renowned economist, business strategist, sought-after speaker, and the author of Backing U! A Business-Oriented Guide to Backing Your Passion and Achieving Career Success - Business and Careers Press, 2009, http://www.backingu.com/

Article courtesy of the recruiting blogspot a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Quick Internet tips to help find a job

2009-11-04T16:26:00.005-06:00

Although the economy may not be the best for job seekers right now, there are jobs out there...YES, really great companies are looking for talent.

Here are some quick internet tips to help find a job. Courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:
From: Matthew Warzel, MJW Careers

________________________________

When a job seeker says "I don't have Internet access or I'm not Internet savvy," it cannot be an excuse in this competitive environment the job market has become. Here are some quick thoughts:

Sorry, but faxing doesn't cut it anymore
Get email account for FREE at Yahoo, Hotmail or Google
Go to a friend's house with Internet or to your local library because they have internet!
Enroll in a free or sometimes very cheap, local "Learn How to Use Internet" classes at Library or community colleges, high schools, etc.
sign up for a $25/class to learn basics of internet terms, navigation, etc. Even Microsoft Word to develop your resume and cover letter.
Post your resume onto general and niche specific job boards as well as company portals.
Almost all companies post their job openings on their website...so go to a company website, find the CAREERS section and enter that career section (called a portal)...sometimes you can even setup an account before applying to a job, post your resume onto that company career account and setup keyword alerts....thus, if you're a mechanical engineer and they post a job a month later for an mechanical engineer, the company will let you know via this alert to your email, which will allow for you to apply as soon as it's posted...this can allow for you to be on top of the application list too for recruiters, because sometimes recruiters at companies will only look at the top 100 applicants as opposed to all 1000 candidates who applied (and being one of the 1st to apply, can make you higher on that list, thus in the top 100)
Setup Google news and Yahoo news alerts for the word "'relocating' or 'relocation' and the job seeker's city or near-city's name" to find companies who are relocating to the job seeker's area; "expansion" and "growth" to identify growth companies and emerging opportunities for you to seek out hiring decision makers and recruiters at those companies
Review leading online and published newspapers like Forbes and Wall St. Journal to keep up on those growth industries (as well as your local paper)- DON'T BE INTIMIDATED OR ASHAMED! You want and need to learn and you are bettering yourself. This is the right step forward. IF YOU AREN'T DOING IT, YOUR COMPETITION IS!
Finally (non-Internet related), try to place yourself into growth industries (biotech, nutrition, energy & renewable energies, photonics, and IT) that you can fit into in respect to your transferable skills as opposed to dying industries (textile, printing, apparel manufacturing & general manufacturing such as steel, and airlines)

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.

Nice is a Four-Letter Word

2009-11-02T09:11:00.002-06:00

The following post is courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:
From: Candice Arnold
______________________________

Starting a new job can be nerve-racking, especially when it comes to adapting to a new work environment. It's as important for new hires to be able to mesh well with their coworkers as it is for them to be able to quickly learn how to do their new jobs. So what's the best way for a new employee to endear himself to his coworkers? Should he strive to be likable or nice?

"I would say that the phrase 'being likable' implies that you are easy to get along with and that you respect other people, whereas, 'being nice' denotes a lack of sincerity," said Holly Stokes, author of "Train Your Brain, Get Results."

Melody Brooke,author of "Oh WOW, This Changes Everything," agrees that nice people seem insincere and untrustworthy. "Being likable is a personality thing ..." she said. "There is something about the person you feel warmly toward. Likable definitely gets you further than being nice."

Mark Stevens, president of MSCO and author of "Your Marketing Sucks," is also in support of being likable instead of nice, if forced to choose. "Nice people are often treated disrespectfully. Is this fair? Of course not. But human nature isn't always fair. Boy by a long shot," said Stevens. "On the other hand, people are often 'likable' because they are self-confident, exude charm and power. They may or may not be 'nice' but they are 'liked' because they are interesting or exhilerating to be around. You don't have to choose between nice and likable, you can be both, but push come to shove, take the latter. It's a lot more fun."

"If you work to be kind, the people who are worth their salt will like you," said Dick Cheatham of Living History Associates, Ltd. "Thus, you get both ... being kind and being liked."

Psychotherapist, Dr. Nancy Irwin gave a broader perspective, pointing out that each has its benefits in the professional world. "Each quality has its place. There is not one that is better than another, inherently. Different businesses and jobs have different qualities that are needed. [For example], public speakers should come across as likable, as should most performers. Yet, being nice (authentic, real), is more important for teachers, health professionals, etc."

Truly, the best way for any new employee to work well and get along with his coworkers is to first be himself, whether it's his nature to be nice or to be likable. In time, his colleagues will see for themselves who he really is and any preconceived notions they may have had about "nice" vs. "likable" will go right out the window ... at least in his case.

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.

Increase Relevant Traffic to Your Career Site w/ Content Re-purposing

2009-10-30T13:59:00.007-05:00

One of the biggest challenges with blogs is coming up with new and fresh content on a regular basis and you are not alone, note the date on my last blog post. It’s especially challenging in this economy where resources are completely tapped.

One solution is to use a resource called The Recruiting blogswap. The Recruiting Blogswap is a FREE service of job board, CollegeRecruiter.com, but is used by an international collection of job boards, recruiting blogs, and other career sites.

How it Works:

Once you register as a publisher, you'll receive articles from authors who specialize in recruiting, career counseling and more, which you may choose to accept or decline based on the needs of your career site. The great thing is that you’re never obligated to publish an article so you don't have to worry about publishing content that isn't appropriate for your site. I just signed up for this service and you can to, registration takes less than a minute!

Other Content Re-purposing Strategies

Turn Press Releases Into Conversational Pieces – Let’s face it sometimes press release can be pretty boring to the everyday person. Try taking key messages within the press release and write them in a more conversational way, cite examples, offer helpful tips even link out to an additional resource.

Old is the New….New – If you have years of content on your blog or website peek through some of it to see where update opportunities may present themselves. The recruiting industry changes pretty quickly creating the need for content to be update frequently. Especially “Tip” type articles. The first article title might have been “5 strategies for finding the best talent on the web” Your new title could be “5 NEW tips for finding the best talent” etc.

Leverage Your PowerPoint Decks – Try turning your PowerPoint decks into articles and blog posts. If you’ve spoken at recruitment industry conferences you could always build out supporting visibility on that topic. Do you routinely do public webinars? That’s another re-purposing opportunity.

Do you have content re-purposing ideas you’d like to share, feel free to leave a comment.

Recruitment SEO Content Strategies the Competition May be Ignoring

2009-09-18T14:56:00.007-05:00

It’s no big secret that a having a recruitment SEO strategy in place can help an organization tap into the candidate pool that starts their job search within search engines.

A good portion of the success of your SEO campaign revolves around the content of your career site. In the eyes of the search engines, quality content is king. The more you have of it, the better.

If you’ve ever wondered why your competitor has better search engine visibility than you do, check out how many pages of content they have. Career Builder for instance has over 1.2 million pages indexed in Google.

This does not necessarily mean you’ll need as many pages to be on the same playing field, others factors come into play such as incoming links.

Tell me more about Linkbuilding

There are many techniques that can be used to garner inbound links to your career site however; the most favored by search engines is building links naturally by having unique content on your website. The kind of content that makes people naturally want to link to.

In addition to having content on a company’s culture, benefits, first interview advice there are some content strategies your competition may be ignoring.

3 Content Strategies your competitors may not know

Contests – the trick with contests is to find ways for the contestants to promote the content online themselves. This technique naturally results in lots of incoming links. Combine this with user generated content, where people are encouraged to promote their own contest submission it’s a magic win-win formula. Some great examples of leveraging this are:

- The Talent Buzz – blog contest
- Best Buy – Help us write the job description

Unique Research – Finding and publishing research is probably the most difficult to master. It requires thinking about all the industry information you have available and determining what insights you may be able to garner from it. This type of project may require looking to a market research firm to help. A good example of a company undertaking this type of strategy is Arbita with their recruitment genome project. The report is a multi-year research project but the first installment is ready to download now.

Awards with Badges – Posting awards has been one of the best ways for a business to establish themselves as credible in the online world. Awards that are represented with badges usually contain a link back to the site offering the award.

A great example of this type of strategy would be the recruiting blogs blog contest in 2007. All recruitment industry bloggers we're talking about this contest and in turn linked back to the Recruiting Blogs website.

The above content strategies alone will not guarantee that you will outperform your online competitors but when done properly, can accomplish a lot for your career site.

If you have examples you’d like to share feel free to post comments.

Back to School Time - SEO Style

2009-08-14T13:36:00.005-05:00

Although SEO seems to be the new buzz in recruiting web 2.0 strategies, it has actually been used for years as a tactic to increase sales for online businesses.

SEO and how it fits into the recruiting industry is greatly misunderstood. I completely agree with Marvin in that SEO is not enough , but it makes me wonder who said that it was the golden ticket to begin with.

SEO Is just a tool

At the end of the day, SEO is not the end all be all. It is one tool that can be very effective to have in your tool box. No doubt, if done correctly, search engine optimization can work wonders for getting your jobs seen by people using search engines but it goes beyond just a platform or technique that helps to get your jobs visible in Google. In fact, it’s really about optimizing your entire employment brand on the Internet.

SEO may not be for everyone

There's more than just keywords and a few meta tags that go into a successful SEO strategy, if you’re not willing to look at SEO as a long term investment, it might not be the best fit for you. Maybe something more instant like SEM (PPC) might be more what you’re after.
Go where your candidates are – If the jobs you have available are not what people are searching for within the search engines then maybe you don’t need to do a whole comprehensive strategy. Maybe you just run a basic SEO strategy that strengthens your employment brand.

Note: Keep in mind that 70% of search engine queries are unique, just because a keyword research tool like the Google Adwords tool says that a phrase was not searched does not necessarily mean that it won’t be in the future.

SEO Misconceptions

Can a service provider guarantee a first page ranking? No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google - Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. See Google webmaster tools.

Using the .jobs domain extension will ensure search engine visibility. The .jobs domain in itself will not automatically help with your search engine visibility. Those who believe otherwise don’t fully understand the way a search engine treats newly-registered domains. Search engine trust is a very important factor in the visibility of your career site. A newly established domain -- .jobs or otherwise -- has not had time to build search engine trust.

Search engine trust includes a variety of factors including but not limited to: when was the domain registered, is there quality content on the domain, is content updated frequently, are there quality links pointing to the domain, etc. In reality, the .jobs domain has more of an employment brand benefit than SEO.

Search engines cannot access my content if using an ATS - It is true that most Applicant tracking systems put up technical barriers that prevent the search engines from being able to access their job content. But there is a work around: If you can get an RSS/XML feed of your jobs and upload the feed to search engines as well as place the feed on a page that search engines can access, your job content will be indexed. This is not an SEO solution but it will allow content that was once hidden to be found.

At the end of the day candidates use a variety of sources to look for jobs. Find out where your candidates are and advertise/be visible in those places, simple as that.

Microsoft /Yahoo Deal - Are Your SEO Vendors Prepared?

2009-08-03T11:00:00.001-05:00

The July 29th announcement of a search deal between Yahoo and Microsoft means that the search landscape is changing significantly.

It's said that the combined share of the market that Microsoft's Bing search engine will have is nearly 30%. Time will tell if that percentage holds true.

Key Takeaways of the Mergers

The term of the agreement is 10 years.

