Posts filed under 'Tips and Tricks'

In Part 1 we looked at the benefits of eliminating third party pop up application forms from job boards.

In Part 2 of "How job boards can improve" we look at incremental job uploads rather than the traditional full file override method currently used by nearly all Australian job boards.

Using the full batch override method, whenever we send a job file on behalf of a client to a job board we have to send the client's entire job file each time.  The entire file we send completely overrides and replaces the entire job file the job board has for that client.  This can happen multiple times an hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Sending an entire job file every single time a client adds a new job, fixes a typo or expires a job is old fashioned and unnecessary.  I can appreciate how this method has evolved from batch processing days but those days are thankfully far behind us.

The way it should work is that a third party uploader should be able to simply send jobs one at a time, real time as soon as anything changes.  This is called an incremental upload.  If a client adds a new job in JobAdder we should be able to immediately upload just that job to the client's job boards. 

The benefits of incremental uploads are compelling;

1. Incremental updates are far less resource intensive.  We are not sending us much data down the line and the job boards do not have to process so much data.
2. Incremental updates are less catastrophe-prone.  A full batch override method is a very scary thing to get wrong.  For example if you have 100 job ads on SEEK and your uploader accidentally sends SEEK a job file with just one job in the file then guess what happens?  99 job are immediately expired.  This is catastrophic from a billing perspective and generally requires numerous people to spend hours fixing it up. 
3. Incremental updates can be processed immediately.  This means your jobs are loaded onto the job boards in real time.

Currently there are only 2 or 3 job boards in Australia offering incremental updates.  I believe this method must become the norm rather than the exception.

Software technology has come a long way in the last few years.  Unfortunately Australian job boards are still using technologies and concepts introduced many years ago.  Many things are being done today purely because they are the accepted norm and because it is easier not to change.  Some things have to change however and in this three part post I will outline three things I believe job boards must address.

1.  Replace third party pop up job application forms with web services.

Pop up application forms have become a lantana-like blight on Australian job boards.

A pop up application form is a third party application form that appears when the user clicks "Apply Now".
Third party application forms are used by recruitment systems and job posting systems as a way to capture the job applications and put them directly into the client's recruitment system.  Many major recruitment and job posting systems (including JobAdder) rely on this method to get applications into their systems. 

Pop up application forms achieve the result, but they are often poorly formatted, intrusive, confusing, over complicated and can be blocked by browsers.

The good news is that the alternative is elegant and quite simple.  The way this process should work is that the job board should capture the job application through their own standard application form and then make those applications available to the client's (approved) recruitment system via web services. 

Clearly there need to be strong approval and security measures in place but this is not difficult to do.

There are 2 companies we have worked with recently that have candidate related web services in place or are developing them.  Bond Adapt allows third party systems such as job uploaders to submit job applications directly into their system on a client's behalf.   The system is well documented, straight forward to implement and works well.   Jobserve Australia is working to implement web services so that they can capture job applications natively and then make them available to the client's recruitment systems.

I strongly encourage all job board owners to be looking closely at implementing job application related web services and eliminating third party pop up windows.  The end result will be more efficient third party integrations, reduced application drop outs, increased user retention and an improved job seeker user experience. 

This will probably be the last blog post I make about Twitter because frankly it is about done to death now.  However there is a large amount of interest in Twitter as a business tool for recruiters so for those with the appetite you can click here to download the the definitive guide for using Twitter for HR & Recruitment

This guide has been put together by Michael Specht, HR and Recruitment commentator, consultant and avid Twitterer.

If you would like to know more about posting your job ads to Twitter please call Stuart on (02) 9955 1555 or email us.

For existing JobAdder clients it is a doddle.

If you are not a current JobAdder client we can have you set up within 24 hours.  If your ATS or job posting provider does not post to Twitter then we can still post your ads to Twitter for you.  You can send your job ads to us in XLS, CSV, XML or just about any other format you like and JobAdder can distribute your jobs for you.

Call now to find out more.

You can also follow us on Twitter @JobAdder.  We practice what we preach so come and join the conversation.

Article by Jared Woods.

