How To Use Content Marketing to Promote Your Job Board

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Matt Jones

Content Marketing for Job BoardsOnce your job board is live and features tons of exciting vacancies, you’re going to need to think of ways to spread the word to generate traffic to your site. After all what good is having a kick ass job board if no one can find it?

Read on to discover how you can use this low cost, high impact form of marketing to raise the profile of your job board.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is quickly replacing traditional marketing as the most effective and trusted form of brand communication and will be key in raising the awareness of any online business. Especially yours.

In short, content marketing is a marketing strategy that involves creating and distributing insightful and valuable content to engage and attract a specific target market.

Consumers have become disenfranchised with disruptive marketing techniques such as cold calls, sales e-mails and pop-up ads. What really works is the considered approach of sharing quality, branded content that is useful and relevant to their lives.

The deliverance of ongoing, valuable content builds trust with consumers. Trust that will eventually turn into loyalty, recommendations and ultimately: profit.

Who Do I Target?

You should be targeting a well researched and thoroughly understood audience. This doesn’t mean writing a blog post about the weather outside your office window and sharing it with everyone on your mailing list.

It means meticulously identifying what makes your target audience tick. What will they be interested in? What content will enrich their lives? How can I get them to engage in my brand and ultimately use my services?

By clearly defining these parameters before starting a content marketing strategy for your job board, you will see much better results.

With What Content?

There are a number of channels you can choose to push content out on. But more important than choosing a platform is ensuring the content is original and high quality.

Lets take a software development job board as an example to consider just some of the content channels your job board can use in its content marketing strategy.

1. Blogs 

Blogs are the most popular and widely used method of sharing content to engage with customers. And for good reason, it works.

For your job board consider sharing short (300-500 word) posts twice a week at consistent times (this helps users and search engines know when to expect new content).

For our example you could consider commenting on industry pieces that have featured in the news or writing about emerging markets and technologies.

When you have built up a reputation you may be able to ask technical professionals to guest blog and increase your authenticity in the field.

2. Video

Videos are useful as they are morelikely to be shared and thus widen your exposure.

Create quality video content that is either informational or humorous in nature and it will drive traffic to your site and increase your online profile.

In our example a video highlighting the differences in two development languages may be watched by budding developers. Who will then follow through to our site seeking employment.

3. Podcasts 

Podcasts are particularly useful for those short on time. They can be listened to at ones leisure, driving to work or on lunch.

A good idea would be to discuss interview tips and techniques that can be listened to on ones way to an interview. 

4. Infographics

A strong visual medium that you will have seen doing the rounds on Linkedin, Mashable and other social news sites.

Easily digested and great for sharing. Infographics are easy to brand and don’t have to be completely informational, they can be fun too.

An informative infographic for our example job board could include a breakdown of the number of software development jobs per state and a salary guide that highlights the fluctuations between them. 

The Internet is Your Playground

There are many more avenues you can explore and once you get started with your content strategy, you’ll come upwith lots more interesting and original ways to engage with your target market.

Just remember: content first, format second. Poor, unoriginal or dishonest content will cripple your image. Focus on quality, valuable content and the rest will sort itself out.

 

Photo Credit:  Sean MacEntee

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Should You Recruit On Facebook Over LinkedIn?

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Lorraine Davidson

7319904344_dd47108363_nOK, so it’s a given that LinkedIn is the go-to social media tool for recruiters.  But where does Facebook fit in these days?  There was a time when news on recruiters and employers checking Facebook profiles to vet candidates was splashed across the HR press but LinkedIn has grabbed the headlines since then.  So has Facebook missed a trick in promoting its abilities as a recruitment platform?

Well, yes and no.  Anyone over the age of 40 might cast a sceptical eye but as far as Generation Y is concerned, Facebook is a way of life.  If they want to work for Company A, they’ll not only check out its website but will visit its Facebook page to see how it relates to its customer base.  They can’t get the same feel for a business from LinkedIn.  So, whether you use it or not to recruit, your Facebook page might affect the quality of the response.

There’s no denying that LinkedIn has the professional, management and executive sector sewn up.  You only have to check the number of recruiters who use it to complement their website and job boards advertising.  But that doesn’t mean that LinkedIn is the go-to recruitment portal every time.  You have to figure out which sites the people you want to attract are using, and Facebook might be one of them.