Microsoft’s Bing will be driving search engine results on Yahoo properties

Yahoo will provide the sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.

Each company will maintain its own separate display advertising business.

Self-serve advertising for both companies will go through Microsoft’s Pay-Per-Click platform (AdCenter)

What Does This Mean for SEO?

Being Bing’s results will power search results for both the Bing and Yahoo search engine. Organizations can’t afford NOT to optimize their career sites to perform within the Bing search engine.

How to Optimize for the Bing Decision Engine

Since Bing is MSN with new name and slightly upgraded algorithm the SEO techniques for Bing will remain somewhat the same as for MSN. Here are few SEO tips for Bing

Content is king - This holds true for all search engines but keyword rich content seems even more important on Bing, given the way that it organizes and presents information in the search engine results pages (SERPS). Preliminary research indicates that Bing favors pages with at least 300 words of text.

Domain Age is Key - Bing appears to put a lot of stock into how long a domain has been registered. Since there’s no way to artificially build up a domains age, if you have a newer domain concentrate on all the other factors.

Keyword rich domains do well - Domains that include keywords seem enjoy good visibility in Bing.

Sitemap Submission is important - Be sure to submit your sitemap to Bing webmaster tools

Keyword placement matters - Ensuring you have your keywords in all the right places is imperative with Bing, especially within page titles, header tags, and link text.

Authoritative inbound links are important - Although this is agreed to be essential for any search engine, Bing appears to act even more favorably toward inbound links, particularly those that are from sites that also have a high number of quality links.

Linking Out - In the past SEO's have been very careful abut linking out to external websites as yo not to decrease their page rank of the site being optimized. However, it appears that Bing likes external links and increases the page ranking of those pages that have more of them.

Title Tags of Other Pages - When you link to an external site, ensure that the title tags of the pages you have linked out to have the keyword that is most relevant to your page.

As SEO's become more familiar with Bing and its algorithm I expect that this list will change. If you have additional tips on optimizing for the Bing decision engine, feel free to post them here.

Social Media Profile Optimization

2009-07-04T19:53:00.020-05:00

I often get asked how social media and search engine rankings can be used together. For the most part I can tell you that most SEO professionals use social media mainly as a channel to help people discover content and link to it as well as for brand management and online reputation management initiatives.

But what about just getting your profiles listed in Google?

In a recent interview, Dana Todd of Newsforce and also a SEMPO board member talked about how social media frequently accounts for up to half of the top ten search results on Google for any given query

That said, ensuring your social media profiles are optimized will increase the likeliness that they will appear within the search engines results pages. Optimizing your social media profiles is no different than optimizing a website. At the end of the day SEO is really all about keywords, quality content, and links.

Tips for Optimizing Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter Profiles

Facebook SEO Tips

Use a vanity URL if possible – read FAQ’s Here

Fill out all your information as complete as possible (basic info, personal info, contact info)

Join groups and participate in their discussions
Become a fan of pages – Become a fan or Arbita

Ensure your profile Picture is up to date

Use the Facebook notes section for posting blog posts
Use the shout box for sharing links and tips
Use the links box to share important links to your website other profiles

Under Privacy > Search settings select “create a public listing for search engines”

Twitter SEO Tips

In your Twitter Settings update your name to read “First Name, Last Name” IE: Nicole Bodem - No one searches for “Nicole_Bodem” or “NicoleBodem”

Optimize your twitter bio line – it appears in the search results. Use keywords that you want to be found for. If you are comfortable talking about yourself in the third person, your name will be bolded within the search results. IE: Nicole Bodem is a Global Search Marketing Strategist

Build followers – Twitter will internally link your followers to your profile. This means that search engines will see your followers as “links” to your profile. Links of course help with search engine visibility. Additionally, if you tweet high quality content you’ll naturally pick up additional outside links.
Link to your twitter profile using your name as anchor text, IE: "follow Nicole Bodem on Twitter"

LinkedIn SEO Tips

When completing your LinkedIn profile remember to use words and phrases that you hope will be picked up by those searching for people in your field. Your goal is to have a profile 100% complete.

Get a vanity URL – your name if possible & make sure your profile is “public”
Your past work history should go back 10 years . Explain what you did at each company.
Fill out the summary section, add substance consider it your “elevator pitch”.
Write/Get Recommendations & Ask/Answer questions
Continually build on your connections
Comment on the LinkedIn blog and link back to your LinkedIn profile
Don’t forget the additional information section – When adding websites, click on the “other” section. You can name your website and that will act as anchor text for the link. (See Images for After Effect)

If you have any tips to share on optimizing social media profiles, feel free to leave a comment

Does SEO Open the Flood Gates to Receiving Unqualified Resumes?

2009-05-29T10:11:00.006-05:00

This past Thursday I gave my first-ever webinar through Kennedy Information. I have to say, it was a blast and I can only hope it was valuable to those attending. There were some really great questions asked duing the interactive Q&A session, one in particuliar that peaked my interest.

I thought it might be beneficial to share the question along with my answer (an expanded version of it anyway) here.

The Question

An ATS provider had told them not to engage in SEO as it would open the flood gates to tons of unqualified resumes. The question asked was basically whether or not this was a truthful statement.

Before I share my thoughts on this, I have to tell you first that SEO is my absolute passion in life (A bigger dork, I could not be) I have dedicated the last 7 years to studying and working full-time in the industry. That said, it erks (is that a word?) me when people who may not entirely understand the field give out inaccurate information.

My first reaction was that they are more than likely unable to provide SEO therefore wanted to devalue the importance of it using the scare tactic of “tons of unqualified resumes” Nice - keep thinking about yourself and not what's in the best interest of the industry as a whole.

The Truth - As I see It (other opinions welcome)

You will never be able to completely eliminate unqualified candidates from applying to your jobs, it doesn’t matter what channel you're using to attract them.

SEO is about leveraging a new candidate traffic opportunity. There are millions of searches being conducted by candidate’s everyday on search engines, applying SEO best practices to your career site and job content will help you get the attention of these people. Will you receive some unqualified applicants? Of course, at the end of the day SEO is just a form of marketing not magic.

With SEO you choose what words and phrases you want to be found most relevant for. If you're hiring specifically for an experienced .net developer that must be a US citizen that’s what you optimize the job description for. Will non US citizens that are only entry level still apply? You bet.

Keyword Research & Job Description Copy is KEY

If you’re receiving more unqualified applicants than normal, the first thing I would do is evaluate whether or not your job descriptions are written in a way that attracts the RIGHT candidate as well as look at what words and phrases you’re targeting in your optimization efforts.

The more specific you can be with your optimization efforts, the better qualified candidate you are bound to attract.

Thoughts?

Your Employment Brand Matters

2009-04-23T09:55:00.019-05:00

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

2009-04-20T14:18:00.010-05:00

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

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

2009-04-13T12:51:00.001-05:00

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

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.
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.
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.

The Waiting Game of SEO

2009-03-13T08:58:00.011-05:00

SEO is like any other form of marketing; it is a long term strategy that should be a permanent part of how you operate your business online. SEO is not a “quick fix”, if you’re success depends on immediate search engine visibility; you should be looking at Pay-Per-Click (PPC) strategies and not SEO.

SEO Requires Patience

When undertaking an SEO project, one thing to remember is that you will not see results overnight; SEO takes time to ramp up. How much time is dependent on many factors including:

How Old is your Career Site URL?
The older your website domain (URL) is the more trustworthy it is considered in the eyes of the search engines. If your career site has been around a while and has quality content that is useful to search engine users it will take less time to ramp up then a newly established domain.
How Search Engine Friendly was your site before?
If your career website had technical barriers that we’re previously stopping the search engine spiders from accessing your content, often you are able to see results fairly quickly. Keep in mind visibility increases over time and continued optimization efforts.
Does your career site have Inbound Links ?
Links from other topical related sites pointing to your career site count as votes of confidence in the eyes of search engines. The more you have, the more trust your website has. Search engine trust is a big factor in visibility.
How competitive are the phrases you’re targeting?
The more competitive a target phrase is, the longer you will likely have to wait to see results. It also means the more inbound links and content you will probably need. Your goal is to start with phrases that candidates use to search but have modest competition. If you’re hoping to achieve visibility for something as broad as “Jobs” it is unlikely to happen through SEO.

Who are Your Competitors and What Are They Doing?
You want to put yourself in a position where your SEO efforts are comparable to that of your competitors with an end goal of going above and beyond what they’re doing. For example; if your competitors are optimizing for the phrase “Minnesota Registered Nurse Job” and their website has 1,000 inbound links and 40 pages of content, we’ll need to work toward that goal in order to be able to compete for visibility.

Before starting any SEO or SEM strategy be sure to research your service provider. There is no barrier to entry for search marketing professionals which makes it very easy for someone to say they are an "expert" when that may not be the case.

In our industry we are used to using search engines to our advantage to research potential candidates it only makes sense that we would do the same for our potential service providers.

Generating More Candidates for Less - Indeed vs. Google PPC

2009-03-09T20:02:00.004-05:00

Given the current economy, everyone needs to generate more applicants at less cost. As companies and recruiters scale back on job boards and newspaper advertising, they look to search marketing initiatives to deliver results.

This week's Wall Street Journal article on recruitment SEM specifically shows how mainstream it's becoming, comparing the cost per applicant in actual dollars vs. print and job boards.

The question that staffing heads often ask me is where they should invest their recruitment Pay-Per-Click (PPC) dollars. Mainstream search engines like Google or Yahoo, or vertical engines like Indeed? My response 99% of the time is “it depends”: as with any search marketing channel, the answer comes through testing. Each client is unique and so are their results.

Read my full Post on the JobMachine Blog - Here

FREE Job Search Webinar Blog Coverage: I have a killer resume now what? Tips on being your Headhunter

2009-02-19T10:53:00.007-06:00

Webinar Presenter - Paul DeBettignies, managing partner, Nerd Search and blogger at MNHeadHunter.com

The presentation itself is very laid back as that's Pauls style. He warns that he uses the words “dude” and “sucks” a lot. I'll try to keep a tally going here.

Tally Results are surprising:

"Dude" = 1
"Suxs" = 5

_____________________________________

Remember: Unemployment and the job market are local things. So keep a bit of a perspective on it.

Do's and Dont's

Do - keep a routine
Do - assume every company is hiring, until you know otherwise
Do - assume advertising one position may be a sign of other open jobs
Don't - assume Company career pages are always current
Don't - get caught in "analysis Paralysis" - don't just be "planning your job search.

If you Don't remember anything else, remember this:

- Doing a job Search sucks
- Finding a job is a job, not a hobby

Who Are You? Tell people why people they should hire you.

10-second pitch
30-second elevator pitch
Make business cards (important for networking events)
Fill out your LinkedIn profile (networking is give and take)
Professional email address (ruupforit@yahoo.com - is bad!)

Keep in Mind - Your job search is all about marketing YOU! Saying who you are and what you can bring to the table. How are you different than the other 150 people that are applying? Sometimes you may have to do things that are uncomfortable for you. Be aware of the image your putting out

People hire People

Who ask questions - seek advice not help
Who reach out - who do you know?
Who appear resourceful - Start at the top

Paul says "recruiters are their to weed people out, there not always to help people get into a position"

Online network groups are a great resource for reconnecting and finding jobs. Start slow and build you relationship.

LinkedIn has 30M users
Facebook has 150M users (average age is 25, it's not for the kids)
Twitter - 124 characters only, Find out what conversations are taking place
Ning Groups

Where Should I look for a Job?

