Job Description Template

I’ve had a couple of queries about my post on the SEO template for a job details page – in particular about the job description and title itself, so wanted to expand on that a little.

Job Title

I still seem to come across so many job descriptions on websites that appear to have been written for newspaper job ads. ‘Attractive’ headlines or calls to action may attract the eye in a newspaper, but the words are of no use to someone searching.

Make the job title simple and to the point.

• Use keywords that people might search for in the job title
• Don’t ‘waste’ words
• Describe – don’t ‘attract’
• Forget humour – keep it plain and businesslike
• Keep it to about one line (8 – 10 words, generally)

So – a good job title would be:
“Senior Mechanical Engineer for Rail Company in South Yorkshire, Permanent”

and a dreadful one would be:

“Are you a fast-mover who likes to keep on the rails?” … you get my point.  Think ‘keywords’ Which candidate would possibly be searching for a ‘fast mover’ etc etc.

Job Description

The description should always start with a brief summary paragraph. Think about having 30 seconds to get all the info possible across to a candidate. Use words they would use.

• Business area
• Role type
• Summary of tasks
• Level / seniority

Remember that the first 160 characters of opening paragraph is likely to be (or at least should be) the meta description.  This has keyword value in Google and other search engines, so get keywords in early.

Things you can use without ruining your SEO

• If you need to attract people to certain words, then use bold (or better, <strong> tags) – if needs be.  Search engines pay little or no attention to whether something is bold (depending on who you listen to) but the human eye can’t help but pick up on certain attractive words.
• Don’t be afraid of a bit of repetition – over-describe the role if needs be
• Qualifications can also be great keywords in some circumstances – list them in the job
• Use the word job.  It’s a job description.
• Location, location, location.  Say where it is.  People need to know.  They might be travelling to it.

… and things you shouldn’t use

• Precious few people search for ‘role’ or ‘vacancy’.  It’s a waste of a word in SEO terms. If you’re going to use it, use it sparingly.
• “My Client has an opening for” etc etc.  It’s obvious that they’re your client.  Waste of words.
• Humour, sarcasm etc.  Not good, waste of words, sets a bad tone.
• “Headline speak”  or “Questions” - Your site  is giving information out to people.  It’s plain patronising to says things like “Do you fancy a change of direction?” and it’s off-putting.

The template for a good job description

Job Title – round about ten words, keyword-rich

Introduction

• Describe role, location, employer-type, and anything else pertinent.
• Keywords in first 160 characters.

Full description

• about candidate requirements
• experience
• employer type
• job tasks
• area, hours of work, etc

Working details

• Conditions / pay
• Holidays if appropriate

‘About’ the application

• Closing date if appropriate
• Further contact info if appropriate
• Excluded applicants

Anything else about the job

• What will happen after application
• Other allowances if appropriate
• permanent or part time, etc
• Headline allowances, remuneration, and other attractive things in the package

Recruitment Websites “by design”

One of the common problems we have to overcome is ‘design’ not really being about ‘design’ at all – but being about visual appeal.

I posted this earlier today on the Reverse Delta blog but thought it worth posting here… though I guess I’m preaching to the converted here if you’re reading a blog about Recruitment SEO!

Flash and SEO – understanding the balance and implications.

We understand the importance of the Brand – all companies need to keep careful control of how they come across to their audience – and the importance of presenting a good image to your audience – whether clients or candidates – on your website is very high. You only get one chance in many ways.

Visually, your site needs to do the job well, and we must accept that one of the big tools in ‘grabbing’ people is animated, (usually Flash) graphics in some way. There’s no avoiding it… things that ‘move’ tend to work. (Within reason – we’ve all been to sites that are way, way too annoying before!).

The problem is, of course, that Flash is effectively a graphical interface – the words or messages in Flash are not indexed by Google or any search engines. They’re ‘empty’ words as far as SEO goes. So does that mean you should be avoiding Flash for your new recruitment website? Well… not really, but you do need to get the balance right. (more…)

How should recruiters deal with truly Free Job Boards?

With a massive pressure to reduce costs, it was a sort of inevitability that some big firms were going to club together and produce a truly free (well almost) super-job board. ‘United We Work’ was set up earlier this month in the US by the Fortune 500 companies.

“We believe that if we can break those [cost barriers] down, it may stimulate an employer to hire now instead of waiting six months,” said Jason Kerr, founder of QuietAgent, the technology developer behind the website.

The site, (at UnitedWeWork.org), won’t compete directly with online job board giants CareerBuilder and Monster – job seekers don’t search and apply for specific positions; rather they complete a standard résumé. It’s an interesting experiment in the US where unemployment is currently 10%.

With so many big firms putting their weight behind the new board, it’ll be interesting to see the level to which (if at all) traditional job boards are hit in the US.

Tweet your jobs… the easy way

I’ve seen so many articles recently about complex mothods of getting your jobs ‘fed’ onto Twitter.

It’s so simple and there are a few sites / providers out there with vested interests giving people all manner of complex advice about how to automatically display your jobs on Twitter.

It’s so simple to do and I feel the overpowering urge to tell you how before someone else tells you a more complex way.

1. Get the URL of your jobs RSS feed no RSS feed? Get a new recruitment website!
2. Create the Twitter account that you want to use (five minutes’ job!) to display the jobs
3. Login to that Twitter account
4. Go to pingvine.com or twitterfeed.com and submit the RSS feed (i.e., paste it in), and authenticate it.
5. Bingo… one more channel to get your jobs to the world – using the world’s fastest-growing search engine – Twitter.

Oh… and don’t forget the bit that people so often miss out on… PRMOTE YOUR CHANNELS – make sure people know they can digest your content in whatever way suits them.

Free versus Paid

Just stepping outside of the SEO loop and into the wider world of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), I thought it was time to post something about the use of Adwords in helping to market your recruitment website. (more…)

This is a democracy – use your vote

Just wanted to clear something up for a client who didn’t fully understand the use of ‘nofollow’ links when adding comments on blogs etc.

As we all know (surely!) a link to your site is generally a very good thing.  A link with good anchor text is generally even better.  This is because Google et al will understand what is at the end of that link to be summarized by the context of the anchor text.  (“Click here for Marketing Jobs” is good “Click here for Marketing Jobs” is not) (more…)

Gain some insight!

It seems one of the most fundamental things, but do people search for “Jobs”, “Recruitment” or “Vacancies”?  It’s about time we buried this one – so many of my clients come from hardcore recruitment backgrounds and as such can get a bit bogged down in industry terms, rather than thinking of terms that people actually search for. (more…)

What is a job search engine? Beyond Google and Yahoo!

Traditional organic SEO means (to put things simply) focus on mainly Google (organic) results and, if you have time, Yahoo (organic) results. It’s no wonder – if someone wants to find something on the web, we all know where people go first – it makes sense to focus your resources there. But what happens when they discover a ‘new’ search engine? (more…)

Meta Title tags: Good ones vs long, boring, spammy ones

According to many sources, the optimal character length (including spaces) is 68. That is the number of characters Google will display in its SERPs (see below), and any keyword after the 68th character is cut off and I am starting to believe that it is either disregarded or given less weighting in keyword searches.

I have seen sites come up very high in the rankings with longer title tags, so I would venture to say that Google doesn’t give demerits for title tags longer than 68 characters, though I would be wary of creating title tags much longer than 80 or 90 characters. (more…)