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widget is a small application that runs either on your desktop or embedded within a web page. A widget adds content to a page provided by another site. Generally widgets are provided by third parties sites, eg. A job board providing the ability for you to display job search functions on your own website.
Job sites create widgets to increase distribution and create loyalty within the user base. By displaying a widget on your website/blog, you can provide your readers with jobs and content from your favorite job site.
Some publishers can earn money from displaying widgets on their website or blog. The widget will allow you to show relevant jobs to your users and earn money every time someone clicks a job link, registers with the job board, signs up for the newsletter etc.
There are various types of widgets available including:
- Job Search Widget
- Job Search Results Widget (pre defined variables)
- Latest Jobs Widget (pre defined variables)
- Multi combo
- Advice & content
Most providers will have some sort of sign up process where you can choose the type of widget to display and customise the various components.
These customisations can include specific job classifications, location, number of jobs to display etc.
- Select your job criteria
- Customise the design
- Generate and preview your widget
- Copy and Paste the generated code into your website
Widget providers should comply with the
IAB Ad Unit Guidelines specifying size restrictions to allow maximum compatibility with existing ad serving programs.
When choosing a widget for your website, make sure you think about the users experience. The key is to seamlessly blend the widget into your website.
Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/examples-of-job-search-widgets-a266.html
Article Tags: job search job search widget job search results job search results widget widget job board recruitment agency job advert search form iab ad unit guidelines widget examples 
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Facebook has released a new version of the website called
Facebook Lite. The new site has been designed for users on slow connection speeds and is simply a stripped down, "bare" version of the social networking website. All non-core components including applications have been removed.
This is good news for people who are new to Facebook, as they tend to be most interested in a simple experience. Facebook has become too big and bloated for most users. Users want to focus on establishing their network of friends and communicating with them by writing on their walls, sending messages, or looking at pictures.
Unfortunately this is NOT good news for Recruiters and other organisations that used applications to interact by sending job adverts, gathering user data or referring friends.
We should have been used to an application free environment as neither the mobile version nor iphone application allows application interaction.
Still, the best way to integrate your website with the social network is with
Facebook Connect using the API. Facebook Connect can provide much the same level of integration between your website and the users stored data.
Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/facebook-lite-goodbye-facebook-applications-a265.html
Article Tags: facebook connect facebook applications facebook lite api social networking View Comments (0)
SMS Job Alerts
Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 7:00pm Tuesday 08 September 2009  |
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SMS is an excellent communication tool - fast, cheap, easy to send and easy to receive. But, are SMS job alerts that effective in the recruitment process?
Earlier in the year I wrote a very informative article titled
Using SMS in Recruitment, and only slightly touched on sending SMS job alerts. Using SMS in the recruitment process is NOT new or revolutionary. Employers, recruiters and job boards have been using it for years to deliver notifications.
- The personal nature of mobile phones makes SMS marketing a very powerful tool.
- Most mobile users keep it on them all the time - meaning they can be effective for time sensitive messages.
- Users are inclined to read virtually every SMS they get - unlike email and other means of advertising.
- Bulk SMS marketing is very economical and one can send thousands of text messages to consumers at low prices.
- Bulk SMS saves time - instead of writing a message and then sending it to each mobile subscriber, one message is created and then sent to a whole group of subscribers.
SMS works great in the temp/casual sectors because you can quickly distribute your message and receive an immediate response. Ask yourself...
- Why are we communicating via SMS in the first place?
- Is there urgency for contacting the person?
- Is it easier to make a phone call or send an email with more information?
Over the past few days while integrating SMS Job Alerts into our online recruitment system, I continue to identify 2 main problems with using SMS.
- The MESSAGE
- The PROCESS
A SMS can be between 140 - 160 characters long per message. Within that message we need to quickly identify the reason for sending the SMS (header) and include un-subscription details (footer).
If you are going to set up SMS job alerts, allow users to set the maximum number of SMS's received per day/week/month and set up specific search criteria for users to receive alerts - location, category, work type or keywords.