You know recruiters are taking Facebook recruitment seriously when they use customized job boards and automated Facebook page links to the careers section of their website.  But there’s a caveat: Facebook is an informal social network so, while there’s a mass audience, not many of them will think ‘I need a new job.  I must check out Facebook.’  They’ll probably visit a few job boards and LinkedIn instead.  So here are some tips on when you should and shouldn’t choose Facebook over other social networks:

1.      Utilise your existing Facebook fans.

Go for it if you have a successful Facebook fan page and continually recruit, particularly if your employee and customer demographics are similar.  If Facebook works well enough for Starbucks and Levi’s to use as a recruitment tool, it’s good enough for you.

2.      Content is king in a successful Facebook recruitment campaign.

Don’t use Facebook if you’re not prepared to build a community around your careers page.  As with any Facebook marketing programme, your page needs to be welcoming, regularly updated with fresh content and full of tips on working in the industry.  It’s not in the rule book but the resources needed to implement a careers page probably means that Facebook is better geared towards volume recruitment.

3.      Think about the suitability of each role.

Specialist posts need the services of a niche recruiter or, if social media is part of your strategy, LinkedIn.  Posting your senior roles or those that require particular qualifications on Facebook is, in most cases, a waste of time.

4.      Be aware of the limitations of Facebook advertising.

Again, proceed with caution when considering the use of Facebook advertising to recruit.  While you can funnel down to a target audience based upon geography, work experience and education to reduce your advertising spend, concerns over privacy on Facebook could mean that the people you’re looking for simply haven’t completed their profiles.

5.      Innovative graduate recruitment can play well on Facebook.

While we associate searches for professionals with LinkedIn, Facebook might be more suitable for larger scale graduate recruitment programmes.  Ernst & Young, one of the biggest accountancy firms in the world, has used Facebook for years to target students and graduates.  A quick look at its careers page shows why it works so well; it has a ‘Games Room’ feature that tells people what it’s like to work for the company, information on internships and links to its daily Twitter brain teaser.  Will these engage an audience that demands interaction and great content?  You bet.

6.      Make sure your branding is right.

Did you spot the common thread between the mentioned companies using Facebook to recruit?  They all have strong and well known brands.  Facebook users commonly react to and engage with the brands they like so it follows that a strong fan page base will make Facebook recruitment more successful.  Build up your brand identity on Facebook before you start thinking about adding a careers page.

Facebook recruitment works much better if you can use your fans to spread the word.  It’s not dissimilar to the principles behind effective social media marketing: posting entertaining and informative content, responding to questions and comments and linking back regularly to your main website’s careers page.  Community engagement takes time so don’t expect Facebook to work overnight.  It will take some testing and a moderate amount of resources to develop an effective Facebook recruitment strategy but, in the right circumstances, it could work better than LinkedIn.

Photo: jkdksh
Posted in Social Recruiting | Leave a comment

Warning: Mobile Apply Is Sinking Your Recruitment Process [INFOGRAPHIC]

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Alexander

We’ve previously covered why every career site needs to think about mobile. It’s a huge and quickly growing market that is on pace to outgrow desktop in 2014.

The number one shortcoming for most career sites is the lack of a mobile experience altogether. In fact, according to a study done by iMomentus, just 10% of the Fortune 500 have a mobile optimized web site for their career section. Based on our own tracking of career sites, 25% of the traffic our clients get comes from mobile. That means most of the Fortune 500 has a substandard, and in many cases, dysfunctional application process on mobile.

What should you consider as part of your mobile strategy in recruiting? Mobile apply.

The Application Process On Mobile Is Broken

Here’s what a typical application process looks like from the perspective of a candidate on his mobile phone:

  1. The candidate enters your career site on his mobile phone. You might’ve paid for this traffic from a source like Indeed, or he may have just entered from your corporate site. The candidate could’ve also entered your site from a job alert he got by email from you. Guess how most people first read their emails afterhours? That’s right, on their phone.
  2. If you’re like 90% of the Fortune 500, you don’t have a mobile optimized career site and instead the candidate sees a large, hard to navigate, and cumbersome job search.
  3. Once the candidate finds a job that’s a good match he wants to apply. Your career site asks the candidate to upload a resume and fill out dozens of fields. The applicants gets frustrated and leaves.
This is a huge opportunity lost for the company to recruit a potentially qualified candidate. Worst of all, it’s a problem that’s not addressed on the career sites of many tech companies.

