It stands to reason really when you understand that referrals are still fundamentally the most common way to secure a new job.

Young professionals build their networks faster and generate more referrals online (when compared to previous generations still using more traditional methods) and social media is the arena for that networking more and more.

The astronomical growth of social networks has created a new way for companies and candidates to connect online.   Nielsen calculates social network traffic grew by 43% from June 2009 to June 2010, and social network activity is now the single largest activity online, dwarinng online games, email and search. And Americans are now turning to their social networks to find jobs.

• 44% of all job seekers cited referrals and/or social networks as the source of their most recent job, compared to 32% for job boards (note, respondents could select multiple options).
• 18% of respondents ages 18-24 and 19% of respondents ages 25-34 used social networks to find their current job, compared to 9% of those 35-44,  4% of those 45-54 , and 1% of those 55+.
• Extrapolated to the national adult population, approximately 14.4 million US American job seekers would credit online social networks for their current/most recent job.

Read the report here

You do have the figures… don’t you?  Don’t you?

If you’re putting any effort into marketing your recruitment company you’ll have some good idea of the cost of using various channels

• SEO
• Pay Per Click
• Social Media Optimisation
• Email Marketing
• Other online advertising or sponsorship
• Print media, newspapers, directories, Yell.com, etc etc.

… but it’s not about costs – is it.  If expenditure was about cost we’d all live in the woods under tarpaulin.   It’s about value.  What’s the value to your recruitment website of every pound you spend on any of the channels

And I’m not talking about value of a click – those are just flattery.  Surely you’re measuring your marketing in terms of a good CV or ultimately a placement.  What’s worth most to you – a click from Google on some long-tail search, or one of the 500 hits your site just sent out from its email alerts.

• What’s the best source of good CVs?
• Which keywords are generating the most placements?

If you’re asking those type of questions, you’re on the right track.  Job Aggregator Indeed.com have spruced up and modernised an old marketing phrase relating to the Four As of Advertising and in their white paper remind recruiters how they can only have true control over ROI for marketing if they think like a CFO and observer the four A’s:

1. Assign
2. Automate
3. Analyze
4. Adjust

I won’t go into it verbatim here, but I’m particularly keen on the “Automate” angle of recording marketing expenditure – and am currently helping a client to do this.  We’re looking at

• Providing full referrer information in a consultant’s application email (Source of click, keywords typed (if search) etc.)
• Providing a linkback to the Recruitment Database (in this case the FXRecruiter website also doubles as the database)
• Full custom reporting system that can pull application and referrer data from the database into easy to view graphs and spreadsheets.

Basically, it’s about filling the gap that currently exists between spending your money on marketing and getting good candidate CVs through the door and getting paid for making placements.  And recruitment is all about filling the gap – right?

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.

Don’t get me wrong – no-one’s about to oust Google from the top spot, but search patterns show that when people find a site that delivers the content they’re after, they go to that site. I’ll give you an example.

I’m a cyclist, and love to spend all my hard-earned on things for bikes. At first, when I was getting used to shopping online, I went to Google and searched for what I was after. Simple pattern – people do it. But then, after a while, I found that only two websites from the Google results suited me – and they way I wanted to shop. Now, it’s very rare that I Google for bike stuff – I’ve been brought in to the brand by Wiggle and Chainreactioncycles. These are “my” new search engines. Job done for those two companies.

Back to recruitment… using that example. How many candidates search for “London Marketing Jobs” every week on Google? I’m not sure ( I wish I had that level of insight!) but what I do know is that all of the results on the first page are sites with their own job search engine… www.utalkmarketing.com – www.brandrepublic.com – www.regananddean.co.uk – www.marketingweek.co.uk – www.londonjobs.co.uk etc. You can probably see where I’m heading with this. The point is, when a candidate finds a site that delivers the search results that they want, will they move to that site’s brand and away from Google?

So what can we learn from this?

1. Let’s not get carried away – and remember that Google’s own guidelines on optimisation are healthy as standalone advice.  A good page structure and page meta are helpful in all sorts of ways – not just getting to the top in Google
2. Make sure your job search works well for people.  You’d be surprised how many internal site searches don’t deliver what people need or expect.
3. Use Aggregators.  It stands to reason that these services -
   1job.co.uk,
   trovit.co.uk,
   indeed.co.uk,
   workcircle.co.uk,
   indeed.co.uk
   … all carry lots of might – and candidates are more likely to use them as their job search engine
4. Be innovative.  Putting your jobs on Facebook?  Tweeting your jobs on Twitter?  Why not?  It’s minimal effort and these are two big search channels.
5. You may only get a few chances to grab that candidate in Google, so do keyword research and get some relevant jobs and other content on your site.

Leading jobs aggregator Workcircle has launched 11 new sector job sites in the UK under their ‘ABC’ brand.

This represents Workcircle’s most aggressive expansion yet. Workcircle CEO Simon Appleton says, “Now more than ever, jobseekers are looking for the best way to find a job quickly, and job advertisers are looking for the most cost-effective way to attract the right candidates. Workcircle addresses both these needs, and we’re building on the massive success of our generalist UK site to launch our first wave of new niche sites”.

The sector sites, launched under Workcircle’s sister ‘ABC’ brand include:

www.abcitjobs.co.uk
www.abcmarketingjobs.co.uk
www.abcsalesjobs.co.uk
www.abcengineeringjobs.co.uk
www.abccateringjobs.co.uk
www.abcfinancialjobs.co.uk
www.abcadminjobs.co.uk
www.abclegaljobs.co.uk
www.abcretailjobs.co.uk
www.abchealthcarejobs.co.uk
www.abcconstructionjobs.co.uk