Big Job Boards (Monster, Career Builder)
Niche and local job boards (Craigslist)
Newspapers (Try going where everyone else isn't)
Trade & professional Association web sites
Aggregators (indeed, Simply Hired, LinkUp)

What do I know About them?

Research your potential employers using....

Google, Yahoo, Hoovers
Local newspapers
Press Releases
Business magazines

Your mission is to find information you can use in emails and phone calls, show them that you have invested time and interest in their organization.

Zero in on Your target

Find a contact name
Target hiring managers, senior management and recruiters
call during breakfast, lunch, dinner as gatekeepers are not around
Google names, industry terms and titles
Have a name but not an email address? Check their press release page and find out their email address format (firstname.lastname@company.com

When Making an Email Contact

Focus needs to be on what you can do for the company
Send resume as a word attachment
Name your resume attachment as Smith.doc rather resume.com
Check your email twice a day, You don't want to miss an opportunity
Grammar, spell-check every email.
Include your name, phone number, email address and LinkedIn URL in the footer

Don't be Afraid of the Phone

Rehearse your call, create a script if you need one but don't read it
Have a primary and secondary objective
Use industry buzzwords
Never use the word "Entry Level" - makes it sound as if you're "inexperienced" or "cheap"

Maintain Contact & Follow-up

Be polite and persistent, not pushy (follow-up in 3-5 days)
Keep the call/email brief and to the point
Is more information needed
Thank you card, letter, email or phone message
Keep a copy of the resume you sent near the phone so you can reference it. Tape it on the wall next to the phone so you can answer questions asked about your resume.

Dead End & Getting Desperate

Offer to do an internship (allows both you and the employer the ability to test each other out)
Volunteer with a non-profit or other community organization
Shadow for a day
Are you addressing the need of the employers? Don't send an email asking what you're looking for. Right now "your needs" are considered deal breakers.
Take a part time or consulting gig
If not now, when can you contact again?

Thanks to JobDig for providing Paul their office space to do this webinar.

That's all Folks!

Upcoming JobMachine Webinars - Don't Miss Them!

2009-02-10T08:13:00.011-06:00

Recruiting Metrics 101: Results For The Metrically Challenged
Thursday, February 12th 1:00 - 2:30 PM Eastern

Do you consider yourself metrically challenged? Are your metrics not making an impact? Do you ever ask yourself "why bother with metrics"? If you answered YES to any of these questions, this webinar is for you!

Key Takeaways:

Learn the value of metrics in measuring business services like Recruiting and Sourcing.
Get a gentle introduction to using a variety of simple, easy-to-implement metrics, and presenting a highly-absorbable dashboard format to senior management.
Draw from Dan's history of metrics success to apply to your issues during Q&A session (voice or text chat allows you ask questions anonymously)
This primer is best for those new to HR and Recruiting management (or aspiring to such roles), or have been hesitant to delve into what only seems like a complicated subject

Webinar Cost - $99.97

--------------------

Branding Your HR Department Inside Your Organization
Wednesday, February 18th 1:00-2:30 PM Eastern

Come Join Shally Steckerl and Bret Starr for an informative and FREE Webinar...

How well perceived is recruiting and HR elsewhere in your organization? Do you feel like your department has the respect of senior management, or are you just another cost center without strategic value that would be among the first to suffer cuts when times get tough?

Especially in a down economy, it's important for executives to know recruiting still has value. Geared to leaders of the talent function, VPs of HR and staffing directors, this session will show you how to market yourselves internally.

Key Takeaways:

Learn how to market yourself internally as well as build a brand for your department across your organization
We'll teach how to use LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, and RSS to manage your brand internally and externally in a way that will be noticed internally
You'll learn how to create and send an effective e-newsletter, beef up your profiles, join the right social networking groups, and use feeds to find relevant news in order to send a competitive report on a weekly basis to internal constituents.

Website Usability 101

2009-01-30T12:33:00.018-06:00

Does your career site work with or without www

After much web surfing, I was unable to find statistics on www vs. non www usage but I would be willing to bet the number is quite high. I took a very informal poll of 15 of my techie friends consisting of web developers, designers and marketing pro’s all but one said they almost always don’t use the www, when typing in a web address. If your career site is not configured to display without the “www” a user will get an error message and in my opinion, that’s not a good first impression.

Best Practice for Search Engine Visibility

When talking about website usability and candidate experience, it is best practice to ensure your career website is configured to display with or without the www.

I'm not claiming to be a DNS expert by any means as I'm sure there are technical reasons I am unaware of that makes it difficult to configure all web servers to work with or without the “www”. But, generally speaking if your site does not work without the “www” it means that your hosting provider forgot to configure it or didn’t see the need.

Remember to 301 Redirect

Once you configure your career site correctly, make sure that you’ve set up a 301 redirect for the non www version of your career site to avoid confusing the search engines.

In other words, when someone types in http://careerwebsite.com your site would actually go to http://www.careerwebsite.com/ (See below)

Google Webmasters – Set Preferred Domain

If you’re like me, running a blog on the blogger platform aka blogspot, I don’t think there’s a way to set up a 301 redirect. In that case you’ll want to tell Google what your preferred domain is within their webmaster section screen shot Doing this will help Google improve how they crawl and index your site.

Do both, if you can

As a 7 year experienced search marketing strategist, I always way on the side of being safe rather sorry so when it comes to working on client sites and ensuring they have optimal SEO visibility, I always recommend doing both - Setting up proper redirects as well as telling Google what your your preferred domain is.

What's SimplyHireds Strategy?

2009-01-19T10:10:00.011-06:00

While trying to find some examples to use to explain the importance of using the negative keyword option when doing a Recruitment PPC campaign I came across this nugget in the organic results.

The Question I ask: What is this doing to their brand?

If there is a "bigger picture" strategy behind this, I'd love for someone to share it with me because I just don't get it. The traffic they could be gaining from this phrase is not qualified in the least. Would you want your brand associated with phrases like this?

I am guessing that SimplyHired is using some sort of dynamic keyword insertion, adding "types" in front of "Nurse Salaries" depending on what was searched for.

My advice would be to exclude terms that may not be appropriate such as: naughty, sexy and others that I don't feel comfortable saying.

Thoughts??

Guaranteed Rankings? - There's No Such Thing

2008-12-29T14:54:00.011-06:00

I would say that guaranteeing rankings is so 1980, but SEO hasn't been around that long. in fact; the earliest known use of the phrase "search engine optimization" was in 1997 posted on Usenet.

Now don't get me wrong SEO in general is very subjective, there are often a number of different ways to go about doing something. But, when it comes to search engine rankings, you cannot guarantee any position period. Google themselves tell you this in their webmaster section.

Too many people out their are getting screwed on a "guaranteed" sales pitch because they don't know any better. It makes those of us who really care about SEO and helping people perform better within search engines look bad.

So my question is for Joel Cheeseman who took the below video at ERE. Joel, as a fellow SEO strategist in the recruiting field how come you didn't ask him more about this? I'd be curious to know how SEO4Jobs is able to guarantee something that is completely out of our control.

To be fair, If you're talking about "performance based guarantees" thats not new either. In my opinion, probably not a very good strategy being rankings are so unstable these days with personalized search and geo-targeting. I prefer to concentrate on a company's key performance indicators? (KPI's) such as number of quality hires, aren't those the true measures of ROI anyway?

Kodos for incorporating linkbuilding, I agree, it's a very important aspect to SEO. Remember, its not just the link that matters, its the quality of the link. 100's of links from the same domain are not going to do you a whole lot of good. Linkbuilding in itself should be a well thought out, on-going strategy.

A Must See - "You Oughta Know Inbound Marketing"

2008-12-11T10:43:00.001-06:00

Paul Debettingnies aka MN Headhunter introduced me to this amazing video today. It's the coolest and most creative thing I have seen in some time. Hat tip to HubSpot's Rebecca Corliss

It's one of those things that you come across and say "Brillant, why didn't I think of that"

Here's Viral Marketing hard at Work...Enjoy

"Oughta Know Inbound Marketing"

If I make one more call
I might go punch a wall.
No one understands
That this doesn't work.

They hang up cause I'm a creep.
The mail I send they don't read.
They always find a way to
Ignore me.
I'm interrupting their lives
So they threaten me with knives.
I didn't think that marketing was like torture.

Cause the calls, direct mail
TV ads, they all fail.
And they aren't getting me anywhere. They don't work.
No!
And every time I try to sell
'Didja know that I'm told I should go to hell?
Then I cry. Then I cry.
And you wonder why.

I want leads
To come to me.
Fix our SEO
Get some inbound links.
RSS
Let's get blogging.
Why don't we just use inbound marketing?
You. You. You. Oughta know.

Get my page rank up.
Tag my content.
Fix my landing page.
Let them come to me.

Now I can blog I can tweet
Publish things you will read.
Won't have to bug you in the middle of dinner.
Google me organically
Search results one two and three.
You need my products? Uh huh. Yeah you'll find me.

Cause the calls, direct mail
TV ads, they all failed.
And they weren't getting me anywhere. They don't work.
No!
And every time I tried to sell
'Didja know I was told I should go to hell.
Then I cried. Then I cried.
And you wondered why.

Now my leads
They come to me
Fixed our SEO
Got some inbound links
RSS
Now we're blogging
Thank god now we use inbound marketing.
You. You. You. Oughta know.

November Minnesota Recrutiers (un)Conference Wrap Up

2008-11-25T10:57:00.005-06:00

Our Fall/Winter Minnesota Recruiters (un)Conference was held last Friday (November 21st) at Best Buy. We had our best turn out yet, a whopping 240 attendees. I was surprised to learn that a good 80% of those in attendance were first-timers.

Thanks to the generous Minnesota recruiting community, we were able to collect 300 lbs of food for our community outreach partner Second Harvest Heartland. Sadly, each day thousands of Minnesotans go hungry and the numbers are growing. Hunger affects the young, the old, women and men from all ethnic backgrounds. The faces of hunger do not look that different from our own families. Together we can make a difference, consider making a cash donation today.

Event Presentations:

First up – A social media panel of experts that included Josh Kahn of Best Buy, Erica Steffenson of Ecolab, Katie Carty Tierney of nGenera Corporation and Tavis Hudson of technical Resources Inc.

The panel talked about how they source and recruit candidates using social media platforms like Twitter - follow me here. They touched on how you would go about establishing a recruiter and employer brand, what their companies think of social media and pitfalls to watch out for.

In response to a question about how much time is spent on Social Media, Katie replied with “constant partial attention.” AWESOME! (Thanks for the quote Paul)

Confused About Twitter? No Worries

I know from having a few conversations about Twitter during the networking session that there were some people that were still a bit confused with Twitter and really wanted more information on how they could get started. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Bryan Starbuck, CEO of Talent Spring created a presentation that is sure to answer a lot of questions. Check it out….

Twitter for Recruiting (Hiring) from Bryan Starbuck on Vimeo.

Second up - Was a very interactive session called "Deep Structure Recruiting" by Allan Larson of Ovation, LLC

This session focused on two concepts that would take your candidate and hiring manager consulting skills to the next level. Attendees learned how to better work within the unique styles of their managers and candidates as well as how to manage their own unique strengths and blind spots.

Sadly, I missed most of Allan's presentation because I was pacing outside the door doing the breathing and hand clenching exercises I was taught to do before presentations. I am new to presenting and am up next. 240 people is pretty intimidating.