The infographic below shows the candidate experience on Google’s career site. While Google has a mobile site for career (a great start), their application process is unusable from mobile.

Mobile Apply On A Career Site

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So What’s The Solution?

If this problem is so significant and pervasive, why aren’t more career sites implementing a comprehensive mobile strategy that includes mobile apply? The truth is it’s not an easy problem to solve. Mobile devices have limitations that desktops don’t. The application process must be radically redesigned and optimized to minimize dropoff for candidates on mobile. How can this be done?

1. Shorten application forms

Google’s application form is long even for a desktop candidate, but becomes completely unusable on mobile. Candidates simply won’t spend time filling out dozens of fields to apply to a single job.

Instead, career sites should ask the bare minimum they need for an application. If just a name and contact information are sufficient, don’t ask for a persons mailing address, their work history, educational background, etc.

2. Don’t ask for resume uploads, use the cloud

While Google’s form is cumbersome on mobile, what’s worse is it’s not possible to apply because the form asks to upload a resume which can’t be done on a smartphone.

The solution is to let candidates connect resume documents they already have in the cloud with their application. More and more people have documents with cloud services like Dropbox, Box.net, Google Drive, and Evernote. Why not allow them to attach with a couple clicks on their phone? As a bonus, that resume could even be parsed out and pre-fill the application form with the candidate’s name and contact information o speed things up even more.

3. Let candidates attach their social profiles

LinkedIn profiles contain so much professional information that for many candidates, it’s just as good as their resume. If the candidate doesn’t have his resume stored in the cloud, LinkedIn is another good option. Facebook works well for professionals who have a complete profile as well.

Posted in Mobile Recruiting | Leave a comment

5 Killer Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Job Site

Posted on November 29, 2012 by Alexander

You’ve created a beautifully designed site, got some jobs posted, so now what? Getting job seekers to visit your site and ultimately apply for those jobs is something every career site struggles with. Everyone’s heard that social media and search engine optimization are huge, but what do you actually need to know to be successful?

Here are a few methods you can adopt to help increase traffic to your job site with concrete examples.

1. Syndicate Your Jobs to Aggregators

What’s a job aggregator? Think Google, but specifically for the job market. Aggregators scour the web for jobs and include them in one single search interface. This means job seekers no longer need to visit many different job boards, but can instead go to one centralize place to search all of them.

You can easily submit your site to be spidered by these job search engines. The two major aggregators are Indeed and SimplyHired. There are, however, literally dozen others. There are even aggregators for specific industries. Other aggregators include Juju, Vast, CareerJet, and Trovit.

While some costs may be associated with getting your site listed with these companies, they can drive massive traffic to your site. You can then retain these job seekers and make them repeat visitors by capturing their information and re-engaging them using tools like job alerts.

2. Distribute Job Widgets To Publishers

A job widget is a small piece of code a publisher can easily put on their website or blog that will display jobs from your job site. The beauty of widgets is their ease of use. Publishers don’t need to be IT professionals to use them. All you need to do is provide publishers with this small piece of code.

Contact blogs that are relevant to your niche and ask them to post your job widget on their site. Some blog owners are happy to do this if your job board matches closely with their audience and will give them a benefit. You can also try this with associations. There’s an association for almost any profession. Reach out to these organizations are explain the benefits of posting your job widget on their web site.

3. Help Facebook Job Seekers Find Jobs

Create your own Facebook page and post jobs to it. Add a “Like” button on your site to entice visitors to like your Facebook fan page. Once you have subscribers, every time you post a job to your Facebook page it’ll be syndicated to your fans. Don’t post more than a few jobs a day to avoid annoying your Facebook fans.

If you have your own Facebook page, you’ll be surprised how many people will post asking for specific jobs they’re looking for. Take a look at the jobs on your career site and suggest one that might be a good fit. Don’t spam. This works especially well for job sites that focus on a single geographic area. We have one customer who actually started a Facebook page that got so much traffic that they started a job site just to cater to the constant job requests fans were posting on their page.

4. Maximize Free Traffic From Google With SEO

This may seem like an obvious one, and we’ve discussed this in the past, but it can’t be overlooked. Make sure your job site is optimized for search engines. Check page title, heading, and META tags to ensure they target the keywords you’re looking to rank highest for. Each job should have a unique page title and page description at a minimum. Help Google crawl your site by submitting a sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools.

