Apparently a challenge is in place where Twitter specialists were asked – “using your Twitter broadcast methods, find me candidates for XYZ job and prove your worth”. (Thanks to James Mayes and his excellent UK-based social recruiting blog which brought this to my attention in The #day socialrecruiting got challenged if anyone knows where this challenge was posted, please share it in comments here). The fairly typical response to such a challenge is ‘yes we can do it, but…’ and my folks taught me that when people say ‘but’, they really mean ‘no’.

Requests for measurable effectiveness of social media recruiting are often met with remarks that redirect the topic instead of directly addressing effectiveness. A request or challenge asking ‘Can Social Recruiting fill positions x, y and z?’ frequently lead to lectures that social media is about community, dialogue, transparency, etc. Would we accept similar arguments saying that asking for results from Pay Per Click is misguided because it’s about the user’s post-click experience?  No. We simply need to get to the point where best practices are an assumed part of any such challenge or request for results. Asking for results is never misguided.

Maybe I’m tired of running into arguments saying that asking for results from social media recruitment efforts is misguided because it’s all about community-building. Or maybe I’m just too close to the issue.

While Social Recruiting is not a one-off campaign tactic and community building is crucial, at some point you have to determine your core performance metric. This is recruitment and ultimately core performance metrics have to include: number of viable candidates found through a social media channel, successful hires of candidates found through a social media channel. No amount of best practice caveats can side-step this ultimate goal.

If I am properly building a social media strategy will I be able to generate an on-demand stream of qualified candidates when positions are open? Will the results of my social recruiting efforts reap the rewards for which I am going through this effort and will they be of an appropriate volume and effectiveness to justify the content development and labor costs associated — because saying social recruiting is free is only true if your time, talent and expertise is free as well.

Should you expect to get these results right off the bat through the social media ‘if you build it they will come’ mentality? No, not at all. You still have to build community, diversify your social media footprint, engage with your audience and build value — all the standard best practices of social media marketing.

Just saying ‘you need to do it right’ doesn’t remove the need to ultimately determine that a well-run recruiting effort/tactic/strategy/whatever actually works and is financially viable. However, given the mind-set of most companies, we will probably all have to get used to repeating variations of this phrase and the attendant details since many seem determined to view social recruiting as a simple ‘plug-it-in’ tactic that will produce immediate results. Yes it will produce results, but…

Can Twitter Social Recruiting Prove Its Worth? Yes, but… is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.

This week Microsoft is rolling out new variations of their ‘Search Overload’ ads in the UK in a bid against Google’s choke hold on the UK search market. Bing has only a 3% market share compared to Google’s 90% — making this a definite search engine David v Goliath battle. Not a position Microsoft is used to: playing the role of David, in this case.

 The multimillion-pound TV ad campaign will look familiar to anyone who’s seen a few of the Bing ads shown in the US.

 It’s been nine months since Bing’s launch and according to comScore’s measurements the search engine IS gaining market share. However that is mostly at the expense of Yahoo not Google. This is good for Bing since it’s growing (albeit usually in percentage points that look like 0.2% gain), but bad since it’s not really hurting Google in any meaningful way.

 With all the recent press around Google and privacy policies and issues, there may be some room for Bing to make further gains if they play their cards right. Maybe they should replace ’search overload’ with a more direct “It’s 10PM does your search engine know what you’re doing?” campaign.

 Anyways, here’s one of the new commercials rolling out in the UK this week — they get points for the most creative use of “Euston station” — oh, who am I kidding, the ONLY creative use of “Euston station.”

 Your thoughts on the Bing/Google search battle and the now international search overload campaign are appreciated.

New Bing Search Overload Commercials Invade The UK is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is an important and valuable part of any recruitment strategy. It has a quick turnaround for implementation, and can  help you quickly leap-frog to the top of a Google search results page for terms which may be too competitive for free ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ search exposure. Among other advantages, PPC can help you: 

• Build brand awareness
• Control costs. You only pay for the traffic you get!
• Attract specific talent pools
• Geo-target key hiring regions

Unfortunately, far too many recruitment PPC campaigns stumble right after they obtain that valuable user click. Why? They fall prey to the seven deadly recruitment PPC campaign sins. Read on and discover if you indulge in any of these temptingly attractive bad habits.