Third up - Was my presentation on the basics of SEO and SEM and how it is applied to recruiting. My goal was to educate people on how they could take advantage of search as a talent opportunity without hiring an experts.

You can view my presentation below.

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by NicoleBodem

All in all I think it was our most successfully event to date. I am honored to be a part of such a great community of people.

Jobs Feeds - The Secret to Search Engine Visibility

2008-11-09T14:19:00.009-06:00

Did you know that the job boards get a good portion of their traffic from search engines like Google? In fact, look at the statistics The Chad found below:

Whats preventing your career site from taking advantage of some of this traffic? Simply put, it's the drop down menu.

Search engines cannot select from drop down menus, therefore all of the job content behind drop down menus is invisible to search engines and therefore invisible to potential job seekers.

Learn The Secret to Visibility

The secret is search engine visibility is a job feed. Ask your ATS provider for a feed of your jobs. Put those feeds on a page of your career site that is already indexed by the search engines, just like Target did (below)

Search engines will come by and follow your job feed links, reading all of the job content within it.

Once search engines read or index your job content, they will make it available in their index for potential job seekers to find.

Granted, job candidates are not searching for "Executive Team Leader Assets Protection jobs San Jose" but this is where optimizing for the right job titles comes into play. It really just shows you how powerful something as simple as a job feed can be.

What is Personal Search & How Does it Affect Your SEO

2008-10-28T08:56:00.006-05:00

What the heck is personal search anyway?

Google introduced the concept of personal search a few years back but it’s not been until recently that it’s received a lot of buzz in the recruiting industry. Yahoo and MSN (Windows Live) have followed suit and also have personal search capabilities.

Once you're logged into a search engine account, like Google Gmail, your search engine results are modified based on your past history of searching, your bookmarks and what’s on your personal homepage. This is another reason why rankings are an old school metric for evaluating success.

Example: 3 People Search for “Beatles”

Searcher 1 – receives results geared towards “the band”

Searcher 2 – receives results geared towards “the bug”

Searcher 3 – received results geared towards “the car”

Personal Search is the search engines way of trying to deliver the most relevant results to you. You can tell whether or not you are receiving personalized search results because it will tell you in the upper right hand corner. Personalized search results only effective first page listings.

How will this affect your SEO Strategy?

For those that already concentrate on relevancy, creating search-engine-friendly sites and user-centered content, this won’t have much of an impact at all. For those that are not, you’ll really need to re-evaluate your SEO strategy. Understanding your target audience and user engagement are critical to attracting the attention of those that use personal search.

Ways to Optimize Your Site for Personal Search

The key is to ensure your site is “sticky” you want users to find your website relevant and stick around for a while. The longer a user is on your site the better. In addition to quality content (I can’t stress that enough) be sure to have features that engage your target audience.

Blog
RSS Buttons
Bookmark or Favorite Button
Video
Social Network Components

At the end of the day as long as you keep “users” at the forefront of your SEO strategy, you can’t fail.

Common Mistakes Made with Social Media Marketing

2008-10-03T19:15:00.001-05:00

Social media marketing (SMM) is no longer the “new kid on the block”. This internet marketing channel has really become an integral part of many organizations online marketing campaigns.

Social media marketing can be described as a “word of mouth” form of marketing. What some often forget though is that the true goal of social media marketing is to provide useful and relevant information to people. If leverage correctly, buzz and search engine visibility will happen naturally.

The problem is that some don’t take this goal to heart and are making many mistakes along the way. On the web perception outweighs intent. How people perceive your social media marketing efforts will affect your organizations reputation, as well as the ability to connect with customers.

Top ThreeSocial Media Mistakes

Participating in to many tools – Signing up and building a profile on every new tool is not the best strategy to take. (I have been guilty of this myself) When you try and manage more then a handful of profiles you usually end up with what they call “naked profiles”. A naked profile contains little to no information. In order to get anything out of social media platforms you have to be willing to invest time into building up quality content rich profiles.
Self Promotion Overload – Social media users generally frown upon self-promotion.
However from my experience I’ve found that the 80/20 rules works just fine. Promoting yourself and your services in moderation is ok as long as you are an active member of the community. When you use the service solely as a promotional platform and don’t provide anything of the value to the community that’s when they start to label you as a “spammer”
Setting up & Ignoring - Social media is similar to SEO in that it's a process. It’s a time investment and one that you need to take seriously in order to be successful. After you've set up your profile, go into the community, listen and participate.

Best Practices for Using Cell Phone Text Messaging to Recruit College Students - Blog Webinar Coverage

2008-09-11T12:24:00.015-05:00

Webinar presented by:
Steven Rothberg, President and Founder of College Recruiter

Webinar is being recorded and will be posted on the college recruiter website next week.

What is text messaging ? (SMS)

SMS stands for Short Message Service
Fairly short, about 2 sentences - 160 Characters / 140 with mandatory opt-out message. Character limits imposed by cell carriers.

No graphics (logo or photo) or custom fonts can be used

You can include web page URL link for for those with web enabled phones (WAP)

Who is receiving SMS ads? (source emarketer)

SMS is a Moving target, U.S mobile advertising spending has gone from nothing a few years ago to a projected 6.5 Billion dollars (WOW)
75% of today's college students and recent grads are carrying phones that are web enabled so it is important to include your web address.

short code is an email address for your cell phone "44646" or you can choose a vanity code like "Dell" (much more expensive)

Who's getting texts?

80% of US adults have cell phones

25% of adults (including Steve's parents) are interested in receiving SMS ads

Half text message weekly

78 million ads received in 2007
58 million in last 30 days

___________________Break for Q&A____________________

Q - How do we get lists of cell phone numbers to text and is it costly?
A - Will covered later in webinar, "costly" depends on your return on investment. If you're trying to fill a few positions, texting may not be the best route. SMS campaigns make more sense if your hiring needs are larger. Work to build your own list, when candidates come to your website, ask them for their cell number.

Q - Who regulates the short codes?
A - short code administration - not a lawless industry - cell phone carriers do a good job at preventing spam. They have prevented organizations sending out messages to people who don't want them. Carriers are very sensitive because they know that their customers pay for a lot of the messages they receive.

Why Use SMS Marketing?

The nature of the media forces the prospects to seek out the message. Because of this they are a lot more interested/ message goes to the prospect rather the other way around.

A cell phone is the only device nearly all people carry. College students especially are more attached and engaged with their cell phone then a typical person. They rely on their cell phones heavily. They text more then call or email.

Brand recall 20x higher then on the web.

10x more effective then direct mail.

This all leads up to fast growth - SMS ads = $6.5 billion by 2011

How are organizations using SMS?

89% of organizations will use SMS in 2008 and 1/3 will spend 10% + ad budget on SMS (more so in the product and services area rather employment)
Increase brand awareness and sales (coupons events, job fairs, invites to visit location, new products)

Increase the size of their opt-in database (website traffic, register for contest, talent pipeline)
Engage prospects in brand

How does SMS keyword advertising Work?

1. In your ad, you would ask people to text a unique keyword to a 5 digit short code - example: text "college" to (95495)

2. You as the marketer would receive a lead in your email and an automated text response is then send back to the candidate.

Service costs typically per lead with monthly minimum
- $50 month plus 500.00 for 500 leads
- $50 month plus 4,000 for 9,999 leads

Best practice for SMS (Hints and Tips)

Use carrier approved aggregators - carriers like T-Mobile know who is doing the sending. Before you are approved to send SMS messages you have to go through a registration process, they check into your organization, wanting to feel comfortable that you wont send out spam to their customers. They check and approve each and every message being sent out.

Set urgency with ad by setting message to expire. If hiring tell people you need to receive resumes by a set date.

Let your vendor know when you want your campaign to go out. Send your message at a day and time best for your prospects, Saturday or Sunday is a good time to send, but not at 2am.

If you're renting a list make sure its current and opt-in, better yet, double opt-in. Be sure to de-dupe your lists. (remove duplicates) You don't want the same person getting double messages, it makes you look stupid and its annoying.
Message people infrequently. You don't want to be perceived as a stalker. No more then 1 message per person per week (college recruiters strategy) best bet 1 message a month.

Do not use no spammy words "opportunity" "money" can be hard because we use those in the employment business. Phone carriers may flag these terms as "spam" likely your message will be delayed or not delivered at all.

The first word in your message should be your brand, this helps with brand recognition and the recipient knows who's texting them.

___________________Break for Q&A____________________

Q - What is your opinion on services that send blog updates to your mobile phone?

A - Sending out text alerts to subscribers is great as long as it is permission based.

Q - Do u have any ROI stats for company's that have used SMS for recruiting.
A - Yes, we're going to talk about success stories next.

Success Stories

UPS - shaker advertising ran campaign

- Goal - hire thousands of IT professionals

- Current media used - job fairs, print, radio, direct mail, transit, movie cinema advertising

- Response options included SMS in 7 cities

- Keywords to track by campaign and city

- One city tested SMS push to previous applicants

RESULTS

Attendance at job fairs were up,

ROI was measured by medium and market in order to gage the effectiveness of each advertising vehicle.

Enhanced opt-in database for future pushes.

Campaing was successful as UPS plans to continue SMS marketing.

More Success Stories

- Fortune 500 consumer electronics hiring dozens of inside sales. They pushed to 45k and hired all that were needed

- Bank hiring finance and accounting at core schools. Push was to 60k. hired all needed, planning another campaign.

- Software company hiring seniors and grads of software engineer programs at core schools. pushed to 15k, planning a larger campaign.

About the College Recruiter List

10 million students, grads and alumni (SMS = 6million)

All double opt-in with easy opt-out

Maximum four SMS per month/per person

I wanna play, how much does it cost?

Entry cost to get started $ 2250.00 (base price) - This gets your message sent to 15k people and a follow up with HTML email.

MN Recruiters Twitter Contest Winner

2008-09-04T07:20:00.000-05:00

Last month Minnesota Recruiters ran a Twitter contest for those that have attended our events. It is our hope to continue to improve on each event, making them engaging, fun and full of information.

We received great feedback, a big thank you to those that participated. Erica Steffenson from Ecolab was the lucky winner of the $100.00 Visa gift card.

Congrats Erica! Watch your mail we'll be mailing it out at the end of the week.

Recruiters Digital Secrets Exposed - Talent Buzz Blog Contest

2008-08-25T07:18:00.007-05:00

Blog post contests have been around a while and are really

quite ingenious if you think about it. They help increase readership,

provide unique content and incoming links, all of which are great for search engine visibility.

I am competitive in nature and have been known to enter a contest from time to time, my latest being the blog contest held by The Talent Buzz.

Those of you who don't know of The Talent Buzz, it's a recruiting blog that provides trends, news, and information you can use. Topics include staffing, recruiting, employment, social media, social networking, and of course, jobs.

There are about a dozen entries, The winner will be the post that receives the highest number of visits. The prize, an 8GB Apple iPod touch.

My entry is entitled "Recruiter’s Digital Secrets - Exposed" and you can read it here.

Good Luck to Everyone Who Entered!

How Employers Can & Should Use Facebook for Recruiting - Webinar Blog Coverage

2008-08-14T06:49:00.006-05:00

Webinar presented by:

Steven Rothberg, President and Founder of College Recruiter and Mike Palmquist, National Account Executive.