When you’re crafting an employer brand, it’s common for someone around the table to talk about having a brand that reaches the greatest audience. They want an employer brand that everyone’s comfortable with, that ensures you don’t offend anyone. A brand that gains mass appeal with the public. A brand that everyone can love. It’s a reasonable argument - more readers, more candidates. And who doesn’t want more candidates? Who doesn’t want to be an employer of choice?

 

You don’t.

 

Being the place that everyone wants to work is the surest way to burning out recruiters, hiring managers, and destroy your brand. Being an employer of choice will grind you into the ground quicker than being the place that no one wants to work. Your popularity will become a curse, and will reduce your brand to a litany of disappointed candidates. You don’t want everyone to want to work for you.

 

Part of a successful employer brand is the appeal to an archetypal person in the market. It’s about creating a personality that certain people will fall in love with. A personality that appeals to everyone makes you lovable to no one. Being lovable is about being individual, aligned and appealing to a particular taste. It’s about finding the people who are like you. Who share your values, your vision, your ethics and your style.

 

If you try appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one. You can’t align yourself to someone by being bland or neutral.  Personality’s don’t work like that.You have to stand for something to get people to stand beside you.

For your employer brand to be really effective, you need a thorough understanding of what your ideal employees want from an employer. Saying you’re family friendly doesn’t appeal to young, upwardly mobile entrepreneurs. Saying you’re a company that pushes hard and rewards extra effort doesn’t appeal to those looking for more work/family balance. Saying you’re anything that you’re not, just for the sake of getting talent through the door, is going to backfire totally. As demonstrated beautifully in this post by Maren Hogan.

Your brand needs to be relevant, targeted and honest. Otherwise, you end up having to manage a lot of expectations,  and you create promises so meaningless and vague that it’s impossible to meet them to the satisfaction of your staff. You brand can’t be open to interpretation. It must be specific about the kind of people it is geared to attract, and the kind of people it wants to repel.

 

An employer brand isn’t just about finding the right people - it’s a cultural blueprint for your organisation. It should make it clear to people who are skilled enough to work for you that there are cultural parameters to being your employee. It should also tell them what those parameters are quickly, succinctly and in a way which encourages engagement or disengagement.

 

Your brand is a message. You don’t just have to craft what you’re saying - you need to define who you want to receive it too.

 

 

This article was republished with permission from the author Jared Woods.

An article today discussing the pending demise of Second Life (the online refuge for those with no first life) served to remind us yet again that just because something is hyped and trendy does not mean you should rush out and invest in it.

Second Life has been touted for the last 2 years as being "the next big thing" and "the future of the online world".  Recruiters and corporates have invested heavily in it.

Well it turns out Second Life isn't all that.   Here is an extract from the article:

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Those who can't do, teach. Second Life, the most overhyped virtual world, has been abandoned even by its most fervent journalistic promoters, like Reuters and Wired. It's now pitching itself as an online schoolhouse.

How fitting, since Second Life, a piece of software which allows users to move "avatars" representing themselves around in a three-dimensional space and decorate themselves and their virtual land, resembles nothing so much as a failed academic experiment.

Linden Lab, the maker of Second Life, has raised $19 million in venture capital from a star-studded list of backers, including Benchmark Capital, the backers of eBay; eBay founder Pierre Omidyar; Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus; and Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos. But the last infusion came nearly three years ago. The company charges fees on people and companies who own virtual land in Second Life, and also issues a currency, Linden dollars, used to trade goods in-world. Kapor, the company's chairman, told the Financial Times last year that it was "absolutely in the ballpark of profitability."

Second Life may well be on the verge of profitability. But it is firmly headed into irrelevance. It is impossible to imagine another BusinessWeek cover story like the one it garnered in 2006. Reuters closed its Second Life bureau last year. The former bureau chief, Adam Pasick, told PBS's Mark Glaser that there was no longer a there there:

 

We were primarily interested in Second Life as a business/commerce/finance phenomenon, covering it like we would any small but fast-growing economy in the real world. The bureau is now closed. Essentially the story we were there to cover has moved on.