 Sin #1: Putting Yourself First

This first sin requires something that sounds deceptively simple: a change in perspective. It’s easy to get stuck looking at things from your own point of view. You know every wonderful detail about your organization, every Employment Branding and Value Proposition nook and cranny. And, frankly, you have seats to fill! But the first thing you have to do is set all that aside. None of that matters. All that matters is what your target audience wants.

Look at it this way: everyone on the web – everyone reading an article, watching a video or clicking on a PPC link has a goal. They went on line specifically to DO SOMETHING and as they go from site to site or search to search, they are quickly scanning what they see on every web page and thinking:

• Is this ONE THING that I am looking for?
• How do I get to ONE THING what I want?
• How can I do the ONE THING I want to do?

 A well-formed recruiting PPC campaign aligns your recruiting goals with the career needs of your audience. If you don’t respect these core user behaviors don’t expect much from your PPC campaigns.

Sin #2: Not Matching User Expectations

 With PPC you have the advantage of knowing exactly what the person is looking for. They have a goal and the search terms they provide allow you to almost read their mind and give them precisely what they want. With a recruiting PPC campaign you do this initially with your ad content – preferably ad content that says the same thing someone typed in when they performed a search.

 Let’s take the search below for example. If I search for’ Nursing Careers’, which of these ads below is most likely to catch my attention? (Note: I’ve consolidated the search results to save on space and make them easier to review.)  

Only three of the eight PPC ads actually say anything about finding a Nursing Job. Two are about Nursing Schools and one requires the searcher to already know that AMEDD is the Army Medical Department if they are going to relate the ad to a Nursing Career. Finally the two ads about “Obama’s Jobs Training” and “Obama Wants You Educated” are wildly unrelated to the search term – from a recruitment perspective, the advertiser is clearly not trying to catch the attention of someone currently looking for nursing career opportunities.

The ads speaking clearly about Nursing Jobs are more likely to catch the attention of the nursing career job seeker. The headlines for these ads closely match the clearly stated needs of the searcher and more likely to get a click.

 Sin #3: Your Home Page Is Your Only Destination

It’s easy to focus on the home page of your career web site as the first place you want to bring a visitor. It’s kind of like the ‘front door’ for your web site and we are conditioned by our physical experience to ‘come in through the front door.’ This obsession to drive traffic to a home page could be considered a manifestation of this real life ingrained habit. So it comes as no surprise that when people are asked: Where do you want your visitors to go? The common answer is ‘my site’s home page.’ But your home page isn’t always the best place to take every visitor.

Why shouldn’t you take someone to your career site home page? Because it’s your welcome mat, your entry point and it doesn’t actually help someone coming from a PPC search. Not in the way they need to be helped. Remember the three questions/needs that are top of mind for your audience.

When they arrive at your page you want the answer to these questions to be very clear. And frankly, since your home page is a ‘welcoming zone’ it is ill-prepared to give such a focused experience to every PPC target audience.

So if you don’t send someone to your home page, where should you send them? I’ll be back next week with the answer to that question and a look at the remaining four Recruitment PPC Campaign Sins.

This post can also be seen at NAS Recruitment, a Recruitment Advertising, Strategy and Branding Agency.

The Seven Deadly Recruitment PPC Campaign Sins – Part One is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.

There has been a lot of talk about Google’s new Sidewiki…a tool which allows anyone to comment about a web page, virtually ON the web page itself in a sidebar. These comments and postings are only available to people who have the sidebar installed but, no-doubt, Google’s hope is that more web surfers will use this as part of their pursuit of socializing and democratizing the internet. That sounds well and good, but just isn’t the case. Excuse me if I don’t indulge in a list of HR messaging pros and cons to Sidewiki. Frankly the issues at stake are much larger than ‘What do I do if someone posts something negative in Sidewiki next to my web site?’ and ‘How to I utilize this as a social media tool?’ Even allowing for the most socially enlightened usage of this technology, the simple fact is that allowing random people to place commentary on a web site they do not own is illegal. This is why hackers who hijack web pages and change them are charged with criminal activity. 