Introduction:

Did you know that Facebook and MySpace are two of the most popular sites amongst U.S. college students and recent graduates? These social media sites dwarf the traffic from any job board, including sites such as Monster, Careerbuilder, and HotJobs.

Yet very few employers are using the social networking sites for recruiting and very few of those are using them well. Employers should be using social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to help them recruit college students and recent graduates.

This webinar discusses how employers can and should use social networking sites to aide in their recruiting efforts as well as examines the risks and potential rewards.

______________________________________

Why Should We Care

According to Alexa, Facebook and MySpace get a lot more traffic then Careerbuilder and Monster. As of May, Facebook exceeds the traffic of myspace. It is also the most popular website of recent college grads. In fact; the average age of a Facebook user is 25.

Distinguish Between MySpace vs Facebook

MySpace

Myspace has it's own search engine that can be used as a resume bank. You can type in keywords such as "Norfolk Virginia electrical engineer" This will pull up candidates pages that have used the same keywords.
MySpace shows you information that might make an employer uncomfortable such as the race or age of a candidate. Knowing is not bad or illegal, it's what you do with that information that can get you in trouble.
Friends are key - The more "friends" you have, the more incoming links you'll have thus the more traffic you'll get to your page.

Questions About MySpace

Q - About privacy Settings

A - If you create a page on MySpace the default is for everyone in the world to see your page. If you do not want people to see your page you need to adjust your privacy settings.

Q - Should I use my personal page if my company doesn't have or want one?

A - You can use your personal page for recruiting if its "clean" G-rated. Best to check with your company to ensure you are not violating their policies.

Q - Strategies for building "Friends"

A - Get your page up and contact your employees, ask them to "friend you",

Q - Do employers report that they are successful using Facebook and Myspace for recruiting?

A - No - often employers don't really understand how to best use facebook and Myspace, this is one of the reasons for this webinar.

Facebook

Friends are equally important here, remember this is social networking, so socialize!
Facebook's profiles are set to "private" as default. Poking is ok in Facebook, it's not a sexual thing. It's basically like your just saying "hey"
A persons "status" is helpful to use to build connections. Maybe you see that a person is into sailing or attending a conference. You can use that information as an icebreaker.
You can link your blog content to Facebook, All your Facebook friends will be notified that you posted new content. Its a great way to keep your page fresh.
If you have a good candidate, go to that candidates Facebook page and find their friends. They probably have the same qualities. However don't contact their friends out of the blue. Rather, network your way in the door.
Facebook Applications - Add the Linked Facebook application "my company's hiring", it's free! It let's your friends and networks know your company is hiring and list's available positions.
Facebook Groups - Groups are Free! It's a good way to raise the level of conversation about a specific topic.
Use profile search: by company - this is helpful if you are looking for a specific person at an organization. If you're not sure who your looking for, try the advanced search feature.
Marketplace - is the online classifieds section, it includes job posting ads.

Questions about Facebook

Q - I heard students don't like to be contacted through Facebook, is it ok?

A - Yes, but do it properly. Do not cold call/email. Network, get your toe in the water. Make them ask you about employment opportunities. Don't harass or stalk them.

Q - How do you set up A company page rather a personal page

A- It's the same process of setting up a personal page, in the beginning you want to select "fan page"

Q - Should we have a "wall"?

A - Absolutely, a wall is like a whiteboard. Comments can be deleted if there not liked.

Takeaways - Top Ways to Kill Your Brand

Have no voice - you need to be part of the discussion, monitor the conversations, clarify when necessary.
Background check - Don't use Facebook for background checking. The recent grads will find out.
Create it then forget it -This is not just about a page, it is about networking and engaging.
Brochure-ware - Do not create your page to look like a brochure, be creative, get involved.
Don't come with cookies - Come with "food" (information) talk with people who want to talk to you but do not invade a persons space.

Takeaways - Top Ways to Enhance Your Brand

Create an active presence - link your blog, update your status.
Include candidates, don't exclude by using Facebook as a background check.
Network - networking is about what you can do for other people not about what they can do for you.
Fan pages, apps, groups, profiles - take baby steps, build on your successes.
Be a resource, not a recruiter.

At the end of the day to recruit generation Y successfully you must be Open, Honest and Transparent.

Minnesota Recruiters Attendee Twitter Contest

2008-08-01T07:11:00.003-05:00

Admittedly, this idea is “borrowed” from the guys publishing my favorite magazine, Search Marketing Standard.

In the spirit of keeping the Minnesota Recruiters quarterly events engaging and fun, we’ve decided to hold a contest.

1 lucky attendee or wanna be attendee will win a $100.00 visa gift card (sponsored by HRSearchMarketing)

Entering is Quick & Simple

All you need is a Twitter account and 60 seconds of your time. Just answer one of the questions below via Twitter for a chance to win a 100.00 Visa Gift Card.

___________________________________________________

1. What do you like the most about the Minnesota Recruiters events?

2. What would you like to see changed about the Minnesota Recruiters events?
___________________________________________________

All responses will be entered into a drawing for the 100.00 Visa gift card.The winner will be announced via Twitter (click to follow) and on the Minnesota Recruiters Website
August 30th, 2008.

Contest Rules

You are limited to one entry of a single tweet. (no longer than 140 characters)
We’ll be looking for tweets mentioning "#MNRecruiters” so please include that name in your message in order to be found.

We’ll announce the winners via Twitter and on our website on August 13th, 2008 so we encourage you to follow us on Twitter in order to see if you are a winner.

If you see that your entry was selected as a winner, simply contact Paul DeBettignies or Myself, Nicole Bodem (formally St.Martin) with your contact information and we’ll send you your prize the following week.

If you have any questions or comments regarding this contest, simply comment on this post and we’ll respond just as soon as we can.

Good Luck!

Recruiting as If People Matter - Don Ramer

2008-07-25T15:07:00.004-05:00

Don is truly an amazing person and his presentation today blew me away. I know it took many hours to create - Seth Fair, Arbita's Creative Director did a fantastic job.

This presentation was a powerful one that you really needed to see in person.

But below are a few takeaways

The words we use for the things that we do in the recruiting industry matter.
You can make the different in what your children and children’s children experience in the recruiting industry.
Recruiting – to bring new life – the people that do the work must be alive in spirit or the work we do becomes utterly meaningless.
If your not outraged at what’s going on – your not paying attention
The employment manager must be a champion of attitude.
People don’t have to be regarded as “assets” anymore. Why should we be able to own people in other countries after we’ve made it illegal here.
People are afraid and stressed when looking for work. How can we look at them as objects? We do because that’s what happened to us. We see ourselves as less then we are.
People are not for money – money are for people
If we believe that the divine is in us, we can find the qualities we need to transform this business. – it should be a web of destiny and kindness – we need to be the change agents to make this happen. We are growing a future.
Shally, Dave Mendoza, John Sumser and many others are working to bring the heart and sole back to the recruiting industry.
The meaning of our work is to bring new life not to crush the life out of people by bringing them into environments where their not supported or developed.
We must be the change we wish to see in the world!
None of us our more important then all of us……..

The Future of Online Recruiting - Why Job Boards Are Only Gateways - Steven Rothberg

2008-07-25T14:44:00.003-05:00

Below are the points that Steven covered in his presentation.

Consumer vs. Recruitment Advertising

Consumer advertising is placed by the marketing departments
Recruitment advertising is placed by HR departments
Consumer advertising drive sales
Recruitment advertising drive expenses…sort of

Advertising has been with us for about 300 years. The first online job ad was placed in 1976.

90% of job board revenue comes from Jobs postings & resume searching.

Video is Engaging & Moving

Video Tips....

Place on corporate career site and YouTube (free advertising)
Make them viral – YouTube, Career TV etc
Video interviewing is coming to life.
Send videos to cell phones (MMS)

The Future of Social Networking

Social networking was born in 1997
Friendster – 2000 mostly used overseas
MySpace – 2003 – 100 million accounts, 230k new registers a day
Facebook – 2004 – open to public in 2006, 90 million accounts
LinkedIn – Any questions, talk to Dave Mendoza!

Blogs – Blogs – Blogs

Talk to Jason Davis about anything blog related

Targeted Emails

Quantity of job postings
Quality of resume searching
Quick time to hire
Similar cost per hire
Double opt-in
Test ….Test…Test

Call Phone Text Messaging – SMS (Gen Y Product)

Great targeting abilities
Infancy
145 character including opt-out
Double opt-in
Used to reach Gen Y

The Future of 1 to 1 Relationships

Tools – not silver bullets
Move away from reqs and efficiency
Move towards ROI and effectiveness
Data driven marketing
Branding
Employer referrals
Focus on strategic vs tactical hiring

Joel Kramer From MinnPost

2008-07-25T14:39:00.002-05:00

Joel Kramer – Editor and CEO of MinnPost.com

MinnPpost is a non-profit startup providing high-quality journalism for Minnesotans on the internet. From 1983-1991, Joel was executive editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and from 1992-1998 he was publisher and president.

_____________

Minnesota Recruiters is giving back to the community by invitng local non profit organizations
to come in and speak about what they do. Joel Kramer is our first guest. Donations to MinnPost are welcome.

Joels Keypoints:

Dozens of metro newspapers in the United States are in the verge of bankruptcy, Circulation is declining. Political groups have found bashing the media is an effective tactic. The result is their is a certain amount of animosity in the public around journalism and journalists.

Journalism matters - we need them to keep track of what's going on in the world. It's the best source of news.

The Internet is creating a new type of information flow - bloggers etc. But this does not replace a professional reporter.

Why is this Happening?

Advertising is the issue.....

Classified Advertising - used to be a huge revenue generator for the newspapers but is not anymore. People are choosing to advertise online because they can better target.
Retail Advertising - Ads are moving to to internet, Because of the huge supply available it is much more cost effective then purchasing a print advertising.

No one has figured out how to make money doing news online. With the exception of The Wall Street Journal.

Google today is the largest and fastest growing advertising medium today.

Whats Your Recruiting IQ?

2008-07-25T09:42:00.003-05:00

George LaRocque – VP Sales Bullhorn
Sponsor of today's event take a few minutes to talk about the recruiting IQ test.

The test was based on input received during the registration for this event, George compares Minneapolis recruiting capabilities with a larger national view.

The IQ test is their effort in shedding some light on what people know and don't know.

Questions in the IQ test were based on the following:

Screening
Interviewing
Employment law
Trivia

The question attendees knew the best was relating to sexual harassment. The question Attendees knew the least about was drug testing.

Spiky & Flat: Locale Is Everything In A Flat World

2008-07-25T08:52:00.003-05:00

Sumser talks about the shifting demographics in America.

Here are his keypoints:

Technology is changing our culture, the trend is that people and technologies are moving to the coast.
Population growth is declining where you think it may be spiraling out of control - Southeast Asia for example. The truth is, the population is actually flattening.
The challenge is making economies grow and work when you don't have a surplus of people. There is not enough replacement energy to keep them at their current size, so the economy starts to fall.
There is currently a big generation gap & a huge technology divide. If you are a 25 yr old looking for opportunity you might be waiting longer as older people are retiring later in life.
In the next 25 years, 3 billion people will be added to the global economy.
Current thought is that if you want to fill a job you can go out and find someone, this is no longer true.
The growth in the economy is dependent on making immigrants feel welcome. Immigrants go to where the "action" is and the action is in the coasts - Texas, Washington, California, Boston, Florida etc.
In 40 years our population doubled. What explosive growth means is that nothing is the same as when you were a kid.
Must read Book - Who's your city by Richard Florida - choosing where you live is the most important decision you'll make in your lifetime.