There are various methods for a user to automatically unsubscribe - send a SMS back the sender or visit a URL and enter the mobile phone number. Either way, this is mandatory!
eg. "New job alert!" (14 chars) + space (1 char) + MESSAGE + space (1 char) + "NOSMS? http://url.com/nosms" (27 chars) = 43 characters used, leaving 117 for the job details.
Surly 160 characters are enough to explain the job? Not really, the SMS will inform the user to perform another step in this process - SMS/call back, check email, view website. Again, these steps need to be relayed in the message.
What ever method you use, remember to measure the open rate, traffic flow to website, replies or responce numbers/rate and un-subscription.
Are SMS job alerts that effective? Have you used SMS in the recruitment process before?
Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/sms-job-alerts-a264.html
Article Tags: sms mobile recruitment sms marketing marketing recruitment marketing job alerts sms job alerts recruitment process mobile phone View Comments (4)
Last week, I was drawn into an discussion regarding Google Base. It was a simple question... Should you post jobs to Google Base?
Google Base was launched in 2005 covering a variety of items including – housing (real estate), jobs, events, vehicles, products etc. In Australia, housing (aka real estate) is the only
Google Base item being promoted. To search for jobs in Australia, you need to use the international
search form.
The site is free to advertise, but you need to post the items via the
Data Feed or API. Google Base may not have any direct impact on your web traffic but it may help with your off-site SEO. Although Google Base is similar to the search function, it is not the same thing. It's actually harder to use as it contains more search options.
Google Base is a way for you to submit specific types of content to Google. The items you submit will be included in Google Base, Google Products, Google Maps and depending on the items relevance; they can automatically be posted in the main search engine.
This is an important thing to understand because the quality of the data you submit will not only affect your results in Google Base, but in these other areas of Google as well.
Eg. If you submit a job listing to Google Base with specific location details - the job can be mapped and found on Google Maps. See previous article titled
Use of Google Maps in a Job Search.
Many people have predicated the closure of Google Base. But I doubt Google will close the project as it provides vital data feeds which help identify, rank and further explain complex content. Did you know that
Yahoo! now accepts Google Base data feeds to their search engine? Odd, but now you can share and use your Google Base data within
Yahoo! Search.
If you think about how people search for jobs on search engines, ie by typing in keywords into the search field; Google could have been a major player in our local market, or will it become a player? There are many people who have suggested that Google could shake up SEEK’s dominance of the online recruitment industry. I doubt it; have a look at the performance details below.
Over the years, I have integrated various clients with Google Base. In all honesty, the site may not return any investments spent on integration. A free job board does not always equal quality. Let’s have a look at the
performance statistics of one of these clients over the past week. You can make up your own mind.
- “API Impressions” refers to the number of times the items were returned via the Google Base API
- “Clicks” refers to the number of times someone has clicked on your item within the search results
Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/should-you-post-jobs-to-google-base-a263.html
Article Tags: google base job search job board online recruitment xml job feed data structure search engine yahoo search api data feed seo organic search traffic seek free job board google maps google products recruitment industry View Comments (1)
Most of us have a profile on social networking websites such as Facebook or LinkedIn. But have you ever considered graphing your contacts interconnectivity? Before creating a
social graph, we need to understand more about
social graph theory and types of
social graphs.
A graph is a collection of vertices (or nodes) and edges between them. The vertices are abstract nodes and edges represent some sort of relationship between them. In the case of a social network the vertices are people and the edges represent a kind of social or person-to-person relationship. eg.
friends of,
married to,
worked with or
went to school with. All these are all examples of possible relationships that could determine edges in a social graph.
These graphs help us visualise data and provides a simple way of interrupting this information. Have a look at other examples at
Visual Complexity.
In the example below using
TouchGraph's Facebook Browser, my network of friends graph highlights the various friend relationships. The program determines the
clusters/cliques your friends belong to and uses different colors to show each clique. Cliques are characterised by having lots of friendships within a group of friends and few connections to members outside the group.
When will we see a social graph using data from LinkedIn?
Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/social-graphs-how-are-you-connected-a262.html
Article Tags: touchgraph facebook facebook.com connections friends groups linkedin linkedin.com six degrees of separation social graph theory social graphs interconnectivity facebook application data visualisation social networks View Comments (0)
As with all your marketing campaigns, value is determined by the contribution you’ve made to the goals of the company. While it is important to generate an “online buzz”, the quality of the postings and impact on the company is still the ultimate judge.
Comments and discussions must be evaluated for both tone and prominence. Whether you are using technology to identify and evaluate articles based on defined criteria or having individuals sift through the articles to determine their value, it is important to take the tone and prominence into consideration when determining ultimate impact.
Companies need to not only track where and how often their brand is discussed but assign a value based on the importance of the outlet to the organization and determine if the conversations are positive, negative or neutral to get an accurate read of their results.
Discover which platforms and techniques have had the greatest impact and who they have influenced. Use criteria that matters to your company to determine that impact – whether it’s the number of sales opportunities uncovered, leads generated or attendees at an event – measuring results is critical to determining your success with social media. By comparing your activity and effort against results, you can gauge what activities are most effective and concentrate your efforts on the platforms that will give you the maximum return. Use this information to determine whether your current strategy is working or if you need to make changes.
If you don’t track the results generated through social media outreach, it will be very difficult to improve upon your strategy and fully reap the benefits social media can offer.
Finally, don’t make the investment in social media without the commitment. Social media takes time. Establishing your network and leveraging the platforms may not happen overnight, but if you follow your strategy they can extend your reach and get the most out of your PR efforts.
Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/creating-an-effective-social-media-strategy-part-9-evaluate-impact-dont-continue-blindly-a261.html
Article Tags: social media social media strategy social networking online recruitment creating a strategy conversation communication collaboration pr spokespeople vocus vocus.com online marketing online communication social recruiting social recruiting strategy View Comments (0)
It puzzles me how recruiters are not making informed and calculated decisions on their recruitment marketing spend. Are you measuring the performance of each job advert via each source? Which sources are the best performing, provide the largest volume and have the lowest candidate acquisition cost?
There is no excuse for job boards, social networking sites, recruitment websites, search engines, etc not to provide statistics on the performance of your advertising. The technology and data has always been there - we just don't understand how to analyze and interpret this information. Are you
tracking candidate sources?Let's face it; there is a glut of data. First we need to understand the appropriate recruiting metrics to consider the information effective and reliable.
- Metrics must be predictive and actionable. Statistics are needed to provide accurate information that can be acted upon by providing data to indicate trends.
- Metrics must be tracked over time in order to generate internal benchmarks and analyze internal performance. A metric is not simply a moment in time – it must be maintained over time by tracking data to present relevant trends.
- Recruitment metrics should include both quantitative and qualitative aspects. Recruitment metrics are most often focused on factors that involve only time and cost. Yes, these factors are still included in the typical framework of recruitment metrics. Time and cost obviously comprise the quantitative aspects of recruitment metrics while productivity, retention, efficiency and candidate performance comprise the qualitative aspects.
So what data should we analyze? The first step is to start measuring the performance of your job ads in terms of conversion rates. These metrics will help you quickly identify bottlenecks with your current recruitment funnel and provide a simple snapshot. Then, you can start to drill down and look at the individual job advert vs source 1 vs source 2 etc.
Ad Views - The number of times a job advert is viewed. May also be referred to as an "impression"
Apply Clicks - The number of times the "Apply Now" button has been clicked. May also be referred to as a "Click through"
Application Form Views - The number of times a job application form is viewed. This should be the same as the "Apply Clicks". If you are using a 3rd party application form, it is important to analyze the "drop off rate". There could be problems with the external application form not loading etc. Aim for 0% drop off.
Applications - The number of applications processed.