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At the risk of sounding like an irksome bore I want to emphasise again the importance of not getting the social media cart before the horse.  

Before you even think about investing in social media recruitment strategies you should ask the following questions of your business:

• Do we have a strong brand?
• Do we have a compelling web site where candidates can find and apply for our jobs and interact with us?
• Are we getting people to our web site?  If so where from, what do they do there, what do they think of the site and are we converting them to job applications?
• Do we rank on page 1 of relevant Google searches?
• Are we taking advantage of all other available online sourcing options? (within budget, niche etc).
• Do we have efficient and effective recruitment systems that track, measure and report on the effectiveness of our sourcing strategies?
• Do we communicate well with the candidates we already have?
• Do we have a referral program in place and is it effective? 
• Are we taking full advantage of the products and advanced options on proven sites like SEEK and MyCareer?

Very few Australian recruiters can tick even half of these boxes. 

If you are not across most or all of these points then you should really forget about Facebook and MySpace for now and focus on at least catching up to the market leaders.  Unfortunately there is no magic social media turbo boost button that is going to send you flying to the front of the race.

It is becoming more and more common for recruiters and HR professionals to Google job candidates, particularly as the candidate moves further along the hiring process.

There have been various articles of late calling into question the validity, legality and ethicality of looking up candidates on Google or social networks such as Linkedin, Facebook or MySpace.

I think this is a perfectly legitimate practice.  Here is my take on it:

• Everybody in 2009 knows that if you put any information about yourself on a public web site then it can and will be accessible to others
• Recruiters looking at public information made public by a candidate have every right to do so
• Recruiters continue to be bound by law to ensure they do not discriminate against a person seeking a job based on race, religion, age and so on.
• There are (thankfully) still no rules about discriminating against someone for being a tool.  We all do it every day.  An essential part of a recruiter's job is to quickly spot and cull out unsuitable candidates based on a thousand different criteria.  These criteria can include "cultural fit" - i.e. "you appear to be a tool and our client probably won't like you."  
• Quite frankly if there are photos of you on Facebook being a knuckle then a recruiter has every right to assume you are such and to find a suitable reason not to offer you an interview. 
• Recruiters are discreet and sage enough to know not to tell a candidate they were rejected because their MySpace page showed them shooting heroin while having a threesome with Thai hookers.  Recruiters have entire handbooks of non contentious reasons for not putting someone forward for a job.

My Summary
Keep your personal, private, embarrassing, incriminating, cringe worthy photos and information OFF the internet and no one can ever use it against you.  Put that information on the internet and, as in life, people will most certainly judge you by it.

Some people don't learn.  Only a few weeks after my previous post about job ads with the word "Shit" in them and there are another 3 offenders on SEEK.  One of them is even one of the same companies as last time.  New ad, same carelessness.





Did I mention that JobAdder has a built in spell checker and rules to let managers force consultants to spell check every job? 

I had a call from a friend this morning asking me what the letters "OTE" stand for in a job ad.
This job seeker is a retail store manager for a well known brand and has worked in retail for 12 years.  You would assume she would know what OTE stands for but she didn't.

It is worth remembering that acronyms and abbreviations we take for granted are not always known to the people we are trying to attract.

In a tightening market anything free is a bonus.  If you haven't already seen it JobX are generously giving away free access to all registered job seekers on their site.  I bet the spam bots are having a feast so hurry and get your free resumes now while you still can.

Go to the home page, click "Find Staff", enter your search terms and away you go.  It displays a clickable email address for each job seeker so you can just email them directly.

100% free.

Do you know the difference between the "job title" and the "search results title" on SEEK ?

Many people don't realise that there are 2 different titles, or that one is more important than the other.

On SEEK the job title that is returned in the summary results is called the "Search Results Title' in JobAdder.  This title can be different to the one that appears on the detailed view of the job ad.

If a job seeker does a keyword search to find a job then SEEK uses (among other things) the search results title to determine the best job matches for the search.  If your job ad has those keywords in the search results title then your job will rank higher in the search results than jobs that contain those keywords only in the body of the ad.