NO ONE STORY - NO ONE ECONOMY

Johns material can be found here.

July 25th, 2008 Recruiting Roadshow Coverage

2008-07-25T08:38:00.000-05:00

John Sumser opens the show by explaining that the idea behind the Recruiting Roadshow is recruiters helping recruiters. The online side of the Recruiting Roadshow is recruitingblogs.com run by Jason Davis. This free network is 10,000 recruiters strong and a great resource for the industry.

Sponsors of today’s event are:

Arbita
RecruitingBlogs.com
BullHorn
Oberon

Before the presentations started attendees participated in a networking & team building event. Everyone was given 3 words and asked to find someone that had one of their same words.

Relationship Marketing via Twitter

2008-07-22T18:39:00.005-05:00

Social networking sites like Twitter have rapidly saturated the Internet landscape and are flourishing. Is your organization capitalizing on this phenomenon?

Zappos is using Twitter to connect with job seekers. In fact, they have over 400 employees actively using Twitter as a customer service and recruitment too

For those of you that are not familiar with Twitter it is a free service for friends, family and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Personally, I use twitter as my virtual “coffee shop”

Social Media Tools Require a Time Investment

Social media tools like Twitter are only effective if you are willing to invest time into growing your network of friends known as “followers” in the Twitter world. So if you’re looking for a “quick fix” social media sites will not be appealing to you.

Susan Burns of TalentSync (follow her on twitter here) gave a twittering for recruiting presentation at the Portland Recruiting Roadshow and Lance Haun posted his takeaways from this presentation:

Be genuine in your message. It is hard for recruiters and HR people to speak like humans. Polished words seem less relevant in the social networking world.

Be prepared to spend time on it. This isn’t a one time set up. This is a multiple times a day activity that takes time to develop.

It isn’t the end all, be all of your recruiting strategy. Not to say it wouldn’t be possible to just recruit on twitter. This goes hand in hand with your other direct marketing and branding efforts.

Who's Using Twitter Anyway?

Twitter is a place you can go to find millions of potential candidates connecting with one another & participating in active conversations each day. Users are changing the very definition of thought leadership.

Social media sites have the potential to change how companies find and build relationships, the challenge is convincing organizations to learn how to harness this potential.

Information Overload - A Webex Presented By Shally Steckerl

2008-07-09T12:58:00.012-05:00

ERE Media's Webinar Series Presents:
Information Overload - How Busy Recruiters Stay Informed & Productive

How does one stay up to date with trends, tools and techniques in such a busy world. Shally says "Drinking from the firehouse" is the strategy you need to incorporate. This basically means picking and choosing what information you absorb.

How do you choose what information is important?

Here are the tips Shally suggests in his presentation to create a clear strategy of how to manage all the information that is out there.

How to Determine A Reliable Source...

Read the context around the post, try to "reverse engineer" to find the original post.

Shally reads....

Pandia Search Engine News
Search Engine Watch
Glenn Gutmacher

How to Measure quality of information

Make a list of sources you read regularly.
Write down the % of articles you find useful among the last ten.
Eliminate the bottom 50% from your list of current blogs being read.
Google Reader "trends" can help you decide.

Also consider..

Posting lengh
Posting rate
Avoid the link frenzy - stay away from blogs that re-post - they are like internet "fast food" tons of content, little substance.

Overcome overload - How to structure your day

Use an RSS Reader like Google Reader.
15 minutes a day read the sources on your short list.
30 minutes a week "gist" the rest of the sources. (scan headlines)
30 minutes a month delete unproductive feeds.
Archive what you fall behind on.

HINT - Reading early in the day doubles your speed.

Speed Reading Tips

Scan first & last sentence of every paragraph.
Skim the whole article, then go back and fill in the blanks.
Keep or Delete - Information Triage.
Don't be a pack rat with your data.
Before bookmarking or adding as a favorite - ask yourself, will it have meaning later down the road?
Always - do it, delegate or delete it.

How to prioritize

Read and process in order of importance

Your Job
Your company
Your industry
informational
The economy
The world

Email Tips

If you have a big email box - batch process

View by "Sent to" in order of importance
View by "Conversation topic" aka Subject line. If it doesn't effect you, delete it.
View by "Sender"

Folder Management Tips

3 folder system

Action Required - on going task or currently working on.
Follow Up - anything that takes more then 2 minutes of time to reply.
Archive - everything else. (Shallys Linkedin Stuff goes here)

Bolierplate Emails

80% of your emails require the same 10 basic messages.
Develop master templates of your top 10 responses.

Evaluating New tools

Change is inevitable, new tools and websites are created daily. Before sinking time in a new tool ask yourself some questions

Can you verify the claims about its impact?
Have others used this tool successfully?
What is required to support this tool?
What do industry experts say about this tool?
Does your organization supply support for the tool?

Shallys Top 5 Tools

Save Data entry with - Contact Capture - Free with referral from Shally
Time management with Rescue Time
Instant Searches with Opera Browser
Email Assistance with Sandy
Capture your thoughts & ideas with Evernote
Monitor what's going on in the world with Alerts like Google, Yahoo & MSN

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Summary -

You cannot read, remember and process everything you see. There will always be more stuff. If it is important enough you'll probbaly see it more then once. Save only the items you think will be important down the road and delete the rest.

If you are interested in receiving handouts from this presentation contact Shally directly. Also be sure to check out jobmachine for more resources.

Search Engine Rankings Are Old School

2008-07-01T20:56:00.005-05:00

Yesterday on Twitter (follow me here) I saw a post from a pretty well known SEO Guru in the recruiting industry. He posted how thrilled he was that one of his clients had achieved a 1st results ranking on Google for one of their “chosen keywords”.

This really got me to thinking…

I’ve been in this industry long enough to know that clients covet “rankings” of course they would; they are tangible and easily understood and no one is teaching them differently. Search marketers should be working to educate clients on the continually changing success metrics and sales teams (in my opinion) should stop selling "rankings" altogether. Why would you want to sell something you have no control over anyway?

Rankings are old school. The search marketing industry has evolved so much in the last 10 years that you can no longer use search engine rankings as a metric of success.

The Problem with Focusing on Rankings

While exciting to see yourself rank, focusing on rankings is not the best strategy when it comes to showing value - here’s why.

Rankings Constantly Fluctuate - Google is constantly adding new websites to their database and making changes to their ranking algorithm, so it makes sense that these additions and changes will impact the ranking of sites already listed within their database.
Rankings Can Be IP Based – Often results are delivered based on the visitor’s geographic location. Meaning, my Minnesota search will more then likely show different results then the same search done in Florida.
Universal Search – The birth of Universal Search adds news, videos, blogs and pictures all into the competitive mix.
Personalized Search – This is probably the most important. Once logged into a Google account, Google will modify your search engine results based on your past history of searching. It is their hope that they deliver the most relevant information to you. It’s all about user experience.

It’s like the guy who authors a book and visits the page where it is being sold on Amazon. After a while it will appear to him that his book is featured on Amazon because of all the clicks he has done. What is really happening is that the result is being delivered only to him, based on his past history of searching for it – make sense? (thanks to EGOL an SEOmoz user for this example)

If Rankings Are Dead How Do I Track Success?

It should be a best practice of all search marketers to concentrate more on quality traffic and conversions, if it’s not – shame on them.

The answer of what to track to show success depends on your individual goals & industry. Generally speaking, I would start by asking the following questions:

1. What type of traffic is coming to your website?
2. What goals do you have for your website?
3. Do I have any conversion tracking in place?
4. What do my current conversion rates look like?

If we’re talking specifically about the recruiting/HR/Staffing world the elements that I track are:

1. How many applicants did I drive to the site via search marketing channels?
2. How many applicants did I drive to a specific job posting?
3. How many of those applicants applied?
4. What percentage of the applicants that applied got hired?
5. What is the CPA (cost per applicant?)

In Closing

There are many ideal ways to measure the success of a search engine optimization marketing campaign. You are no longer bound to quantifying your success based on rankings.

There are countless traffic opportunities available from news search, blog search, social media as well as stand alone image, video and audio search, there’s a lot of accountability left on the table taking ranking out of the equation.

Does a “Green” office mean Happy Employees?

2008-06-25T07:45:00.001-05:00

I was reading one of my favorite magazines yesterday, INC (second only to The Economist) and was surprised to have read two articles on employee retention within the first 20 or so pages.

I understand that employee retention is an ongoing challenge within organizations. So I’m not surprised necessarily at how much exposure the topic is receiving, but rather their theories on what they believe motivates employees.

Article One

The first article was based on findings from the Grant Thornton International Business Report. This report concluded that the main objective for companies participating in “do gooder” activities such as recycling and supporting local community groups was to promote recruitment and retention. There belief is that employees are behind the push for many of such programs,

Article Two

The second article was about the importance of greening up around the office. Companies are saying that incorporating green practices such as the recycling of office products and using energy efficient equipment is helpful to attract and retain workers.

Are Companies Missing The Boat?

Granted I am sure age, job type, life-stage and socio-economic conditions all play a role,
but I have to say for me personally, whether or not my company is recycling paper, or using soy based ink in their printers has no baring on my employment decisions.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe that everyone (companies included) should do their part in reducing their carbon footprints and all, but I don’t agree that it affects employee retention the way they are claiming.

What Motivates 30-Somethings?

I was curious to see what others thought, so I took an informal survey of about 40 of my 30-something peers.

Below you will find what they say is important to them when it comes to employment.

Competitive Compensation, Benefits & Vacation Package
Understand & Help Achieve Professional Development Goals
Advancement Opportunity
Challenging Job Responsibilities
Telecommuting Flexibility

Effective Managers = Happy Employees

In my opinion, ensuring that employees are happy and motivated is in the hands of their managers.

Here’s why - A truly effective manager takes the time to understand his/her employees as individuals….

Charlie likes being given a task, then left alone to complete the work.
Shelley likes to be given her work and then checked up on occasionally.
Tom is a single dad so appreciates the flexibility in his work schedule.
Bill is looking to advance and is looking for a mentor.

Each employee has their own list of what’s important to them, some you can control, and some you can’t. The closer a manager can get to satisfying what is in their control, the happier, more motivated and productive the employees are.

A Tribute to My Dad – On Fathers Day

2008-06-14T17:21:00.006-05:00

To Dad, With Love...

Since father's day is this weekend, I thought what better gift to give then a tribute for the world to see.

The lessons my dad taught me shaped the person I am today. Much of my success is due to the values I’ve learned during my childhood.

Dad taught me to be accountable for my actions, always keep my word, and my commitments.
He taught me to challenge myself and to set goals, doing so will help me grow as a person.
Anything I want to do is attainable if I put my mind to it and take the initiative.
If I’m going to so something to take my time and do it right the first time.
He taught me to be disciplined in life, stressing the importance of staying focused on your goals.
To be a leader, not a follower. (influence is better than power)
Life is about building relationships, never “burn bridges” because you never know who you may be working with in the future.

Dad, thank you for the many things you’ve taught me, for always believing
in me and for giving me the confidence to accomplish anything I set my mind to.

Happy Father's Day!

Everything You Wanted to Know About Hiring Search Marketers

2008-06-11T20:13:00.005-05:00

I’ve been fortunate to find a career that I absolutely love, Search Marketing.

