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Creating an Effective Social Media Strategy, Part 2 - Take Time to Listen, Don’t Just Jump In

Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 8:00am Tuesday 28 July 2009    Print Article

The first step in putting together an effective social media strategy is to understand the dynamics of the landscape. With social media, it is more important than ever to listen to what is being said before participating. What are people saying, how is it being said and where are they saying it?

Using a comprehensive monitoring strategy, it will help you define your online corporate brand identity and help ensure you are engaging with these new platforms effectively.

Monitor the social media platforms for discussions on both your company and the competition to determine the value of the platform and the discussion as well as to help understand what is impacting your brand. Look for the platforms that your customers, prospects and the industry influencers are using. If you find your brand or industry discussions are focused on one or two platforms, you can concentrate your efforts.

Monitoring will not just help you understand which platforms are the most important for your brand, but also the style and tone of the discussions. All social media platforms are different. While some lend themselves to a more formal tone, such as Linkedin, others are about more informal conversation and thoughts, such as Twitter. Both may be equally valuable to your overall strategy but require different approaches.

By listening to the discussions on each you will understand how to best approach the different audiences. Some may be used as a way to promote company activities and others may be more useful in interacting with your customers, uncovering potential sales opportunities and learning more about your industry. Be careful not to use the forum as a means of selling your products and services, some groups may consider this to be a form of spamming.



Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/creating-an-effective-social-media-strategy-part-2-take-time-to-listen-dont-just-jump-in-a236.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 measuring social media

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Creating an Effective Social Media Strategy, Part 1 - Overview

Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 1:38pm Monday 27 July 2009    Print Article

It’s undeniable that the new world of social media can have a dramatic impact on your organisation. All it takes is a quick scan of today’s headlines to learn the effects of successful (and not so successful) social media campaigns. While it seems that social media presents an endless amount of opportunities to build awareness, it also presents risk, which means that creating an effective strategy isn’t just nice to have – it’s an absolute must.

Creating an effective social media strategy is as much about what to do as what not to do. Before you jump in, it is important to develop guidelines to not only help you understand the current landscape but to help shape it.

Most importantly, keep in mind that social media is about conversation and in many ways reflects the same basic tenants of traditional PR strategy and outreach.

From identifying spokespeople to researching targets and outlets to knowing when and when not to engage, this paper will help you learn how to build a successful social media strategy for your company that helps you enhance your PR campaigns by leveraging these powerful new channels.

Creating a social media strategy is really no different than building a traditional media strategy. However, unlike traditional media, social media presents far less barriers to reaching your ultimate consumer which may leave you vulnerable and more open to risk.

Be prepared to invest time and research into creating your social media plans to ensure its success. You need to know your audience, know your objectives, know your outlets and know your message.

Over the next few weeks, I will post each part of how to create an effective social media strategy from a whitepaper released by Vocus titled "The Do’s and Don’ts of Creating an Effective Social Media Strategy".

Topics include...
By incorporating an effective social media plan into your overall strategy, you can leverage this new medium to take your campaigns further, gain valuable business intelligence and increase your overall PR results.

Remember, the most important “Do” in social media is “Do” get started so you “Don’t” get left out of the conversation.


Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/creating-an-effective-social-media-strategy-part-1-overview-a235.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 measuring social media

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Give your resume the FLICK

Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 11:42am Monday 27 July 2009    Print Article

This morning, I spoke with Annemarie Cross & Keith Keller on their weekly radio show, discussing how job seekers can give their resume the "FLICK" (Format, Layout, Image, Consistency & Keywords).

Most people would be familiar with the KISS principle and job seekers should apply this when developing a resume. Let me explain how you can give your resume the FLICK.


FORMAT

It is important for job seekers to save their resume as either a Word ".doc" or ".pdf" format. Unfortunately many recruiters and employers have not upgraded to the latest MS Word version using the ".docx" format. When sending or uploading your resume ".doc" is preferred. Your resume may be parsed and stripped to be inserted into a database.


LAYOUT

Develop a easy to read, and well laid out resume. Stick to plain fonts. Try not to include complex tables and images. Recruiters/Employers are going to evaluate you on your skills, experience and qualifications. How are they going to find this information if your resume is unreadable?


IMAGE

Is this resume a reflection of your actual presentation? If a potential employer was to meet with you, would your demeanor match your resume style? Also image can relate to your "online image" on search engines, social networking sites, blogs, forum posts. Google yourself, and check what your online image says about you


CONSISTENCY

Be consistent with your resume. It's great to have a number of different versions of your resume. But when you update your resume on one site, make sure you update your resume on all the other job boards, recruiter/employer databases and resume databases to be consistent. There is nothing worse than finding two different resumes on a database - which one would you use?