Maybe I’m being too subtle, perhaps a touch understated. This is Google-enabled property damage. Your web site is the wall and Google is passing out spray-cans. This almost makes  Microsoft’s ’Smart Tags’ look good. For those who don’t recall this little bit of technical brilliance, Smart Tags was a new feature around 2001 in Microsoft XP which allowed Microsoft to highlight content on web pages with links to Microsoft and its partners. In other words, Microsoft’s web browser would be able to place links on your web page content without your knowledge or consent. There’s nothing quite like that warm glow you get knowing that some third party can leverage (translation: monetize) your content as an advertising channel — or considering the prospect that any fool with a Google application can comment, slander and advertise almost right on your web site (think blog comment spam or signature spam — point in case, I just deleted a blog comment from this site promoting auto insurance).

Consider just these three of the many ways this tool can be abused:

• Competitors or disgruntled former employees can visit every page of your web site and post lies about your employment experience, hiring practices, etc.
• Job seekers and candidates could mistake Sidewiki for a company endorsed and managed tool, posting pri­vate information or details you are unable to effectively correct or remove.
• Have a target hiring audience? So do your competitors and a wide variety of advertisers, Congratulations! Your site has just become their new marketing channel! I’m sure you can’t wait for some technical training service to start spamming your I.T.-related career pages with messages about how they can help them gain valuable skills for the job market. (Come on…I can’t be the only person who thinks this way.)

Back in 2004 Google made it very clear they intended to be different, that the company was guided by different stars and their core philosophy could be summed up as “Don’t Be Evil.” 

In a Letter from the Founders titled “An Owner’s Manual for Google’s Shareholders” you can find their approach stated as follows:

DON’T BE EVIL

Don’t be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served-as shareholders and in all other ways-by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company.

Sidewiki doesn’t live up to the promise to do good things for the world. It opens up another channel ripe for abuse not only by those seeking to make malicious remarks but also for those who will use this space to promote completely irrelevant commercial messages and spam. It all depends on how much market penetration and use Google is able to generate — the more users, the higher the potential for abuse. While I am all for pro-active brand monitoring online, having to consistently police your own web presence so you can alert Google that you want something removed (which they may or may not act on) is just another daily task most IT and HR departments simply do not need on their plate. 

Google has a little legal wiggle-room to play with when it comes to Sidewiki. Technically the posts aren’t actually ON your site but rather posted in an application that ‘rides shotgun’ right next to your carefully crafted brand and message. No doubt Google is counting on this to provide them the legal room they need to sidestep any claims that Sidewiki promotes or enables illegal activity. And let’s face it, Google has the position of power here. As Chevy Chase might say: “I’m Google and you’re not.”

So what can you do in the meantime? There are some tools which can block Google Sidewiki, but rumors already abound that doing so may damage your search engine rankings. My advice: take control of your Google sidewiki content. As the owner of the web page you have the opportunity to have your content appear at the top of all posts. This is a great location to take control of the conversation by recognizing your audience, pointing out important site content or functionality (and even link directly to it!), you can even introduce Search Engine Optimized keywords since Sidewiki is indexed by Google. Check back soon (or subscribe by RSS) to find out how easy it is to set this up…heck, I might even post a video showing you step-by-step!

Remember, there are appropriate locations online for people to engage in dialogue and express their opinions about your organization. Your branded social media sites or profiles are appropriate places for such communications, like the Wall application on a Facebook page. To reap the benefits of social media realities you should get involved with discussions in these environments, especially those which are critical or negative, and use them as opportunities to promote your value, share success stories, clarify mis-conceptions, address grievances and provide solutions. This proactive attitude allows for you to build a reputation as a transparent and responsive organization. It also doesn’t involve random people spray painting on your web site.

Don’t Be Evil? Don’t Be Ridiculous.

Kevin B. Hawkins

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Three Ways Google Gets Evil with Sidewiki is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.

Still not sold on the need to use twitter, email or mobile job alerts to engage candidates? What if a simple mobile TXT campaign could make a potential candidate get excited, fill them with anticipation and even, pleasure? Would you use it then?

Imagine this: you are Pavlov’s Poodle and your Twitter Alert, TXT message notification, incoming wall post notice (along with other social media ‘incoming content’ cues) are all bells triggering a behavioral response. Triggering, in fact, your brain’s pleasure centers and creating a loops which virtually assures continued engagement. In “Seeking. How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that’s dangerous.” Emily Yoffe reveals some amazing research shedding light on how the acts of searching and finding trigger pleasure centers in the brain. Remember those studies with lab rats who would ignore food as long as they could press a button to stimulate their brain’s pleasure centers? Well — essentially we’re the rats and Google is the button. One of many such ‘buttons’ like mobile phone TXTs, Tweets, emails, etc.