I first got involved in search marketing 7 years ago when very few
businesses understood how this type of marketing contributed to
an organizations bottom line.

The industry has come along way, now more then ever, companies are realizing just how powerful SEO can be. Experienced search marketers are in high demand.

In fact, a quick search on indeed.com yields over 32,000 results for “search marketing”

Because there is not a search marketing degree available or even classes offered in colleges, demand exceeds supply. Organizations seeking search marketing talent are going to have a tough time.

The Business Challenge

The SEO industry is still fairly new and many businesses don’t fully understand how SEO works or how it’s done. They just want a website that ranks well in the search engines and are aware that that’s what search marketers do.

Sadly, this can lead to bad hiring decisions; I have seen it time and time again. New search marketers are hired and the hiring manager discovers soon after that they don’t really know what their doing or worse, they implement unethical techniques to achieve high rankings quickly only to get the companies website banned from the search engines index altogether for not complying with the proper terms of service.

Finding Quality Search Marketing Talent

Conduct Technical Interviews - Unfortunately the SEO business has more scam artists than most industries. Soon after people realized that search was taking off, people starting saying they were “search marketers” when the truth is, they’ve read a few articles online and are learning as they go. Using experienced search marketers to conduct technical interviews for you will help you weed out the dishonest applicants.
Network, Attend Search Marketing Events - With the exception of my very first search marketing job, I’ve never had to use job boards to find new job opportunities. Hiring managers have always found me through events, professional associations and professional networks like LinkedIn.

Instead of posting your SEO job on Monster, use that money to register & attend a search marketing event. You’ll not only learn a little bit about the industry, but you will be in a room full of 100’s of talented search marketers. Collect their business cards and invite them to your professional networks; you’d be surprised at just how fast you can build up your connections to search professionals.

Search Markets are Job Jumpers by Nature

Generally the “job jumper” is flagged during the screening process and put in the “rejected” pile. Not taking the time to get to know these people will seriously limit candidates at your disposal.

Here’s why:

Search marketers have to be continually learning to be good, if they are at a place where their learning capabilities are restricted or are no longer challenged they generally move on to other opportunities – because they have to. If SEO’s are not able to keep up to date, their skillset will become obsolete in as little as 6 months. The industry can change that fast.

If you allow your SEO’s to attend conferences, keep them engage with challenging projects and pay competitively you’ve covered most of the reasons search marketers tend to job jump.

Keep in mind also that the more jobs they've had, the more projects they've worked on, thus the more experience they probably have.

Search Marketers Salary

Competitive salaries for search marketers are across the board. Salary really depends on daily job responsibilities, expectations and the job location. When allocating money to your new hire keep the following in mind.

Search marketing is constantly changing, in order to keep up with the changes, search marketers must be attending events, reading, testing and networking all in addition to their everyday job duties. Which does not sound difficult but believe me, as passionate as I am about the industry I myself find it difficult to find time outside of the search world.

____________

If you are currently hiring search marketers and have questions or need help with a technical interview, feel free to contact me.

What your Email Correspondence Says About You

2008-05-30T19:55:00.008-05:00

You've Got Mail!

Email is a powerful tool. In my opinion, when your dealing with people there is no such thing as an inconsequential communication. Your emails say far more about you than most realize, so it is essential to always present a professional image.

Taking the time to read and answer all questions contained in an email seems simple; unfortunately it’s often the “simple things” that are overlooked.

Take the following email string between myself and a local recruiting professional

Recruiting Professional:

“Hi Nicole - Thanks for taking my call
today. Again, my name is EDITED. I look forward to hearing from you once you’ve
had a chance to review company and position information.

EDITED OUT
JOB DESCRIPTION

I look forward to hearing from you.
Thank you
for time!”

My Response:

“Hi Name -

I’m
wondering what the salary range is for this position?

Their website is done completely in flash which is pretty much not indexable by the search
engines. If they are looking to receive traffic organically through search
engines, their site will need a complete overhaul. Additionally it makes
any other marketing channel a challenge.

It's not something I'm
interested in personally but can certainly pass it on to a few
friends.”

Recruiting Professional:

“We are paying competitively for this role. What are you
currently earning and what would you like for pay in a new position like this?
I’d like to spend a few minutes via phone talking to you. Do you have 15 minutes
for a call with me? Can you also forward to me a current copy of your
resume?

I’ve emailed your question to the hiring manager and I’m
waiting to hear back from him.

Best
Regards,
Name

What really bothers me about this string is that I feel my email was not even read.

At the time I was more then happy to forward this job along to my very rich network of search marketing professionals. But, after receiving this response I just let it sit.

If you’re not able to give me a salary range at the very least, I don’t know which people to forward this job along to. If it’s a 50k position, forwarding it to an upper level search marketer would make me look silly.

Additionally, I said that I was not interested, but this person still pushed for another call and a copy of my resume.

What Gives?

Lack of Email Best Practices

I have seen countless articles on best practice written for the entry level job seeker but what about for the recruiting professional?

Thoughts?

Viva Las Vegas Wedding

2008-05-25T12:11:00.007-05:00

I'm officially Married! Adam and I said "I do" last night (Saturday May 24th) at 7:30 PM.

The Professional Reputation Management Test

2008-05-18T13:13:00.004-05:00

What's more important than your professional reputation? In my opinion, your reputation is everything.

Protecting my brand is a priority which is why I invest a lot of time and energy in controlling and managing it.

I am curious to see how important brand management is to some of my fellow recruiting friends.

The Brand Management Test

Admittedly, I am stealing this idea from a fellow search marketer and friend Ward Tongen. I lost this challenge a few weeks back to my colleagues Paul John, Clint Danks and Sarah Bernier but only because my Google Alert fell into a spam folder that I rarely check. (SIGH)

So here goes, the test subjects are:

Paul DeBettignies of MN HeadHunter
Steven Rothberg President & Founder, College Recruiter.com
Don Ramer / CEO & Founder, Arbita
Gregg Dourgarian, CEO of TempWorks Software
Rick Deare of Deare Recruiting Solutions
Toby Dayton, President & COO of Jobdig.com
Doug Berg, co-founder of Jobs2Web and HotGigs
Josh Kahn of the sourcing Riff

As recruiting, staffing and HR professionals who are very web savvy I figure there are a few ways they could find this post.

A vanity search (after this post gets indexed)
Backlink analysis of their web properties
Referral analysis of their web analytics
RSS feed to HRSearchMarketing.com

Ok let’s see how long it takes them to find this post.

Paul, Steven, Don, Gregg, Rick, Toby, Doug and Josh – when you find this post leave a comment. First one to leave a comment wins!

Why Do or Don’t you Blog?

2008-05-05T15:10:00.005-05:00

Blogs represent an emerging and rapidly growing communication vehicle. According to the state of the blogosphere report there are over 70 million blogs aka “weblogs” in existence today.

Blogging as part of your overall recruiting strategy is a powerful, inexpensive way to generate brand awareness as well as humanize your company.

Where Are All the Minnesota Recruitment Bloggers?

With all the local recruiting events I’ve been helping to organize I’ve been fortunate to have met hundreds of recruiting and HR professionals but sadly, I only know a handful of
Twin cities recruiting bloggers.

This is where my question comes in – Why do or Don’t you Blog?

I’ll start…

Why Nicole Blogs

First and foremost, like all new bloggers I was afraid to death to start, my first post took me a good day to actually “publish”. But, that was a year ago and now I am absolutely addicted.

I mainly use my blog as a way to share what I’ve learned with others. It is also a place for me to answer questions I get asked regularly. My hope is that the information I provide helps people to understand a bit more about search marketing, while establishing myself as the “expert”– move over Cheezhead (only kidding – we can share)

Your next...........

Social Tools and Technologies w/ Jason Alba

2008-04-29T09:34:00.007-05:00

Last nights Jason Alba presentation at JobDigs was fantastic. Thanks again Toby Dayton and crew for hosting us!

You can tell Jason is passionate about educating others on what he’s learned throughout the years.

We were Jason’s 4th stop of the day and yet he managed to keep a very high energy level.

I stated in a past blog post that I was going to blog this event “live” but unfortunately, I got caught up in my other “wingman” duties and couldn’t make that happen. For those who are interested, I did manage to take some pictures of the event.

Thankfully though, there are other bloggers like Gregg Dourgarian who were online blogging about their experience just a few short hours after the event – Go Gregg!

Jason’s Presentation

Jason gave a 90 minute presentation entitled "social tools and technologies for recruiters" in which he explained the value in tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Blogs and Twitter for recruiting professionals. Here's a bit of video, nothing fancy.

SEO – More then Just Hype

2008-04-24T08:34:00.002-05:00

There have been many blog posts written recently describing SEO as “Hype” So, what’s the real deal, Is SEO valuable or just overly promoted Hype?
____

Overly promoted – I suppose sometimes, but in my opinion that’s because there is a fundamental lack of understanding in terms of what SEO can and cannot do. Often I feel that SEO is considered “the entire strategy” rather then an aspect of the strategy.

SEO is not the end all be all, but it is a very effective tactic to an organizations overall search marketing strategy.

Search Engine Optimization in its simplest form is the concept of making changes to a website’s content and often code in order to increase the site’s visibility in the search engines.

SEO Alone Is Not Enough

SEO alone is not necessarily enough to secure a high ranking within the search engines, often (depending on industry and goals) there are many other tactics involved including:

Link Building
Article Marketing / Content Syndication
Press Release Optimization
Blogger Relations / Blog Optimization
Professional & Social Networking
Social Media Optimization
Social News Submission
Online Reputation Management
Video Optimization
Online Reviews
Photo Sharing

Our Site Ranks Well, Now What?

At the end of the day successful SEO implementation can only bring traffic to your website. If a website lacks basic usability principles and visitors don’t convert, where is the value?

Example – If your organization is looking for experienced .Net Developers and qualified individuals find your website via the search engines, but are then forced to jump through hoops to apply for the position and decide not to – is that the fault of bad SEO? Not in my mind, poor user experience is to blame here. SEO and website usability are both needed for high impact results.

Unfortunately, most organizations don't want to hear about their need for a usability makeover, they don't want to discuss website architecture or visitor behavior, they want rankings and want them now. Finding a balance between SEO and a usability can be a challenge, but it is necessary in order for your website to be most effective online.

In Closing…

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a valuable technology that brings your product/service/jobs visibility to the people looking for them online. SEO should be considered a long term investment, a tactic and not a one time event or the entire strategy. SEO is much more then Hype and definitely here to stay.

Minneapolis Welcomes Jason Alba

2008-04-21T10:15:00.007-05:00

Let's give a big Minnesota welcome to Jason Alba (al - buh) author of the book I'm on LinkedIn - Now What??? and CEO of JibberJobber.

Jason will be speaking with Minnesota Recruiters at the JobDig corporate headquarters in Eden prairie on Monday April 28th

from 5-6:30.

Presentation Info:

Topic - Social Tools and Technologies for Recruiters

LinkedIn is obviously a powerful tool for recruiters. What about

other social tools, such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs?

How can recruiters develop and execute a social networking

strategy that will help them find new (and passive) candidates,

engage with them and develop a relationship, enriching

their candidate pool?

Jason will share what he’s learned as a job seeker and career management

advocate, taking you on a tour of successful recruiter strategies with these

four technologies.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

As I write this only 9 tickets remain. This is a FREE event (snacks included)

I plan on blogging the event live as well as getting my copy of his booked signed to add to my collection.

