» 2008 » December

Two of our recent customers are based in Montreal - Upclick and Interactive Brands. And both are actively hiring.

Click to continue →

The team at Standout Jobs couldn’t resist the silly e-card phenomenon. And of course, they make me look like the grumpy one! Anyway…

Happy Holidays and New Year!

It’s been an incredible year at Standout Jobs - next year will be just as wild. There’s a lot going on, and a lot of news to announce in early 2009, so stay tuned. And enjoy any time off that you get to enjoy.

Click to continue →

We’re all familiar with Google’s kick ass employer brand. I’ve often said to people, “Everyone wants to work at Google. Even if you don’t know it yet, you do.”

But is that the case anymore?

The folks at JobMatchBox point out that the recent cuts to perks and benefits at Google are tarnishing its employer brand. They point to a Wall Street Journal article that talks about the Google cuts to cafeteria services, new product development and perhaps the precious 20% “free” time that so many Google engineers have enjoyed.

JobMatchBox points out that:

Google is a company that has worked very hard to maintain a very unique and strong employer brand, but the company has also spent a great deal of money to reach the #1 employer status. In today’s current economic climate Google is one of many companies cutting back on excesses.

And with that in mind:

So what does this mean for others who have been competing against Google and other top tech brands over the years? If the writing isn’t already on the wall let me spell it out. For starters, there isn’t a fire sale for employees at Google, but there is an opportunity to hire away some of their best and brightest people in all areas.

I’m not sure we’ll see a significant exodus out of Google in the near future, although I do agree with JobMatchBox that opportunity always emerges for someone out of tough times.

But what about Google’s employer brand?

Is their employer brand damaged?

And I wonder about other companies as well - since Google isn’t the only one cutting. How are employer brands impacted (internally and externally) by cuts? Can the damage be mitigated somehow?

Third party recruiters are learning that an online profile is of great use to them in the War for Talent. Using social media profiles, Search Engine Optimization techniques, and new tools that aggregate content for candidates, headhunters have figured out that building an online profile is the first step in building trust for candidates in their niche.

It’s pretty simple. Online job seekers use search engines to research products they buy, people they date, and yes, companies where they would like to work. Having a strong name online helps niche headhunters control that section of the market. For example, I am a social media headhunter and if you type in keywords concerning social media, you’ll often come to one of my sites, where contact information and the ability to capture resumes is clearly displayed.

Work I do today brings in candidates over several years, as I found out when I posted a list of java swing interview questions some time ago. Today, I still get resumes and contacts looking for work based on that one post. It’s my very own desktop java landing page.

Landing pages are marketing tools we use to convert traffic to a specific goal. An online visitor that comes to your main site may not feel like hunting and pecking through your site to see what they need to do, so a landing page clearly spells out their possible actions. Typical actions include: signing up for email, purchasing a product, or calling a sales rep. Landing pages work because they simplify the action you want the visitor to take.

So, do you have any landing pages for your company career site?

Internal recruiters have a harder time branding themselves in a niche, because they often work on a larger and more diverse number of open reqs than third party firms. Resumes by the numbers are not a problem – sorting them and finding good ones is. Combine those two issues with the corporate fears of creating a branded recruiter who leaves when they’re famous, and you end up with little opportunity to drive the right kind of traffic to your desk.

Landing pages solve that. Used correctly, landing pages can help you sort positions directly off your career site. Candidates searching for these jobs can be funneled any number of ways, and (I’ll stress it again) if used correctly, can boost your rankings for these jobs in the search engines. What would be the value of being the first result in Google for “business analyst Toronto?” Optimized pages can make a huge difference in the quality and number of referrals and applications. They can be utilized both for your most unique and also for your most numerous roles.

It’s not just a simple matter of adding a page to your website. You need to get your marketing department to pitch in and show you how to market your jobs through the website. Talk to your SEO folks, IT, and even corporate communications to create inbound links. Take advantage of your site ranking to lend Page Rank to these pages, and you too can start taking advantage of search engines to help your recruiting efforts. And if for some reason, you don’t have someone in marketing that can show you, I know a new req on which you should be working.

---

Jim Durbin is the Social Media Headhunter. As a recruiter and social media strategist, Jim explores the intersection of employment and marketing. He blogs at http://socialmediaheadhunter.com, and is currently offering training DVD’s on how to use social media to hire candidates at the SMHeadhunter Cafe.