5. Tweet It Out

Every time a job gets posted to your career site, tweet it out with the hashtag #jobs. Not only does this hashtag get searched for on Twitter by job seeker (especially by millennials), but it also gets indexed by search engine specially for jobs posted on Twitter. You should be able to automate this process so it doesn’t require constant attention from you.

Photo Credit: jon.bell

Posted in Tips | 1 Comment

How To Create A Job Board

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Alexander

Understand What You’re Getting Into

Running a job board takes a lot of time and energy, probably way more than you realize. Even if you are using the easiest job board software out there, you will still need to spend time working on the back end. Coding is not necessarily a concern these days, but you will want to make sure you select options that create exactly the job board you want. You will also need to spend time curating job entries and managing subscribers. After that comes customer service and solving problems as they arise. Once your board takes off, you may have the funds to outsource these kinds of tasks. At the beginning, however, it’s likely to be all you.

What to Look for in a Job Board Platform

There are a ton of different options available for job board software. Choose one that is easy for you to use and that you are able to keep up with on your own. Ideally, you want to give your subscribers options to perform both quick searches and more advanced searches, so look for software that supports these functions. Also, job alerts are a fantastic way to provide your subscribers with a way to be notified if their dream job is posted on your site. A software that enables you to offer RSS feeds for your subscribers is another option. By offering several subscription methods, subscribers can view job postings in the manner they choose. Look also for software that allows you to choose multiple payment methods from your subscribers. If you exclude certain methods, you lose those potential sales.

Does Your Job Board Cater to a Niche?

From the beginning you need to have a goal in mind. Is your job board niche-specific, or are you looking to service a broader job-seeking public? If you want to drill down to highly specified job searches, keep that in mind as you set up your job board. Make lists of items that both job seekers and job posters would find relevant and include those in your board. Think about what you look for in a job board. Are there features that you wish you could find more often? Maybe those features need to be highlighted in yours. This can always be used as a selling point later.

Enlist Test Drivers

Now that you are getting closer to your launch, talk to friends and family about test driving your job board for you. They can often find issues before your intended visitor find them, giving you a chance to correct problems before you open to the public. Have your test drivers start from the beginning and follow the process all the way through so you get a full perspective. Once you have collected some feedback, you know exactly what if anything needs to be changed.

Syndication Can Be Your Friend

In the beginning you may not have many companies beating down your door to post their job openings. Other networks, however, have syndication services that allow you to cross post some of their job listings on your board. This helps to fill in empty spots on your own board and also gives you time to gather more of your own listings. On the other hand, some job boards opt to stick with syndicated content because their niches are so specialized. You may even decide to play around with this option to see what works best for your particular board.

Get the Word Out

Once you have all the kinks worked out, start publicizing your new job board. Tell your friends and neighbors and use social media to your advantage. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are great places to start letting people know what you have to offer. If you have your own website, you can link to your job board from there. Forums are another great place to advertise your job board, especially forums that cater to the same niche you do. Soon you will have plenty of job seekers ready to use your service.

Image Credit: @pobre.ch

Posted in How To's | Leave a comment

Join us at mRec2012!

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Alexey

We are excited to sponsor mRec2012, the premier conference in mobile recruiting in Atlanta, GA on September 14, 2012.

We’ll be exhibiting our latest service offering in mobile recruiting. Please join us for this exciting announcement and see a preview first hand of what’s coming soon! Contact us for free tickets to this great event.

Posted in Company News | Leave a comment

3 Reasons Your Job Site Needs A Mobile Strategy

Posted on August 21, 2012 by Alexander

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard about mobile recruitment. What’s with all the buzz? There are many reasons companies and recruiters are excited about mobile recruiting. Here are three major reasons you need to consider mobile as part of your job site strategy.

1. Mobile users will surpass desktop users by 2014

According to Morgan Stanley, there will be more mobile than desktop users by 2014. This is a massive shift. Not only will the number of mobile users exceed desktop, the amount of time people will spend on their phones will surpass the time spent on desktops. Your competitors won’t ignore mobile and neither should you.

2. 10% of all Google searches are made from a mobile device

According to research firm Forrester, 13 percent of the U.S. population searched with a mobile device in 2010. By 2015, that number will increase to 28 percent of the U.S. population by 2015.