Big thanks to Toby Dayton and crew at JobDig for hosting this event.

Going Global? - Global SEO Strategies

2008-04-14T11:45:00.010-05:00

Managing an international website is not as straightforward as running a website focused on one local market. When it comes to taking search engine visibility globally, the question I get asked most often is “Why can’t I just translate it?”

Unfortunately it’s not that easy. SEO presents very unique challenges for organizations seeking global search engine visibility. Given the needs of search engine users, extending brand presence around the globe requires much more then simple translation.

Language & Content Considerations

At the end of the day search engines care about their user's and from a search engine users perspective, it is important that their search be relevant to their location and language.

Forget about translating from one language to another, you need to translate from one culture to another (localization). Think about the differences between the English spoken in the UK and in the USA for example:

Localization is the process of adapting your website, to a specific locale; to its language, standards and cultural normalities and dialects (Bejingese to Shanghaiese for instance)

Ian McAnerin, International SEO Guru provides the following foreign language examples:

French – In French, search engine optimization is "Référencement", not the literal translation of "optimisation de Search Engine", which would make you look foolish. Additionally, no one is searching for “optimisation de Search Engine” anyway.

Chinese - In Chinese, what an English speaker would call "cold water" to drink, would be called "open water".

Website Address

It is interesting to see the different approaches organizations take when it comes to a website address targeted internationally.

For example, Apple and Microsoft utilize subfolders to distinguish between the various language versions of their site. On the other hand, Mercedes-Benz, Nokia, and Google use country domain extensions. Companies such as Yahoo and MSN choose to use a combination strategy utilizing both country domain extensions and unique sub-domains.

Which Strategy is better?

The famous answer in search marketing is “It Depends”. Each approach has unique benefits. You will need to examine factors such technical constraints and content management limitations before making the decison as to which approach is best for you.

Additional Elements to Consider:

The behaviors of your audience

What search engines are key in a given country (Badiu in China, Naver – South Korea)

How each country specific search engine operates by default

Example:

Below you will see I did a search on Google UK for “Board Games”, by default the results that appeared had the .UK domain extensions, unless I re-ran the search checking the "search the Web" radio box. How many people do you think change the default setting? Therefore, if you don't have a local domain extension, you could be at a disadvantage.

In Closing

Taking your online search marketing strategy global is no easy task, it involves many different people, across multiple countries. Before you decide to go global, it is important that someone within your organization take the lead. Create rules of engagement, guidelines and best practices that become institutionalized - keeping all involved stakeholders on the same page.

Comments?

Recruiting Using Craigslist

2008-04-07T11:17:00.007-05:00

If you’re currently not using Craigslist as one of your online recruiting channels, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to find candidates.

Guy Kawasaki agrees in the extraordinary effectiveness of Craigslist, read about his experience with posting jobs.

For those that are unfamiliar, Craigslist (as defined by Wikipedia) is a centralized network of online communities, featuring free classified advertisements (with jobs, internships, housing, personals, for sale/barter/wanted, services, community, gigs, resume, and pets categories) and forums on various topics.

Craigslist is Mostly Free

Craigslist allows employers to post jobs, mostly for free (unless you are in SF, LA, DC, NYC and a few more) and the traffic driven to the site is decidedly tech savvy.

If you are posting in a paid area it is still much cheaper then traditional job boards. Here’s a price per ad comparison chart.

Best Practices for Recruiters

Sr. Technical Recruiter Gene Leshinsky has already written up best practices around how recruiters can use Craigslist effectively so rather re-invent the wheel, here is what he tells us:

1. Create an account. An account is free and will allow you to track your ads. This will also allow

you to preserve your job descriptions and easily repost ads next time you have a similar position.

2. Edit the Job Description. If the job description given to you by your client is 5 pages long, cut it down to a paragraph or two. Most people won’t read the whole description, nor will most candidates have the whole skill set, you will be missing out on many candidates if you don’t edit the job postings.

3. Know your categories. Discover what jobs get the most replies in what categories. I know that posting a really obscure skill set on CL (Salaselogix, Tivoli) will probably not yield many results, while posting an ad for “Help Desk”, I will be inundated with qualified professionals.

4. Know where to post for free. Boston charges, but Worcester doesn’t. Most candidates will commute from the cities around Worcester to Boston.

5. Search in the Resumes! There are some very talented people who post their resumes on CL and lot’s of recruiters who don’t know about them. Search other city sites for candidates who may be willing to relocate.

My Contribution

6. Craigslist allows HTML, when posting your job description, break up the content by adding headers, bullet points and live clickable links.

7. The newest jobs are listed on top. Remember, the higher you appear, the more visibility you’re likely to receive. Every few days, delete your ad and create a new version of your ad. (copy/paste works fantastically)

Recruitment – The Lying Game

2008-04-04T14:50:00.005-05:00

I apologize for my short hiatus – unfortunately I’ve been pre occupied dealing with the effects of a bad employment decision. Just days after accepting and on-boarding with a local company I discovered that several aspects of the job as well as their company culture (which incidentally I find most important) were misrepresented during the interview process in fact; I feel I was straight out lied to.

I want to mention also that this post is not about bashing the recruitment industry – After my experience I felt the need to research this topic as to better prepare myself for future employment negotiations.
- - - -

Just how common is lying in the employment/recruiting process anyway? According to an article found on YourHRGuy.com, quite common.

Question: Is the business of recruiting corrupt?

Lying on Your Resume – Info Check USA, a Resume verification service, tells us that 80% of people lie on their resume. Enhancing terminology maybe, but blatantly lying about education, accomplishments or skill sets? I just don’t get it.

Companies are growing increasingly savvy in ferreting out lies on resumes through more comprehensive background checks conducted both pre and post-hire. More then likely you’re going to get caught and the only thing you’ll be taking with you is your new reputation for being dishonest. In a world where networking and reputation management is essential, is that how you want to be viewed?

Recruiting / Staffing Agencies – Not all recruiting professionals are unethical, (I know plenty that play by the rules) but sadly you will find some that are. Two of the top complaints I’ve heard are:

They use the famous line “where have you applied or submitted to” in order to take the company names and hand them over to a sales rep to get their foot in the door.
They run teaser job ads in order to build up their labor pool.

Although I would never use the methods above, one must remember the job of a recruiter is to get the position filled. Would the above be considered unethical or just creative strategies to complete their job? I'm sure there is argument from both sides.

Hiring Managers – Hiring managers are not exempt, two of the most voiced complaints include:

Communicating back to the recruiter that their candidate wasn’t what they were looking for when in fact, the resume was not even looked at.
Passing on a candidate because they were “over qualified” for the position when the truth of the matter is, they were not a good fit.

It’s not the companies that lie, it’s the people. Call me crazy but I just don’t see lying as a winning strategy when it comes to recruitment – without honesty you cannot create better results.

Comments?

Increase Your Talent Pipeline By Refining Your PPC Campaigns

2008-03-04T19:15:00.003-06:00

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has proven to be an effective tool for recruitment advertising if used correctly. Even though many articles on recruitment PPC have been authored:

PPC for Recruitment – Jason Whitman
Search Engine Sponsored Links – Dr. John Sullivan

Understanding the complexity of PPC is still a challenge for organizations. Unfortunately companies are losing money instead of enjoying a steady flow of qualified applicants. In order to ensure you’re getting the most out of your PPC recruitment dollars keep the following tips in mind:

KeyWord Selection

Stay away from broad keywords (Jobs, IT Jobs) as broad keywords bring a lot of unqualified traffic. Choosing more focused keywords is optimal (ASP .Net Job, ER Nurse Job). Additionally, using keywords related to learning and the latest tools in your field will help drive passive candidate traffic.

KeyWord Targeting

There are three ways to target: broad, phrase and exact. Many first timers to PPC make the mistake of setting up their campaigns to use “broad targeting” While this type of targeting will send you tons of traffic, keep in mind that you are paying for every click, qualified or not.

You will need to do some testing to determine which targeting method works best for you. A good rule of thumb is to start with “phrase targeting” as this will ensure that most of your traffic is relevant to your ad and your conversion goal.

Write Better Ad Copy

The goal of you ad is to engaged the visitor, encourage them to click and complete whatever goal you have set up. A few things to remember:

Make sure your keyword appears in the ad; the words will appear Bold. You can ensure your keyword is included by using DKI (Dynamic Keyword Insertion)
DKI is a tool that automatically inserts your keywords into the ads, making them more relevant
Be specific, if you are recruiting for someone with more then 5 years of experience say so. If you are targeting a specific geographic area, mention it in the ad. Most importantly; don’t forget to include a call to action – Apply Today!
Be sure to create multiple ads utilizing different titles and descriptions, conduct an A/B test to see which ad resonates the best, continue testing until you feel you have a strong compelling and customer focused message.

Landing Pages

The landing page is probably the most neglected aspect of the PPC campaign. Rather then land a visitor on the home page, develop a custom landing page that focuses on conversion (whatever conversion may be to you). If you are asking someone to apply, send them directly to the start of the application process, don’t make them search. If you want them to upload a resume, send them to an upload page etc.

Don’t let pay per click intimidate you, use the tips above to refine your pay per click campaigns, I bet the results will surprise you!

Are Your Employees Engaged?

2008-01-29T14:06:00.000-06:00

Nope! Not according to the Ivey Business Journal. In fact, they say 54% of employees are essentially “checked-out” of their work day.

With statistics like that it’s no wonder that increasing employee engagement has become a talent management priority for 2008.

Why Does Employee Engagement Matter?

There are countless studies that link employee engagement with productivity and retention and although I know that Michael Haberman would argue, I tend to agree based on my own personal career experiences.

People define employee engagement in many different ways but to me it’s about caring about the future of the company you work for and being passionate and enthusiastic about the work that you do.

Measuring Employee Engagement

To measure employee engagement companies need to ask employees for their opinions and feedback on multiple issues that influence their attitudes at work. Metrics can be derived in multiple ways including:

Employee opinion surveys such as the Gallop Q12

Employee focus groups

Manager Interviews

Direct employee observation

If you ask for feedback, actively take steps to improve employee engagement levels based on the feedback you’ve received. Asking for feedback and then ignoring it is far worse then not asking at all.

7 Steps To Improve Employee Engagement

Understand your employees.

Give your employees challenging work.

Provide training and opportunities for career advancement.

Communicate company vision and goals.

Effectively convey expectations.

Provide feedback & mentoring.

Reward & recognize employees in a ways that have meaning to them.

Create an environment that fosters trust and collaboration.

Your employees are your organizations greatest assets. Their ideas, feedback and passion for what they do helps your business grow and succeed. How does your company stack up when it comes to employee engagement?

107,897 Reasons Why Your Jobs Need Search Engine Visibility

2008-01-18T14:35:00.000-06:00

Below is a sampling of some of the top job related searches performed on search engines for the month of January, what percentage of these searches are you leveraging?

Results Of The Best Recruiting Blog Awards of 2007

2008-01-08T08:39:00.000-06:00

The best overall recruiting blog winner is.....(Drum Roll Please)

Six Degrees From Dave

HRSearchMarketing came in #6 out of 52 total blog nominations in the best overall recruiting blog category and took 2nd place in the best HR blog category. Not bad for a blog that's not even a year old. I am pretty sure a owe a lot of votes to Paul Debettignies for marketing my blog more then his own :)

Many thanks to Jason Davis of RecruitingBlogs.com as well as ZoomInfo for sponsoring the contest.

View overall results and category winners here.