According to the results from some researchers, it isn’t even the act of getting a reward which is the most powerful element in this phenomena. The acts of wanting and seeking or EXPECTING new information can become more addictive and pleasurable than actually getting the information in question. So you sit down to search for one item of information and find yourself still online an hour later performing search-after-search, caught in a loop where the act of seeking is just as important and fulfilling as actually finding what you are looking for. This is called a seeking/wanting system and if you’ve ever felt a shiver of excitement or anticipation at the incoming tone for a TXT message, tweet or email you have experienced the phenomena first-handed.

So let’s go back to our would-be candidate, the job seeker who has requested to be notified whenever a position fitting their criteria has been posted or when an article specific to their interests is available. You’re already providing them convenience — providing information to them in the media and format they have requested through the device of their choice. All great reasons to take advantage of this technology. But if researchers are correct in their findings, you are also ‘priming’ your job seeker: getting them excited, triggering anticipation pleasure in expectation of a ‘reward’ as you ring the bell. Would these be worthwhile emotions to tap into and engage right before they read about an job opening specifically related to their career goals? That would be pretty powerful stuff, and is very likely exactly what is happening every time someone gets a mobile (or other social media or email) career-related message.

Are Mobile Job Alerts Turning Job Seekers into Pavlov's Poodle? is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.

Did that title get your attention? Good. This is all about grabbing attention. This is about a video you HAVE to watch…all the way through to the end. I’ll give you the link in just a bit. First, some back story:

The other day I received a call from an associate engaged in recruitment video marketing. He had just read my recent post “Do You Have The Best Job In The World?” and we got to talking about the power of video to reveal culture, work experience, and how it can help job seekers self select whether they are appropriate for employment in an organization or a particular career. Our discussion reminded me of a video I stumbled across some time ago which I’d like to share with you. You may have seen it before (it’s about two years old), but it’s certainly worth another view.

If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a hundred times. IMHO our aim should be to make people salivate with desire to work someplace. Create desire…point at opportunity. Make your pipeline a throng of people wanting behind the red velvet rope. Now I’ve said it one hundred and one times.

Of course if you can make your message social media friendly and viral too…well, all the better.

If you’re bored of recruitment videos that remind you of a PSA spot on ‘local cable,’ or something out of a show on The Learning Channel or Discovery, I have an example of the recruitment video cure. Let’s make something clear: the difference between what this video HAS and DOES NOT HAVE is not an issue of who wrote and produced the video; rather, it’s a result of what the company was willing to reveal about itself. The company had to “get out of its own way” and allow a shift in communication from corporate mission to authentic revelation. The two are not mutually exclusive. One is just less formal than the other.

This video has no:

1) Talking Heads
2) Description of Work
3) Voice Overs
4) Company Stats

In other words, none of the ubiquitous hallmarks that make you feel like you are being sold or lectured to.

Check it out now: http://ow.ly/i1Yy

What it does have:

1) A great soundtrack
2) Work Environment – and a fun one at that, complete with a ping-pong table – you get to travel the office through the song
3) Co-workers who aren’t afraid to be silly or have fun
4) Good production value…no shaky camera or bad lighting
5) Sly pop-culture (like the SILF t-shirt)
6) FUN
7) Just when you feel like you’re watching a music video, the sound shuts off and you get the employees singing and the aftermath of the shoot. They are real and you get to see them that way A link to an annotated Flikr photo of the people in the video, with each person identified

The company is Connected Ventures. They run Busted Tees and College Humor (hence the very Gen Y staff). The video was shot in one take. ONE. The first take, even.

The bad thing…their careers page is ONE PAGE linked to brief, underdeveloped job descriptions. Also, there is no sign of this video…or testimonials…or photos (through Flikr which would be awesome with this audience)…or example projects…etc. Oh and the link on their video goes to a 404 File Not Found message — the result of an orphaned social media campaign. This is something for us to keep in mind for any social media/bookmarking campaign. Just because an initiative is over doesn’t mean links (or potential link juice) go away. A branded 404 “Page Not Found” would be useful here to say the least, even if it isn’t specifically recruitment focused.