KEYWORDS

Keywords, keywords keywords! Keywords play a critical part in how your resume may be found by recruiters and employers. Before a job is advertised, recruiters will often search a database of existing candidates.

Fill your resume with rich and meaningful keywords. You do not need to spam your resume with irrelevant keywords, but incorporate these into explaining your skills and experience. When conducting a keyword search on a resume, the number of times that keyword (or phrase) is found in a resume is called "keyword density". Try to incorporate your occupation or job title with your name to stand out from others ie. "John Smith, Tax Accountant CPA".


Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/give-your-resume-the-flick-a234.html

Article Tags: resume job seekers career development job seeker advice resume preparation resume format resume layout keywords annemarie cross keith keller career communique radio

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Search Engine Friendly URLs

Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 4:01pm Sunday 26 July 2009    Print Article

Job aggregation sites were one of the fist to fully embraced the search engine friendly (SEF) URL structure, as it generates high organic traffic from the search engines. Over the past few years, other job boards have been envious of MyCareer's SEF URL structure and now SEEK has implemented a SEF URL structure for each job advert.

Using relevant keywords within the URLs of your website is commonly referred to as using "search engine friendly URLs" or "friendly URLs" (SEF) and is a basic concept where the URLs of each web page properly reflect the content that's on that particular page.

Friendly URLs make a site a lot easier and usable for both humans and search engines to understand. You are probably wondering why such a long URL would be considered friendly; after all who would want to type out all of that?

You would be right on that point, but that is not what we mean by "friendly". What makes this URL friendly is that it is made of words, so the URL gives you an idea of the subject matter.

So ‘friendly’ = easier to understand. The only major job board not to fully implement SEF URL's is CareerOne. who are currently using the following structure URL/GetJob.aspx?JobID=[JOBID]

Let's have a look at the individual job advert URL structure of a number of job boards...

MyCareer
URL/jobs/[LOCATION][SUBURB][POSTCODE][STATE]/[CATEGORY]/[SUB-CATEGORY]/[JOBID]-[JOBTITLE].aspx

SEEK
URL/job/[JOBTITLE]/[LOCATION]/[JOBID]

JobsJobsJobs
URL/Job-[CATEGORY]-in-[LOCATION]-[JOBID].html

NowHiring
URL/[JOBID]+job+[JOBTITLE]+[LOCATION].aspx

CapitalJobs
URL/[JOBTITLE]-jobref-[JOBID]

MyCareer's URLs are quite long, but specifically target job seekers searching for local jobs (ie having Suburb/Postcode in the URL). The common unique parameter in all URLs is the JOBID. When the job board script receives the URL request, the script will look for the jobid and redirect you to that job advert.

Keywords in the URL in itself will not guarantee you great ranking, but it will enhance your chances. Placement of your desired keyword (ie. Job Title, Location, Category) in your URL will increase your search engine ranking. But it may be wise to consider not changing your existing URL or setting up a redirect to the new URLs.

This is because a change URL may result in broken link and that would greatly decrease you ranking, especially if one of your pages is ranking well in the search engines.





Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/search-engine-friendly-urls-a233.html

Article Tags: seek seek.com.au careerone careerone.com.au mycareer mycareer.com.au friendly url search engine friendly seo search engine optimisation jobsjobsjobs jobsjobsjobs.com.au nowhiring nowhiring.com.au capitaljobs capitaljobs.com.au job aggregators sef url job boards recruitment websites

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Hijacking Competitors Job Adverts

Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 12:21pm Friday 24 July 2009    Print Article

Do you want your competitors to work for you? Easy. Redirect candidate traffic and visitors away from the competitor by hijacking their job advert.

With the increased use of RSS feeds and job aggregation software (and very smart and savvy IT programmers) you can make competitors and the rest of the industry drive traffic & job applications back to your own agency.

This is how some recruiters have been doing it.....

All you need is a competitors (or job boards) RSS job feed, job aggregation software, a few twitter accounts, some catchy tag lines and a IT computer programmer.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of twitter accounts that automatically distribute jobs or “feed” these into the system. When a user clicks on the link they are redirected to either a 2 framed webpage with the job in one frame, and a small top/bottom frame with the competitor’s details/slogan/apply now links. The other option (which is quite complex to program) is to overlay the existing “apply now” link or image with YOUR application form link.

Candidates are none the wiser and assume that either the top frame is part of the job application process and would have no idea that the job has been hijacked.

There are various job aggregation scripts that are available off the shelf. You collect RSS feeds from job boards, recruitment agencies or employers and feed these into your database. Within a few weeks you have built a database of thousands of jobs. Job aggregation software is very SEO friendly and it won’t take long to build up some traffic. The other option is to feed these hijacked jobs into twitter where you can easily build thousands of followers in a short amount of time.

I’m not going to give away anymore information on whom and how people are currently doing this. Is this ethical? No, but it is being done.


Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/hijacking-competitors-job-adverts-a232.html

Article Tags: job adverts online recruitment competitors online marketing rss job feeds rss job aggregation seo twitter hijacking

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CareerOne. Now powered by Monster

Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 3:02pm Sunday 19 July 2009    Print Article

One of the biggest changes to the job board landscape this year would have to be the new CareerOne platform which is now powered by it's partner (and 50% owner) Monster. How much this platform update will help the job board is yet to be known. Can they gain a further hold on the number 2 position and increase market share?

All jobs advertised on CareerOne will now be syndicated across Monster powered sites and job seekers will also be able to search for international jobs on CareerOne.

Although the changes may be hard to recognise for a "common job seeker". I will try to point out some of the job search updates and issues we have found.

From a job seekers point of view, the sites structure and layout has been left much the same, with all the "static" pages - job seeker resources, ask Kate, research companies/recruiters, etc left the same.

The search function has been expanded to include the ability to select up to 20 different job categories/occupations and expanded location search including postcode and proximity search (ie. within 5km) I wonder when we can expect results to be displayed on Google Maps?


The job search results are neatly displayed with only the job title, advertiser, location, date and distance. Expanding the job details will display the short description. Plus all the usual bells and whistle functions - save, rss, related jobs, sort by date/relevance, etc. It will be interesting to see how often the distance function is used, and how relevant the search results are.




As previously revealed in this blog post Sneak peek of CareerOne/Monster, the job advert has been expanded to include further details about the advertiser and it gives the advertiser more room for branding and a structured layout. The bottom purple bar has the ability to pop up (over the job advert) to display the apply now form. Jobs with an external application form will open in a new window.




A new job seeker function released in the update is what CareerOne is calling "Job Comparison" we haven't tried the new function yet but it states "Once you apply for a job, you will be given the option to compare yourself to other candidates, which will show you what jobs they've also applied for - so you never miss an opportunity."

Unfortunately with any review, comes some criticisms.

I initially tried searching on CareerOne via my iphone but was unable to conduct a proper search as I could not scroll through the various categories/occupations in the multi-select drop down.

Another problem was that you could not scroll through the whole job advert or pop up the footer bar.

The advertiser portal has also been updated with a fresh new design and dashboard. They have also released a new job feature (upgrade) called "Premium Listings". A premium listing includes a 7 day auto refresh, the ability to brand your listing with the inclusion of your logo and the option to bold job title in search results pages.

Overall the upgrade looks good. I expect we will see some more products rolled out very soon.





Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/careerone-now-powered-by-monster-a231.html

Article Tags: careerone monster job board careerone.com.au monster.com job board search function proximity search postcode search iphone job comparison

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SEEK updates search function

Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 1:48pm Sunday 19 July 2009    Print Article

SEEK NZ has released an updated search function to include expanded classifications and search by salary range. I am not a fan of searching by salary brackets as it does not properly accommodate hourly contractor rates, commission or non financial extras.

Another small addition was the inclusion of "Other" countries in the location drop down. The expanded list of locations and job classifications has also been added to the main SEEK website.

Although most readers will see these as minor changes, these updates are the results of 12 months plus of user research and data collected from initiatives like PayCheck








Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/seek-updates-search-function-a230.html

Article Tags: seek seek.co.nz job search search criteria salary range job classifications job board seek.com.au

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Need a fake job reference?

Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 1:13pm Sunday 19 July 2009    Print Article

A new website in the US is offering fake job references. CareerExcuse offers both written and verbal references for a fee.

As recruiters, we should be aware that these services do exist and we have processes in place to properly verify candidate employment history, qualifications and other details.


A fake reference is a vital service that benefits anybody seeking an approval on a lease application or is in the hiring process with a prospective employer. If you don't want your current employer being tipped off that you are seeking employment elsewhere, are attempting to be approved to rent a property, or have another similar need, this is the service for you. Don't let bad job references stop you from getting that job.

1. Creating Your New Employment History

First you need to choose your career by industry. Example: Legal Profession, Retail, Technical, Sales, Manufacturing, etc... CareerExcuse.com has dozens of established companies in many fields. Let’s say you are applying for a Retail position and have a 3 year gap in your resume you want to fill.  CareerExcuse.com has a retail company already established with an 800 number, a real address, a real website, and a real contact person.  If you are a engineer or a sales representative in a manufacturing industry, we have that company waiting for you too!

Now that you have chosen your career industry, next is your job title.  Asst. Manager, Sales Manager, Lead Engineer, Cashier, Accountant, etc.

Last but not least, is the employment dates, starting and ending salary, reason for leaving and a brief description of your job responsibilities. We recommend using laid off due to lack of work as the reason for leaving.  You can ad your own, or make any request you may wish to add.  When you are filling out your reference information after you subscribe, we left a big box for you to fill with as much information you want to include.