Google will continue to be strong driver of traffic to your web site, but the users Google delivers to you will now have a completely different experience. Visitors won’t just be on a Mac or PC, they’ll be on iPhone, Android, iPad, and Kindle Fire. The percentage of your total visitors using mobile and tablet are going to increase every year.

3. Mobile optimized sites are better for SEO

So what happens if you don’t adapt for mobile? Search engine optimization experts have evaluated search results for the same keyword searches on mobile and desktop. What they’ve found is that sites optimized for mobile rank higher than those that aren’t. If you don’t optimize your site for mobile, your traffic from Google will ultimately decrease because the number of Google mobile searches increases every year.

Next Steps

What does Morgan Stanley’s and Forrester’s prediction mean for you? It means having a regular web site that is unoptimized for mobile is no longer enough. At the very least, your mobile strategy needs a mobile friendly interface, optimized for phones rather than desktops. The amount of information presented, how it’s presented, and navigation for mobile is drastically different from desktop design. Your visitors will love using a site specifically optimized for mobile and tablet devices and Google will reward you with mobile search traffic.

The next phase of  your mobile strategy should include fully blown apps built for iOS and Android devices. Many job sites currently don’t have apps in these stores and are missing a huge opportunity. The Apple and Android marketplaces have millions of users who search for apps without using Google. By having your own app in these marketplace, you’ll be able to get even more exposure to job seekers looking for jobs on their phones.

Image credit: smoMashup_

Posted in Mobile Recruiting | Leave a comment

Resume posting, cover lettering, and employer registration processes get a revamp

Posted on August 2, 2012 by Alexander

It’s been years since we released the first version of webJobs and resume posting, cover letters, and employer registration are all processes that haven’t changed much since. In webJobs 4.4 we decided to take a careful look and see how we could improve each to help increase your employer registrations, total number of resumes posted, and usability.

Resume and Cover Letter Posting

Posting resumes was previously a process disconnected from registration. After a job seeker registered, he was not automatically redirected to a page where he could post a resume. That has changed.

Now, the job seeker goes through the following steps, all guided by webJobs automatically:

  1. The job seeker registers by filling out six simple fields.
  2. He is redirected to the profile creation process.
  3. After the profile is completed, he is forwarded to a page to upload resumes. This step can be skipped
  4. Once resumes have been uploaded, the job seeker is redirected to a page where cover letters can be uploaded for future use.

With these clear, predefined steps, job seekers no longer have to fumble around your site to figure out to upload their resumes and cover letters.

In fact, we’ve taken it even a step further. If the user leaves this process before completing and tries to apply to a job, he can upload a resume and save it for later use with a click of a button:

Streamlined Employer Registration

Let’s face it, no one likes registering for your site. We’ve just made it simpler for your employers to register to prevent them for wasting their precious time. All extra fields have been removed and only the core information webJobs needs is now collected.

We’ve also added two much requested fields to the registration: the ability to upload a logo and video right at registration:

Posted in webJobs | Leave a comment

More great bells and whistles for webJobs

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Alexey

We’re constantly adding great new bells and whistles to our comprehensive job board solution. In the latest release, here are some of the ones you’ll enjoy:

  • Notifications before a job expires – employers can now receive an email alert notifying them that their job is about to expire. That way, if they haven’t filled the position, they will be able to renew and the job will remain active within the site. Great for your employers, and great for your bottom line.
  • Recent searches – webJobs now has the ability to keep track of recent searches a candidate has made, and allow them to easily click back to view those results.
  • Search result sorting – candidates can now sort search results by date and salary to find the position they’re looking for even easier.
  • Employer approval – looking to manually screen each employer that registers for your site? Now you can, with an easy to use administrative interface to approve new accounts on the fly.
  • Email confirmation – looking to verify that a candidate has entered a real email address during registration? We now have the option to send verification emails to candidates that have registered to ensure that a valid email address was used.

You’ll have access to these great new features when webJobs 4.4 is released!

Posted in webJobs | Leave a comment

Great looking emails for your job board

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Alexey

People receive dozens of emails each day, so it’s important for yours to stand out and look great. We’ve introduced a new email theme system into the new version of webJobs that allows you to use one of our great looking themes, or create your own entirely. This allows you to custom brand emails to match your company colors, logos, and just about anything else. It’s also a great way to grab your users attention when communicating by email whether it’s a welcome email or a job alert.

Posted in webJobs | Leave a comment