CPV - Cost per view $ (lower the better)
CPC - Cost per click $ (lower the better)
CPA - Cost per applicant $ (lower the better)
CTR - Click through ratio
CTR1 - % of Ad Views to Apply Clicks (higher the better)
CTR2 - % of Apply Clicks to Applications (higher the better)
CTR3 - % of Ad Views to Applications (higher the better)
Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/recruitment-marketing-analytics-a260.html
Article Tags: recruitment marketing online marketing job boards advertising job adverts recruitment marketing analytics data analytics ctr click through rate statistics ad views apply clicks application form application rate cpv cost per view cpc cost per click cpa cost per applicant recruitment metrics ratios sources of hire sources of talent View Comments (4)
I am not a fan of long and complicated job application forms. Do you really need a candidate to register for an account before they can apply for a job? No. Registration details can be automatically generated after a form is submitted by using the candidates email address (as the primary id) and a randomly generated password.
Compare your registration/application form page views against the number of applications. How high is your churn rate?
Below is an example of a application process presented to a candidate when they apply to a particular recruitment agency. Keep it simple, cut down the steps in the process. Remember after 2 or 3 clicks people loose interest.
How many candidates are you loosing because of your application form?
Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/complicated-application-from-processes-a259.html
Article Tags: application form online recruitment statistics churn rate ats crm candidate registration form recruitment agency View Comments (0)
Last week, I decided to test drive a new referral system called JobGenie, brainchild of Riges Younan.
JobGenie is a candidate referral platform which takes the hassle out of managing a referral program. The platform can manage, track and monitor candidates that are referred for a job.
Once you create a new job on the system (see screenshot below), you can choose where you want the referrals to come from - email contacts, employees or social networks.
The platform is integrated with the various social networking sites including
Twitter,
Facebook and
LinkedIn. Allowing the employer/employee/recruiter to refer a job to their network of friends with ease!
Each time you refer a job; candidates can just click on the link and are redirected back to the job advert, which tracks the candidate and referrer for any future payout.
The JobGenie platform is
integrated with Facebook Connect allowing you to post the job automatically to your Facebook news feed, or choose which friends are sent the job referral request.
The "job referral request" (sent to friends) is possible because JobGenie have also created a Facebook Application.
Last week I wrote an article titled
Share on LinkedIn explaining the process for how you share content with your LinkedIn contacts or groups. In the article, I mentioned that LinkedIn have not released the ability to choose which section content is posted to. Well, it seems that JobGenie is now the first website I know of, that can post jobs automatically to your LinkedIn groups. Well done.
Overall, I was quite impressed JobGenie's seamless integration with the various social networking sites. The system has some excellent tracking and statistical reports available, allowing you to measure the response rate from the various sources.
Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/sharing-jobs-on-social-networks-using-jobgenie-a258.html
Article Tags: jobgenie jobgenie.com.au facebook facebook.com linkedin linkedin.com twitter twitter.com social referrals social networking social media referrals api riges younan statistics reporting social network integration referral recruitment facebook connect View Comments (1)
79% of jobs advertised in Australia are online, 73% of job seekers prefer online compared with print. But that only equates to 39% of the overall $$ advertising spend in the marketplace. Clearly, the structural shift in how people look for work proves that using print media is a waste.
Why are employers/recruiters wasting money using print media, when there is no accurate measurement of readership or ad views compared with online?
The statistics show that there is still plenty of room for online job boards to increase advertising rates.
Revenue will be generated from increasing yields with the existing client base and bolt-on products.
Job boards don't need to drop their pants with cheaper adverts, specials or bundles. But refocus on the value online provides compared with print.
Does that mean there is there room for more job boards? No, I still believe the market is too fragmented. Any new job board will have problems in establishing traffic and differentiating themselves from existing sites.
The main industry sectors that are propping up print include: Government, Health and Education. How can we increase the uptake from print to online?
Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/when-will-print-die-a257.html
Article Tags: online recruitment job boards print media job adverts anz job advertisements series job seeker preference statistics revenue model online vs print View Comments (5)
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smsthejob.com.au launches September 09 and will allow JobSeekers to receive sms'd job ads to their mobile and then if interested apply for them using a reply sms. This will send their application including resume to the employer advertising the role.
Not having to lock yourself down behind a computer for hours to first find and then apply for jobs is just a part of a movement that allows this service to be woven into your normal daily activity. And in the hope that web spiders are not far away.
Thanks
Rob Wise