When writing your search results title it is important to consider what a job seeker might type in the keywords field to find your job.  For example if your job is a Java Developer and they need to have Oracle, SQL and J2EE experience then it would be a good idea to get as many of those words as you can into the search results title.

Below is a perfect example. I typed 'java developer oracle j2ee sql' in the keyword field.  Notice the second job that appears is actually 16 days old - yet it is number 2 in my search results.





If you use your search results title effectively then your ads will appear in more searches and therefore receive more applications.  This also means you don't need to continually refresh your job ads.  Write it once and write it properly and your 30 day ad will remain relevant for the full 30 days instead of 30 minutes.


Note : Don't just keyword load your search results title for the sake of it - your ad still needs to read well and make sense.

In an economic downturn free job boards should flourish.

Advertisers know they need to keep advertising even when times are tight however constricting budgets will mean they will be looking for more cost effective solutions.

This does not include startups who hope to attract advertisers with $10 or $29 or $79 job ads.  Startup job boards heading into the next 12 months should be frantically revising their strategies because job advertisers are even less likely to be taking punts on start up job boards now, no matter what the price per ad.

A fascinating article on Interbiznet today reinforces the importance of continued advertising during a downturn.  You can read the article here but some of the highlights are:

• Maintaining a company's advertising during an economic downturn will give the image of corporate stability within a chaotic business environment, and give the advertiser the chance to dominate the advertising media

• Economic downturns reward the aggressive advertiser and penalize the timid one

• When times are good, you should advertise; when times are bad, you must advertise

Not everyone can afford to increase or even maintain advertising budgets through a downturn so this is where free job boards will become a great option for those looking to maintain branding and awareness when times are tight.

AFAICT TXT LNGE DNB IN JOB ADS.  AOAS IT S2B OK FOR PPL TO PUT TXT IN2 JOB ADS.  @TEOTD IT IS NTEOTW AND IT IS PAND THO A PITA IF U R A NOOB.  OMG WE !!

OK I am exhausted - that really took it out of my 30 something year old brain!  Kiddies please bear in mind WDASURL (old person guessing the SMS for "We don't all speak your language".  It's probably a real one but WCFBB checking :)

It was an interesting exercise to check a few SMS words on major job boards to see how often some of these words are appearing. Unfortunately a little too often for my taste.

Below are a few real life examples from Australian job boards....

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Anyone interesting in learning a new language can visit the SMS Dictionary here.

This week's well written job ad of the week is from Retail World Resourcing.  This is another great example of creative ad writing that catches the eye and captures the imagination.  I found myself thinking about firing up the BBQ....

Last week I wrote about the importance of displaying salary details on your job ad.  This week is about my second biggest bug bear - bullet points.

Most companies now utilise the 3 bullet points on their SEEK templates (and most other job boards) to the point where 3 bullets at the top of a job ad has almost become the industry standard.

The problem however is that bullets have become so "the norm" that most people don't put any thought into them - the result being boring, pointless drivel that detracts from the job ad. 

I don't care how amazing the role is or how much time you put into crafting your job ad if your bullets are mindless your job ad probably won't get read.

Some real life examples I found today:








Every job has a location and every job has (at least in your mind) an "impressive", "excellent", or "competitive" salary".  You might as well save yourself the trouble and write:

• My client has an office
• You come to work on a train
• You get paid, you go home.
  

Bullet points can add tremendous value to a job ad but they are also one of the first impressions a reader has about your job ad.  Put the time into writing useful and creative bullet points and more people will make their way down to the bottom of your ad, where incidentally the Apply Now button usually sits :)

In today's job market it is vital to list salary details on your job ads whenever humanly possible.

With the number of job ads currently listed on job boards it is imperitive to list salary details on your job ads so that candidates can more effectively determine if your position is suitable or not.  Salary is easily one of the most important criteria that candidates use to decide if a position is of interest to them. 

An analogy I find interesting is that of property.  My wife and I have been looking for a house to buy or rent for the last few months and to assist us in our searching we have been registering for alert emails on all the major real estate sites.  One of the things I found interesting is that after about a day of looking I stopped clicking on houses that didn't have a price listed.  Even if the houses were in the right suburb and had the right ticks in boxes I found it too frustrating to then have to phone real estate agents, leave messages, never hear back etc etc.  So in the end I used listing price as the key criteria in determining if a property was worth even clicking on let alone visiting.

