All Work and No Play Makes You Dull - JBE 24 days of Christmas (presents) - Day 6
December 6, 2008 by SEO for Recruiters Guy · Leave a Comment
I hate to work on the weekends… it makes me think that all I do is work. So I’m not doing it. My present for today (Saturday) was actually to myself. I took the day off and watched my favorite football team beat their hated rivals in a series that goes back 109 years.
Congratulations to the midshipmen of the United States Naval Academy and Navy fans everywhere.
Navy now leads the series 53-49-7 since the first game in 1890.
Navy has won 13 straight times against Air Force and Army since 2002, outscoring the programs 441-205 during the streak. The Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy (which goes to the academy with the best record against the other two schools) remains docked with Navy.
JBE 24 days of Christmas (presents) - Day 3 - Where to Host Your Recruiting Website
December 3, 2008 by Custom Websites for Recruiters Guy · 3 Comments
Where to Host Your Recruiting Website
There are innumerable places on the web to host a website, far too many for me to make reviews of all of them; so I won’t. Having worked with numerous hosting companies over the past decade, I have some personal preferences based on my own experiences that I will share with you. Based upon how much technical talent you have in your corporate knowledge store the wise choices for you will vary.
For Super Technologically Talented Firms - If your firm has all the technical talent you need, then you may already be developing and administering your own website. I would just make a recommendation to you that you try HostGator as your web hosting service - they are terrific. I would also recommend that you DO NOT USE Ipower.
For Modestly Technologically Talented Firms - If you think that you have the talent within your team to do some of your own development, or at least maintenance I would make the following suggestions - use HostGator as your web host, use GoDaddy as your registrar, and use DreamWeaver as your development tool. Make heavy use of CSS driven templates - as good source is Lucky Marble.
For Very Light Technologically Talented Firms - If you have light technical talents, you may want to check out the web templates that are available from web hosting services. My best advice to people in this category is to pretend that you are ‘clueless; and follow the suggestions that I make for that group. If you’re stubborn, then us GoDaddy as your registrar, your host, and use their overnight website templates to get your site up. You won’t get the advantage of being able to get your jobs posted easily, but you CAN get a site up that can accomplish some of the goals that I outlined in my first article in the series.
For Clueless Technologically Talented Firms (or those who know how to maximize their intrinsic talents) - If you are ‘clueless’ technologically or if you are brilliant in realizing that you can make more money by spending your time on the things that you do extremely well and let third parties do the work of implementing the technical innards of your website, then the best thing you can do is find a third party source for “turn-key” website implementation.
There are a number of companies that provide websites as part of their service offerings. Some companies that produce ATS or back-end recruiting software will provide their clients turnkey websites which are integrated with their software package. You should check out BigBiller, Attract HR, Recruiters Online Network, or look into the service offerings for recruiters of Job Board Engine.
JBE 24 days of Christmas (presents) - Day 2 - Attract Candidates with Your Recruiting Website
December 2, 2008 by Custom Websites for Recruiters Guy · Leave a Comment
It seems simple enough when you read it “Attract Candidates with Your Recruiting Website” but why are their so many recruiters that don’t even think about it?
Many of the clients that we first start working with are in one of two camps [as I alluded to yesterday] - either they have no website at all or they have a website that is nothing more than an electronic business card. Neither does anything to attract candidates.
If you think about the recruiting process, the one that you go through hundreds of times monthly as you try to find a candidate to match your search assignment, it always involves a presentation of an opportunity. The presentation must be attractive, it must be interesting, and it must be of interest to the candidate because it is a match for his background and skill set. If you never make a presentation, all your “smiling and dialing” will accomplish is raising your phone bill.
It’s much the same with your recruiting website - you must make a presentation. The best way to utilize your recruiter website is to post jobs to it. That’s it. Post all of your jobs, and do it in a way that the job details and job title contain keywords that will match the words that candidates will most likely use to search the Internet when hunting for their next career position. When properly post your jobs with great keywords they will be indexed in search engines using something called ‘long-tail search engine optimization.’ What that means is your jobs won’t dominate search engine results for terms like ‘manager’ or ’sales manager’ but they will do extremely well when someone does a search like ‘Capital Equipment Sales into Clinical Lab - Toronto Canada.’ This leads to a great, often unexpected benefit. Instead of getting a bunch of plumbers. painters, and mechanics applying to your job titled ‘Sales’ when a candidate who searches for something as specific as the example above, you can bet that the candidate is as close to ‘pre-qualified’ as they can be.
“So“, you may be asking yourself, “how do I get my jobs posted to my website?” Heck some of you may be asking “How the heck do I get a website?” Well there are quite a number of ways for you to get a website and to get jobs posted to them. Tomorrow I’ll go into some detail about alternatives for getting a website setup for your recruiting agency. Right now I’ll give you some ideas on how to get jobs posted to your website.
- Use an ATS or recruiting software package that has job post integration with websites as a feature. This could be problematic as it could mean that change of your recruiting software if your current vendor’s product doesn’t have the feature, and sometimes, despite Obamaniacs, change is not good. There are a couple that I’m personally familiar with that do a pretty good job of post jobs and allowing for candidate applications - Big Biller and MaxHire. I have friends that use both, the Medical Sales Recruiter uses Big Biller (you can see the integration here) and GLI/Grimes Legal, Inc. uses MaxHire (you can see the integration here).
- Buy job board software and install it on your domain. This option may require a commitment to a larger technology and knowledge budget than you may desire. If you try to do it yourself, chances are it will cost you more than having someone do it for you. If you bring someone in or add someone to staff, the cost will likely become prohibitive.
- Have someone build you a website and custom program the job posting function. Really expensive and not recommended.
- Use a service that provides websites and job posting software as a turnkey service. I’m not aware of very many of these companies. There is a company called Attract HR that charges about $10k up front and about $1000 per month for hosting, maintenance, and SEO for the recruiter website. The service provided by us here at the Job Board Engine comes in varying levels, the least expensive of which provides members with 5 custom websites with unlimited job postings for $300 setup fee and $150 per month which includes hosting and maintenance and search engine optimization.
So whatever you choose, make sure that you are posting jobs on your website. It will attract candidates who can turn into placements. You only need one placement to more than pay for all of the costs associated with setting up, maintaining, and using the your recruiter website. Actually, depending upon your particular market niche and average fees, one placement generated by your recruiter website with jobs posted to it might pay for two, three, or more years of website related costs.