Tag: job postings

Categories
Interview Job Site Jobs Recruitment

TxtaJob.ie – Interview with Derek O’Neill

Derek O'Neill from Text a Job (txtajob.ie) I had a chance to talk to Derek O’Neill about his new recruitment web site launched recently TxtAJob.ie. It is a first Irish site to offer a free jobs advertising to employers, and charges job hunters for receiving the job advertisements via the SMS messages. Here is what Derek has to say:

1. TxtaJob.ie is a first mobile recruitment application in Ireland. The BETA was released a few months ago. How is Ireland embracing it? Is Ireland ready for Mobile Recruitment?

Job seekers and employers alike seem to be embracing the idea without question. This is evident in the 1800 job postings to date, with about 1200 active at the moment. Hundreds of job seekers have signed up before we have even started advertising. We are certain that Ireland is ready for mobile recruitment, especially given where mobile technology is. With WiFi access and large screens the new norm for mobile phones, we are perched to be the first to grab the recruitment market via a mobile platform.

2. The benefits from Employers are obvious – your service is free! What is the take-up like and what are the general trends?
In short it has been fantastic! It has exceeded our expectations by a mile really. What is even more important is that the subscription rate is actually accelerating. We get the same amount of job hunters subscribed in a day now, that it took us a week to get when we started.

3. Jobseekers get the unique service from txtAjob.ie. You simply subscribe and get your offers on your mobile. What was the initial feedback during the BETA period?
We took on board literally tons of constructive feedback and suggestions. The category listing is perhaps the best example – where the job hunters and the employers actually defined it for us in those first few months. The service we provide now is already miles better that what we could achieve on the first day when we launched.

4. How does the competition react? In fact are the traditional Irish jobs sites a competition at all? Is there any competition?
The competition has yet to say anything about us, that we know of! Although we are providing a different kind of way to search for employment and our service is free to employers, our competition is still the likes of IrishJobs.ie, Jobs.ie, and your regular job boards such as Gumtree.ie. We are however providing something unique to the Job Seeker, while providing a more organised, cost effective medium for the employers. We are job seeking on the go, getting the information to the candidates for the employer as soon as the job is available.

5. How do you see the economy in Ireland today? Are there sectors clearly out or still deeply affected by the recession?

We feel positive about the economy and like to believe things are on the upswing. We have noticed a bit of a downward trend of using recruitment agencies, while companies are searching direct. In saying that, the recruitment agencies we have contacted seem as busy as ever. We have noticed lack of jobs in the Banking, Tourism & Travel and aviation industries. There is plenty of work in Web development & design, driving, cleaning, and general trades. Then again maybe its just the companies and recruiters we have yet to speak to, only time will tell!

6. What sectors of the industry do you serve the best so far? What sector embraced the new technology and the business model fastest? What sectors are lagging behind?
It is hard to say, it is still early days. We haven’t seen any specific sector pick it up faster than another. All employers are keen to get free advertising of their job postings for free via the website. While professional work is being put up through the website, general work (a days painting or plumbing) is being posted mainly via our quick texting system by texting the word Ad + Job description (160 characters) to 51000 (standard text rates).

7. What’s next for txtAjob.ie?
The launch of our own mobile phone application with 92% mobile phone compatibility across Ireland is what certainly excites us the most. While we are not the market leader in job advertisements, we are the first and only business to provide the service on a mobile platform. We believe mobile phones and all of their technology is the way of the future, and we are successfully leading the recruitment industry in Ireland that way. We want to make sure that if there is a job in Ireland, we send it to the interested job seekers mobiles instantly. Our mobile application will make it easier than ever to receive and apply for relevant jobs instantly without having to use a computer. You will even be able to type a quick cover letter and send your CV which is uploaded to the system when you register.
Personal branding is certainly the next step for us, look out for our radio ads on FM104 and Newstalk.

Categories
Job Site Jobs Recruitment Social Recruitment

EmployIreland.ie Looks to Rebound in Tough Job Board Climate

Since the economy bottomed out and took scores of Irish jobs with it, purveyors of job boards have seen corporate customers curb or cut contracts at the same time they’ve dealt with an influx of résumé postings from the newly unemployed.

More companies also are adding job postings and career centers to their Web sites, or are using social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn for recruiting, which raises the possibility that they won’t go back to previous levels of job board spending once the recession ends.

The result: falling revenue and earnings, as evidenced by publicly traded job boards such as industry leader Monster Worldwide, which in the first half of 2009 lost $11.7 million on revenue of $477.4 million, a 34 percent drop from the same period last year.

Peter Zollman, executive editor of Classified Intelligence, a consulting group that tracks the classified advertising and job board industries, says that while the job board industry has struggled in 2009, some privately held firms may be better positioned to weather the recession.