Why does this video work? I’ll steal a line from Jeffrey Gitomer: People hate to be sold to but they love to buy. And this video gives the passive (and active) candidate something to BUY. They can buy the workplace (some wide-open, sunlit places complete with a ping pong table), they can buy the casual (t-shirt friendly) dress code, the can buy an employer who is willing to have fun on video and and employees who aren’t afraid to get on camera and act silly. Without telling you anything specifically, the video tells you a lot about Connected Ventures.

Not every place is a Connected Ventures…many are the exact opposite. But if you can open up to DISCOVER and REVEAL even just ONE powerful Employment Value Proposition which is vibrant, realistic and RESONATES with your ideal candidate, you can use it, share it and benefit from it.

There is a lot of talk about corporate transparency and corporate ethics and responsibility. Transparency can also be used to attract and communicate, but you might have to loosen your tie a little bit and let your workforce, your environment, your inner voice speak up and say the things that can not be expressed in a brochure and corporate mission statement. Give that a try and you might be amazed at how job seekers (both active and passive alike) respond, they might even say:

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I’d leave my job to work at this place. is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.

This blog will be brief. Also look for ‘What you need to know about job seeker’s search engine habits. Part II.’

It’s likely that you have already heard about the ingenious ‘Win the Best Job in the World’ campaign created by Tourism Queensland to help promote travel and, well, tourism to Queensland and Australia. In case you haven’t heard about the campaign, it began in 2008 and offered the following glamorous job: feeding fish, cleaning the pool and posting weekly blogs about the experience. 34,000 people applied for the job. Did I mention that the job pays around $150,000 and provides housing in a $5m villa on Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef? Did I mention the daily oppportunities for snorkeling, sailing and island-hopping? Yes, it seems likely that the position of ‘Island Caretaker’ could indeed be ‘The Best Job in the World.’

So how do you attract 34,000 job applicants? First of all, aside from the attractive compensation and housing, Tourism Queensland provided their target audience a clear idea of the traits they were looking for and the skills needed for success. According to the organization, in addition to feeding the fish and other such chores, “The successful applicant will be required to report back on their adventures to Tourism Queensland headquarters in Brisbane (and the rest of the world) via weekly blogs, photo diary, video updates and ongoing media interviews.” They were looking for someone adventurous, passionate about the outdoors, willing to try new things, have strong communication skills in English (both as a speaker and in writing) and, of course, the ideal applicant would be a good swimmer who enjoys snorkeling/diving.

So, what about you? Do you have the best job in the world at your organization? Are you hiring for the best job in the world? Wouldn’t it be great if you could reach out to job seekers and say: “Here’s a job you’re going to love. Let me tell you why.” I can already hear you saying “Are you kidding? We don’t have an exotic locale, our job description doesn’t include snorkeling in crystal clear water. Real jobs are not like that.” I disagree. Let’s set our sights just a little lower than the lofty goal of ‘Best Job in the World’, lets focus on matching job seekers with the Best Job Ever…for them. You can find the tell-tale signs of people who have the Best Job Ever (BJE) by asking three simple questions of your organization’s employees: 1) Why did you take this position?, 2) Why do you stay with this organization? and 3) What do you enjoy most about your work experience? Sure you could ask more, but at this point you don’t need a full-fledged survey to track down BJEs — you need to find signs of engagement, passion and fulfillment among your employees. You need to find the stories that highlight what makes you unique.

My job is the Best Job Ever because it allows me to: 1) work with topics which fascinate me, 2) continually challenge myself, acquire new skills and develop those I already have , 3) travel and meet new people, 4) provide comprehensive solutions to specific problems and 5) work with a close-knit team of professionals i respect.

There are BJEs in every organization, what makes your job a BJE or what BJE opportunities exist in your company?

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Do You Have The Best Job In The World? is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.

There is a lot of discussion about using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to attract job seekers to your career site and even directly to viewing your available positions. What isn’t very clear from these discussions is exactly what you need to focus on optimizing in your pursuit of candidates through organic search engine results. What are the actual words and terms which job seekers are most likely to use when searching? Is there a relationship between certain search phrases and the number of searches performed? To get some perspective on this lets consider what controls your search effectiveness: intent, keywords and competition.

