Irish Recruitment Marketing

If we clearly define and make a distinction between Marketing and Advertising in saying:

Advertising–what Larry Heiman refers to as “Lead Generation”–is the “magnet” you use to attract the customers you want to your business. Marketing is the process you use to determine who and where those people are, what they buy from you, why they buy from you, and how they think. With that information at your command, then–and only then–can you begin to construct the strategic magnet that irresistibly attracts your ideal customers.

The typical Irish Recruitment Agency hires a Marketing Manager. The Job of a Marketing Manager of an Irish recruitment agency is to… ADVERTISE! Marketing manager manages the advertising budget, typically spent on the Irish Job boards, and the print, radio, beer mats, bus shelters, LUAS, cinema, bank machines, taxi, airports and other visual advertisements.

The closest the Marketing Managers of the Irish recruitment agencies ever get to the real (Internet) marketing is when they ask the job boards to supply them with the ABC approved figures, that show the number of the visitors per day, their geography, and so no. Anyone who has ever seen the two of the such reports from different Irish Jobs Boards knows that you simply cannot compare one with another. And if you try to reach some conclusions from those reports – it is in clear disparity with what you see yourself online.

The Online Marketing Manager of an Irish Recruitment Agency should know the answers to the following questions:
1. Who are our clients (employers) looking for, and expecting us to deliver?
2. What internet recourses do those candidates use?
3. Who is advertising on those web sites (or online software like Skype for example)?
4. How likely is it that an advertisement is going to be seen on the web page where it is advertised?
5. How likely that the advertisement will result in a ‘click’, and wring a job hunter to our web site?
6. What is the cost per application from each of the web sites where the jobs are advertised?

As opposed to the above, the typical Irish Marketing Manager of an Irish recruitment agency is interested in and managing:
1. What Job boards to use and advertise on?
2. How many jobs can be advertised there (number of job slots)?
3. Are our jobs ‘seen’ in the searches on the job boards ‘high enough’ – or down below thousands of other advertisements?
4. Can we reduce the rates paid to the job boards (or increase job slots!)?

We all know that people use the search engines more than job boards. In fact, the job boards get the vast majority of their visitors from the search engines. In the same time the Irish Recruitment Marketing Managers are totally oriented and dependent on the Irish Job Boards as opposed to the search engines. The only exception is Google AdWords that most of the agencies have trued using, but were simply outbid by their own money they invested in the Jobs Boards, who simply outbid them.

An Irish Online Marketing Manager of the Recruitment Agency should think on how to put his advertisements on the web sites that are being visited the most. Google.ie is on the top, for a long time now. Why is there not a single recruitment agency on top of the search results for the phrases job hunters use to find the jobs? Simply because the Marketing Managers have got the wrong job description. They should not manage the advertising budget, but monitor what job hunters use, and where they can be ‘surprised’ with the advertising message.