One such firm…

The above article is actually from: http://www.workforce.com/section/06/feature/26/71/27/index_printer.html

The second part of the article is less interesting and less relevant for Europe and Ireland in particular. This is my attempt to finish it up:

One such firm is EmployIreland.ie.

EmployIreland.ie is the only job site in Ireland that hasn’t been letting go it’s staff during the recession.

Irish Jobs lost their largest client – CPL. Jobs.ie is selling traffic left right and center. They even implemented Pop Under windows, and that’s surelly the worst marketing practice. RecruitIReland even went free for a the best part of the year to get jobs on their site. Loadza made all kind of experiments like Online Jobs Fair that did not stop clients leaving.

The traffic job boards in Ireland are attracting fell drastically, as well as their revenues in 2009. Most of the jobs sites are actually using Google AdWords PPC to drive traffic, since there is simply not enough ‘organic’ – natural traffic from the search engines.

The fact that the revenues of the Irish job boards will not bounce back up is something all of them are trying to hide. Or they simply live in denial.

Social networks is where the recruitment is turning to and massive job boards will slowly be losing their revenues. Going forward it will not be so rapid as it was in the 2009, but there is less and less advertising revenue available for jobs advertising in the years to come.

Even new jobs sites are not popping up as quick as they did up until just a few months ago.

EmployIreland.ie is in the unique position to thrive in the current market. It is agile enough to change with the times. EmployIreland.ie is in its core a technology company Portal.ie. The experiments with the recruitment social networks lead to a number of BETA releases like JobsMarket.ie and JobsBoard.ie, and a few international ones.

By running the only Irish real time job posting system eRecruit.ie, the company is in the unique position to….

I am kind of out of inspiration any more. Just remembered the title of the Recruitment Conference yesterday: The Future of Recruitment … Job boards are less and less part of that future. EmployIreland.ie will lead the way by innovation, and embracing the new ways of doing business in recruitment industry!

Categories
Career Google Internet Jobs Recruitment

How to write a job advertisement – for Google?

Since the Irish recruiters have finally understood that the search engine optimization strategy is the key to the success of their business I get asked a same question more and more, and more often:

How do I write a job advertisement so that it attracts more and better quality candidates?

While the page you are publishing a job advertisement has the critical determining factor when it comes to search engine rankings, the targeted keyword phrase should still appear in the add itself. Also having your keyword combinations appear throughout the job specification generally helps search engines further identify the relevancy of the page for your search keywords.

Here are a few general tips for keyword integration in your jobs advertisements:
1. Job Titles
The most important place your keywords should appear is in the title tag of the page. The nice thing about job boards is that your job post or page title will be automatically transformed into both title tags and either an H1 or H2 heading tag as well. Remember, your headline should wrap your keywords in a pithy promise that perfectly communicates what the job is about.

2. Short Job Description
I’ve always found it useful to repeat the targeted keywords in the short job description, as long as it can be done in a way that is appealing to the candidate and reinforces relevancy. Since many job boards use this initial copy as the displayed description of the job, you want to make sure you are accurately inviting the candidate to click through as well.

3. Subheadings in Job Description
Another important place that keywords can appear is in subheads that aid the reader in navigating down the page. A resource that matches up well with the targeted keyword phrase will find natural opportunities to restate keywords in subheads, as an introduction to the next topical section of the page. Subheads are on jobs sites typically created using the H3 tag.

4. Related Words and Synonyms
Good job description copy should naturally result in words that are related to, as well as synonyms for, the keyword phrases you are after. Rather than mindlessly repeating the same words ad nauseam, assume that search algorithms are advanced enough to look for proper contextually-related words that support your targeted keywords. Think skills!

5. Specificity
One of the hallmarks of great job description is specific, descriptive words in lieu of bland general terminology. Specificity aids the reader by clearly demonstrating relevancy, allows for more dynamic copy, and provides opportunities to increase the general on-page keyword frequency. Make sure to employ your specific keywords when feasible within the context of the job description, rather than rely on generic wording.

6. How to Apply?
Let us not forget that we want the Candidate to apply for the job. Otherwise, what’s the point of advertising? Once again, your job advertisement should conclude with a call to action that prompts the reader to travel down the path you desire. It might be to use a facility to apply for a job on a jobs site, or to contact you directly. Your primary keywords should naturally fit in with the next step you want the reader to take.

Conclusion
The key to good job advertisement is crafting the content that seamlessly integrates keywords in a way that doesn’t offend the reader. In fact, good keyword-rich job advertisement should never even consciously alert the reader that keyword repetition is being employed for any reason other than his or her own benefit.

The other factors that determine whether your job advertisement will appear in the search results in the search engines, or your competitors is the number and relevancy of the links to the page where the job is advertised. You should certainly submit your jobs to the social media sites, especially if advertising jobs on your own web site as opposed to a jobs board shared with your competition.