The more specific your terms the more capable we are of determining the job seeker’s intent. Matching the searcher’s intent is what allows you to successfully engage with the search engine job seeker. The job seeker looking for ‘nursing jobs’ has a less specific intent than the searcher looking for ‘nursing jobs salary’ and their informational goals could be quite different. The ‘nursing jobs’ job seeker could be interested in locating sites where they can find job opportunities, maybe a job board or an aggregation site where they can perform a search. They could just as easily be researching how many different types of nursing jobs exist for a school paper. Typically speaking, the fewer the terms a person searches with, the more vague their search intent — and the more competition there is to gain a first page listing on a search engine for these high traffic terms.

We can place the keywords an active job seeker uses into four different categories, each with distinct traffic volumes and specificity of intent:

• Core Search Terms
• Position/Job Title Terms
• Location Terms
• Hybrid long-tail phrases

Core Search terms can also be considered job browsing terms — they are the highest level, least specific job search related terms for a particular area of work such as nursing jobs or nursing careers. These are search phrases which see very high volumes of activity but there is a distinct order of job seeker preference which echoes across different groups of job seekers. In fact, according to Google’s search volume reports, just adding one simple letter to one word can increase the search activity on a core search term phrase by over 100,000 searches per month or more. What letter could wield such power? The letter ’s’. Job seekers typically seem to favor the plural form of the words job and career. The terms jobs and careers consistently generate more searches than their singular forms: job and career. In some cases these increases can be as high as 1258% to 2400%.

Typical core search terms include the following (the term ‘nursing’ is used as a job field indicator for example purposes): nursing jobs, nursing careers, nursing employment, nursing job and nursing career. The search volumes for these phrases is typically quite high, especially for phrases containing ‘jobs’ or ‘careers’ and typically the organic, non-paid, search results for these terms are dominated by job boards. Arguably, at this phase of the job search experience the active job seeker using these search phrases is looking for job search resources although if the right job opportunity or company were to appear in these listings, it would definitely receive traffic.

Position/Job Title Terms could be considered ’strong active’ job seeker searches. These are searches specific to a particular position or job skill. For the core search term ‘nursing jobs’ a related position search phrase would be ‘registered nurse jobs’ or ‘nursing assistant jobs’. From a search volume perspective, it is not uncommon for more than half of the top 20 search related terms about a particular field to consist of these position specific terms. Again, depending on the job family niche these volumes can be quite high (i.e.: sales manager jobs with ~74K average searches per month) or noticeably lower (i.e.: accounting sales jobs with ~210 average searches per month). However, like the core search terms mentioned above, these search results pages are often dominated by both the general audience and niche audience job boards. Again, the seeker looking in this area is probably looking for job search resources but would welcome the appearance of a familiar company name in their area.

Location terms are even more specific variations of the previous search phrases. Why look for nursing jobs everywhere when you know you really want a nursing job in the greater Boston area? Depending on the job field these monthly job search volumes tend to be in the thousands for state-related searches, in the hundreds for city-related searches, and for some locations the search volume is so low that Google will simply report ‘not enough data’. Who is your competition here? It’s not your candidate-space competitor across town who’s looking for the same talent you are. Yet again these search results tend to be dominated by general and niche job boards. However, depending on the job niche and the city, it is not uncommon to see the occasional business show up in this type of search result.

There are syntactical variations to all of the above searches: people looking for ‘jobs in sales’, ‘nursing job finder’, ‘engineering vacancies’, ‘nurse job opening’ and the like. Some of these can even generate a fair amount of traffic but typically, as seen with the rest of the types of searches performed, the search listing competition is dominated by job board sites.

Finally, there are long-tail search phrases. Long tail phrases are typically very specific job search related phrases like ’sales jobs in fort lauderdale fl’ or ‘nursing jobs boston area.’ These search phrases typically see much less traffic than the more general search phrases mentioned above. And, although the competition for these phrases can be much less fierce than that seen for the other types of job seekers searches, it is still no cake-walk to get a first page listing for these phrases. The strength of the job boards in the other search areas still lends to them appearing in search results for these phrases. The key question that long-tail job search raises is: how much is a search phrase which may only bring in one click a month really worth? On it’s own, not much. This is why typical job search SEO long-tail strategies focus on hundreds, if not thousands of long-tail search terms. Variation after variation of ‘job name city’, ‘job name city state’, etc.

