Evenbase (owners of Broadbean and Jobsite amongst other big players) have brought their competition closer to home to ride the powerful stats of the job aggregator – with

“Last month, Jobsite had 5m unique visitors; Jobrapido had 32m – we’ve gone from 5m to 37m,” Evenbase chief executive Keith Potts said.

Read more here on the Recruiter wesbsite www.recruiter.co.uk/news/2012/04/jobrapido-acquisition-supercharges-evenbase/

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?

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

Alec Brownstein, a 28 year old New Yorker who was in need of copywriting work.

Alec’s plan was to play upon the the guilty pleasure of ‘Vanity Searches’ (Googling your own name) and paid for Google PPC ads using the keyword of the name of his targeted big-shot employers. When those employers Googled themselves (go on – we all do….) the ‘sponsored’ result they saw was Alec Brownstein’s pay-per-click Advert, pointing them to his own website.

The clicks on all the ads cost a total of $6 – and he’s now employed. Nice work.

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!

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.

As this article describes very well, there is a balance to be struck. On one extreme, you could go all out with Flash for that mega cool graphical interface, then try your best to optimise, or (at the other end of the spectrum) go for a more traditional text website but throw in the odd smidgen of Flash to lift things.  The latter is a significantly better route for SEO if you can make your brand work around the concept of organic SEO.  There is a lot that can be done by small bits of dynamic, ‘moving’ content without going for a wholly flash-based solution.  If you do go down the flash route, prepare yourself for some pretty poor organic search traffic.

I’d liken this to a brickie not ‘getting’ what an architect does – or even trying to understand the process of architecture. A brickie could pretty easily build a house without an architect – so why would they need one?

This fascinating story on SEOMoz shows a web developer’s foray into the world of SEO – it’s a great read.