2. Sign-up: Submit Your NEW Job References


After you submit your reference information, we will enter it into our data base.  You will then receive a Email with your NEW employer reference, including company name, address, "800" number, company website/Email address , contact name, contact phone number, contact email address.  You submit this information on your resume and job application forms.

3. When Your Employer Calls to Verify Your References


When one of your potential employers calls, they will be directed to a human resources dept. where they are instructed to fax, or e-mail, a Authorized Release Form and their Employment Verification Form to certain contact person acting as your past employer.

As always, CareerExcuse.com will Email you as soon as someone calls! When a Employment Verification Form is received by us, we will forward you a copy of the completed form to your e-mail address the same day!






Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/need-a-fake-job-reference-a229.html

Article Tags: job reference employment reference character reference fake job reference career excuse careerexcuse.com employment history candidates

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Recruitment Blogs

Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 1:10am Thursday 16 July 2009    Print Article

What started out as a small project in Nov 2008, Recruitment Blogs has grown to syndicate over 2,600 recruitment blog/news articles from 23 leading industry sources across Australia & New Zealand. The site keeps growing and growing! Remember to sign up for the FREE daily email, or follow the site on Twitter to receive the latest news.

Some of the sources include...
  • Capital Jobs, Clayton Wehner
  • CareerMums, Kate Sykes
  • Destination Talent, Phillip Tusing
  • Even It Up!, Diane Lee
  • Geoff Jennings
  • GradConnection
  • HR Daily
  • Human Capital Magazine
  • Human Resources Leader
  • Jobadder, Brett Iredale
  • Michael Specht
  • Recruiter Daily
  • Recruitment Directory, Thomas Shaw
  • Recruitment Extra
  • Ross Clennett
  • Shortlist News
  • Six Figures, Kelly Magowan
  • The Savage Truth, Greg Savage





Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/recruitment-blogs-a228.html

Article Tags: recruitment blogs recruitment news hr blogs recruitmentblogs.com.au rss syndication capitaljobs capitaljobs.com.au careermums careermums.com.au kate sykes destination talent destinationtalent.com.au phillip tusing clayton wehner diane lee evenitup.com.au geoff jennings geoffjennings.com greg savage gregsavage.com.au hr daily hrdaily.com.au human capital magazine hcmagazine.com.au human resources leader hrleader.net.au brett iredale jobadder jobadder.com michael specht recruiter daily recruiterdaily.com.au recruitment directory thomas shaw recruitment extra recruitmentextra.com.au ross clennett rossclennett.com shortlist news shortlistnews.net.au sixfigures sixfigures.com.au kelly magowan the savage truth greg savage gregsavage.com.au

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Why Job Boards Share Postings

Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 12:15am Tuesday 14 July 2009    Print Article

It's not uncommon to find the same job adverts appearing on multiple job sites. In Australia, the practice of job boards sharing "job content" has increased dramatically in these economic times. Are your job adverts appearing on other sites without your knowledge?

Steven Rothberg from CollegeRecruiter.com wrote a interesting blog post the other day titled Why Job Boards Share Postings.

Virtually every major job board shares at least some of the jobs posted to it with other job boards. The boards each do this to help ensure that they have plenty of jobs postings for virtually every candidate who runs a search at their sites.

Some boards, for example, may have a lot of postings for candidates in the Eastern United States but not have enough for candidates who are searching for a position in the Western United States so they'll pursue cross posting partnerships with boards which are strong in the west but not in the east.

By sharing postings, candidates using either board are almost always sure to find multiple positions of interest so they'll be more likely to register, apply to the jobs, come back repeatedly, and refer their friends.


Jobg8 (a spin-off company of JobServe & JobDispatch, launched late 2008) is a global marketplace of job boards, job aggregators and affiliates which buy and sell qualified job applications on a pay for performance basis.

The benifits of sharing and accepting job content include -
  • Increase revenue by selling qualified applications
  • Satisfy job seekers with additional content
  • Reduce the need to scrape job content
  • Reduce selling time with individual job boards

But.... the practice of sharing job content raises a number of concerns among advertisers.
  • Who owns the copyright to the job advert content and the right to re-distribute? The client (Employer/Recruitment Agency) or the publisher (Job Board)?
  • Should advertisers be made aware of the fact their jobs are being distributed across other sites?
  • How is this affecting the Employers/Recruitment Agencies brand?
  • How can we properly identity the correct candidate source, if this process is hidden from the job’s advertiser?





Article URL: http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/why-job-boards-share-postings-a227.html

Article Tags: job boards job ads aggregators jobg8 jobg8.com.au collegerecruiter collegerecruiter.com pay for performance job aggregators job applications candidates candidate source

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