The goal of long-tail search phrases is to attract visitors who have signaled very specific intent through phrases which get typically get very low volumes of search on a monthly or quarterly basis. The intent of these long-tail visitors is typically more ’serious’ than your ‘browsing’ job seeker using a search engine. These are visitors whose intent, when matched with the appropriate information on your ‘landing page’ (the page they arrive at after clicking your link) are more likely to convert…either as an applicant or by joining a talent network, subscribing to an RSS feed, etc. The value of the actual volume and leads generated through these long-tail methods in search engines (not job search aggregation sites) needs to be carefully balanced against the cost of implementation and how the execution fits into your entire online recruitment strategy.

Why job boards are your search engine competitors.

When it comes to search listings, the search engines look to two primary items to determine if a page should be listed high in search results: content and confirmation. Yes, Google’s ranking algorithm is complex and yes there is more to it than JUST these two items, but these two represent the heart and soul of search. Google and the other search engines want to know what the page is about and the more closely the page’s content relates to the specific search term being used by someone, the more likely that page is to be listed. However it isn’t enough for your page to contain content about a subject or to be ‘optimized’ for a specific search phrase. The search engines want confirmation that your page REALLY IS about that topic, and even more importantly that it contains worthwhile content about the subject. To get that confirmation they look for links, links inside your site that point to that page and links from other sites that point to your page. The more links you have from credible online sources, the more certain the search engines are that your page is related to the search phrase. Optimizing for the exact search phrase is crucial, and subtle: under-represent the phrase in your strategy and you will get ignored, use it too aggressively and you risk being penalized for ‘over optimization.’

The job boards have plenty of what Google loves: Content and Confirmation. This translates into millions of page of content capable of linking to each other with keywords specifically created to align with the four job search patterns: core, position/job title, location and long-tail hybrid search phrases. They have strong networks of links pointing to them, reaffirming that the content of their pages is topical and relevant. Oftentimes, they are your search engine competition, not the company who is out recruiting the same talent as you.

So how do you get your career messaging and opportunities seen by search engine job seekers? How do you compete with the job board juggernauts? In part 2 of this post we will look at some solutions to this dilemma and your secret weapon for candidate engagement. In the meantime, please share your search engine optimization experiences.

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What you need to know about job seekers' search engine habits. Part I is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.

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Free Report: Web 2.0 Recruiting is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.

When was the last time you looked at a career Web site and thought, “Yes, I want to work there?” For all the technical skill and audience appropriate information, most career sites are, well, dull. When job seekers encounter most career sites the experience is like some cyber-interrogation:

Name? “Widgets, Inc. We’ve been making quality widgets since 1962.”

Rank? “We have 4 Account Manager Level III positions available.”

Serial Number? “We offer an exciting, challenging environment for self-motivated achievers. Excellent benefits. Click here to apply!”

To engage candidates properly on your career site, to stand out, think of each candidate as a customer and your company as the product. The better your product is presented, the more motivated your customer. Let’s look at an example from the consumer landscape: In 2003, J.D. Power placed the Land Rover near the bottom of their customer service index ranking. That didn’t adversely affect their sales though. Buyers wanted something more than just a reliable truck; they wanted the feeling they had when they drove a Land Rover. They wanted to drive off-road in exotic locales and experience the sense of adventure and freedom in Land Rover’s ads. The average Land Rover owner may never use it for more than driving to work, shopping and errands – but they bought it for the feeling of excitement.

“Recruiting is marketing” may sound simple, even trite, but very few put this in action on their Web sites. Career sites do not speak to job seekers to fire their imagination and desire. Most are bland Frankenstein monsters created from the pieces and parts of various company brochures stitched together with “Help Wanted” classifieds. That’s not a career site – it’s a corporate promo piece with job listings attached. A career site has one primary goal: it should tell candidates why they want to work for you instead of anyone else.

The key word is “want.” As in, “I need a watch, but I want a Rolex.” Want fuels sales. Want is why people buy sports cars when all they need is a compact car. However, human resources concerns are often focused on needs – internal needs: we need to fill this position; we need someone with these skills. Clearly a shift in mind-set is required to change the model…to speak more effectively to the job seeker and potential candidate. And this is especially crucial if you wish to engage job seekers in the emerging Web 2.0, social media environments where dialogue and participation are key.

In my follow up post I will look at the four key elements crucial to engaging and firing up your audience and addressing what they want.

What Do Job Seekers Want, Anyway? Part I is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.