Categories
Career Internet Recruitment

If there is a job, Hound will sniff it!

hound-job-siteAmerican marketing was always a bit specific. In some cases it just does not ‘cross the water’ well, and sounds a bit off on our shores here. In recruitment the example is the job site Hound.com. It is a Employers Only model job site, like Ireland has its own RealJobs.ie. It’s marketing is very original and different from the usual jobs sites. On Hound everything is about the hounds and the front page is full of dogs images. 13 dogs will welcome you on the Hound home page. Quite impressive for the jobs site, isn’t it?

This is Hound they think you should use them:
Hound shows its members jobs from every employer website it can find in the United States and throughout the world. It is the most powerful job-search engine in existence and powers several job boards. Recruiters use Hound to track down potential jobs for their clients.

Meaning: If there is a job, Hound will sniff it!

Categories
Blogs

Recruitment SEO 101: Keyword Analysis

Any SEO Consultant will tell you that a decent SEO project should somewhere in its starting phase have a step called Keyword Analysis. Unfortunately different people have a quite different idea what exactly does the Keyword Analysis mean. Some mean that it is about finding the most relevant keywords, some that it is about the number or keywords, and the rest arte somewhere in between.

Google has a quite easy to use Keyword Suggestion Tool. Here are the keywords that Google will ‘suggest’ as a similar and relevant search keywords to the term ‘Jobs’.

I’ll leave up to you to draw your own conclusions about the suggested keywords. Are those really relevant? Too many? Too few?

Keywords related to term(s) entered – sorted by relevance:

jobs, sales jobs, job, accounting jobs, job opportunities, job search, finance jobs, medical jobs, find jobs, hr jobs, legal jobs, nursing jobs, summer jobs, temporary jobs, job vacancies, job site, job bank, jobs search, jobs online, jobs google, internet jobs, full time jobs, jobs available, financial jobs, healthcare jobs, temp jobs, job listings, part time jobs, banking jobs, top jobs, retail jobs, job sites, government jobs, jobs uk, jobs london, graduate jobs, engineering jobs, office jobs, new jobs, jobs com, parttime jobs, jobs wanted, jobs banks, find a job, social work jobs, contract jobs abroad, job fair, job find, advertising jobs, job seekers, environmental jobs, pa jobs, job agency, need a job, technical jobs, media jobs, administration jobs, accountant jobs, financial services jobs, sales rep jobs, job vacancy, job agencies, jobs waterford, online job, recruitment jobs, job recruitment, job google, part time job, jobs vacancies, jobs in london, jobs cork, accountancy jobs, local jobs, jobs international, irish job, jobs it, finance job, engineer jobs, jobs canada, hotel jobs, home jobs, sales job, jobs bank, language jobs, job applications, irish jobs, jobs on line, www jobs, looking for jobs, jobs france, all jobs, list of jobs, jobs no experience, ebay jobs, jobs club, jobs i, delivery jobs, microsoft jobs, receptionist jobs, promotions jobs, jobs websites, customer service jobs, child care jobs, fun jobs, jobs website, forklift jobs, partime jobs, maintenance jobs, clerical jobs, manufacturing jobs, jobs compliance, job seeking, loads of jobs, i need a job, ice jobs, microbiology jobs, job search google, tv jobs, nursing home jobs, promotional jobs, jobs in google, health promotion jobs, looking for job, health care jobs, jobs in healthcare, computer jobs, google job listing, job finder, gallery jobs, seasonal jobs, logistics jobs, dental jobs, job boards, jobs in boston, night jobs, jobs in chicago, my jobs, jobs in san francisco, jobs with animals, midland jobs, jobs in radio, payroll jobs, forestry jobs, welding jobs, entry level jobs, looking for a job, art jobs

Google has a bit more for your Keyword Analysis study. Here is the list of:

Additional Keywords to be considered – sorted by relevance

employment, employment agencies, employment opportunities, careers, recruitment, recruitment agencies, career, job listing, job postings, hiring, vacancies, opportunities, vacancy, help wanted, part time, employers, work, telemarketing jobs, employment google, employment online, job opening, job posting, entry level positions, employment agency, job opportunity, openings, auditing positions, recruiters, employment cork, jobs marketing, accountant hiring, positions, sales vacancies, home employment, entry level, recruit, full time, recruitment companies, telesales, recruitment agency, career opportunities, auditing position, part time work, typist, staffing, recruitment google, irish employment, sales reps, irish recruitment, legal recruitment

This second list is actually very interesting. What one can do is take any of those and ask the Google Keyword Tool for the Related Keywords suggestions again. By doing so the keyword list expands indefinitely.