Job searching is the same.  Job seekers have hundreds of thousands of potential vacancies to look through so why would they go to the trouble of clicking on your job if they don't know what the salary range is?

I know all the reasons why recruiters and corporates sometimes don't like advertising salaries but on the balance of things you are always going to be better off listing a salary.  Job boards like SEEK and MyCareer know how job seekers behave and have been encouraging us all to list salary details for years.  If you are not doing it yet then think about starting today.

There is a great post on Valleywag today titled "17 mistakes startups make".  In my job I am lucky to get to speak to dozens of startup recruitment agencies and recruitment related businesses.  With that in mind I thought this article is worth considering...

 

 

 

 

"In 1999 John Osher started Dr. John's SpinBrush to sell a $5 electric toothbrush. In 2001, he sold the company to Procter & Gamble for $475 million. Here are his "17 mistakes start-ups make" in 100 words.

 

• Failing to spend enough time researching the business idea to see if it's viable.
• Miscalculating market size. Entrepreneurs say, 'The market size is 50 million people. If I only sell to 2 percent, I'd be selling a million.' But most products sell less than 1 percent.
• Making a commitment on sales projections that were wrong. Created costs that require those projections to be met. Run out of money.
• Overprojecting sales prospects.
• Making cost projections that are too low.
• Hiring too many people and spending too much.
• Lacking a contingency plans.
• Bringing in unnecessary partners.
• Hiring for convenience rather than skill requirements.
• Spending half their time doing something that represents 5 percent of their business.
• Accepting that it's "not possible" too easily.
• Focusing too much on volume and company size rather than profit.
• Looking for somebody to tell you you're right.
• Lacking simplicity.
• Lacking clarity of your long-term aim and business purpose.
• Going after too many targets at once.
• Lacking an exit strategy."

 

I came across this job ad on SEEK today.  This is a classic piece of creative job ad writing and well worth sharing.

A recent Hudson survey of job seeker opinions is getting plenty of coverage around town today.  You can read a detailed breakdown of the study here on Shortlist but there are a couple of very interesting points that I wanted to comment on...

1. Job Seekers want more details in job ads. 
   "It showed a growing frustration with job ads among candidates, with 45% of respondents saying they lacked sufficient detail for the candidate to make a decision. This included vague descriptions of roles, omitting the employer's name and lack of salary information."
   
   There are only 3 reasons I can think of that might explain why a recruiter wouldn't write a detailed, descriptive job ad. (i) You don't know much about the job (ii) you are too lazy to spend the extra 5 minutes (iii) you are being driven by unreasonable KPIs that don't give you the time you need to write a good ad.
   
   If you are guilty of (i) or (ii) then the good news is you can easily turn this around.  You will make more placements and more money by spending the time to understand your roles and write detailed ads.
   If your problem is (iii) then go and find yourself a new job.  There are plenty of them going..


2. Your web site is critical to your success.  "The research showed that more than half of all candidates (55%) now go directly to a company's website during their jobsearch process."
   
   Intuitively you would expect that people check out your web site when they are considering working for you or using your agency, but did you realise it was more than half?   These findings should spur all recruiters and employers to re-examine their web sites.  What does your web site say about you?  Would you work for you based on your web site?


3. Poorly written job ads are harming your future chances with today's passive candidates.  "Nine out of 10 (88%) candidates used the major job boards as a research channel during their job search process, and 83% also used newspapers."
   
   When writing your job ads bear in mind that job seekers and future job seekers are using your ads to research the job market.  In so doing they are forming opinions about you.


4. Niche job boards are vital.  "54% of candidates used specialist industry job search sites as a research channel."
   
   Are you using specialist niche job sites to advertise your roles?  This report proves that the global move to specialist job sites is alive and well in Australia.  There are some great specialist job sites in Australia and you owe it to yourself to try them.

How do you go on these 4 points?