You can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/smheadhunter.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Michael Specht lists 10 Recruitings Trends for 2009, including:

1. quality of hire
2. time to hire
3. ROI, ROI, ROI
4. use your talent pool
5. look for innovative and cost effective advertising
6. branding
7. referrals
8. social media
9. social networking
10. learn to use search engines to find candidates

John Sumser had a Recruiting Trends list (published in the Fall) with similar items, although there was some variation. I added my own thoughts to the mix when John published his trends list, referencing how the recruiting trends are relevant to Standout Jobs and our future plans.

When we look at Kevin Wheeler’s thoughts on what would be hot in 2008, we see quite a few similarities.

Looking at the combined lists, here are some additional ideas / expectations for 2009:

1. Strategic Recruiting becomes a priority. Transactional, shotgun recruiting has been diminishing in value for some time. A recent report indicates that Monster’s revenue will drop 37% in the coming year as companies abandon or lower their job posting contracts. Companies need to look at recruiting strategically and what that means for budgets, time to hire, etc. In my mind, this is a meta-trend for some of the items Michael and John have listed.
2. Consolidation. The job market is incredibly fragmented, which makes sense given the size of the market and the problems that have existed in it for so many years. I expect 2009 will see more consolidation, although the economic downturn can make it harder for big companies to acquire smaller ones. Nevertheless, I see this trend expanding in 2009 and certainly beyond, when things pick up further.
3. HR converts into a Marketing Department. Maybe this is just a pipe dream, but the writing would appear to be on the wall. Again, I see this as a meta-trend - encompassing at least half of the recruiting trends Michael references, and at least an equal number of the recruiting trends in John Sumser’s list. Human Resources departments are shifting, and that shift will accelerate in 2009.

It takes time to make monumental change.

That’s certainly true in Human Resources, where many of the points listed above have been on people’s minds for many, many years. But things are changing. More and more recruiters are using Twitter. HR people (corporate and 3rd party recruiters) are blogging. Social networks like RecruitingBlogs are growing in popularity.

Things are changing.

2009 will be a very interesting year. Budgets are being cut (or frozen), people are nervous (or downright panicked), and as much as you can look for opportunity in tough times, driving change and innovation through tough times is extremely hard. It’s easy for people to fall back on what they’ve always done. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “You can’t be fired for posting on a big job board…”

Well … give it some time …

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (as per a reference from this blog), makeup artists are extremely in-demand, listed #7 out of the 10 top in-demand positions for the near future.

Makeup artists?

Apparently so.

Most of the other jobs in the list make complete sense, including Personal Care Aides, Home Health Aides and Medical Assistants. Although the list is fairly varied, there’s a strong healthcare-bent to it.

A Labor Department report (as reported by CNN) shows a list of 3 major areas of job growth, even in the recessionary economy:

1. Education
2. Health services
3. Accounting

There are no real surprises here. Education and Health services should almost live outside of economic circumstances, while Accounting becomes more and more important when things are tough. And of course it’s closing in on tax season.

The makeup artists stand out as an anomaly, but I suppose the downturn economy doesn’t impact the vanity of Hollywood stars…

OnDemandBeat, a popular Enterprise 2.0 blog, recently featured a review of Standout Jobs along with an interview with Ben Yoskovitz.

Ameed Taylor, owner of OnDemandBeat delves into Standout Jobs’ current mission and future plans. A good amount of the Q&A focuses on Standout Jobs’ business model, how the downturn economy is affecting us, our channel partner strategy and how we’re trying to impact recruitment marketing.

Please read the full story: Q&A with Standout Jobs’ Ben Yoskovitz.

One of the great things about HR is the ability to learn so thoroughly from someone else’s mistakes. In so many different corporate functions, specific mistakes departments make are isolated to their particular market or industry. Luckily (or unluckily?) for us, the problems we have as HR people often transcend industries and markets.

While hiring during normal economic periods is itself fraught with big time peril, hiring during a recession can have its own set of unique challenges. Here are the top five recruiting mistakes made by companies during tough economic times:

Click to continue →

One of HR’s top blogs, Fistful of Talent has posted a review of Standout Jobs and the value we can bring in attracting and converting Gen X and Gen Y job seekers.

Read the review here: Attracting Gen Y/X Candidates - Job Portal Style.

The review hits the nail on the head in terms of the value we’re delivering and always working to improve upon:

My point is, with all the talk about community and so many companies trying hard to project a “young ‘uns welcome here” sign, StandoutJobs offers a tremendous tool at a very small price tag. My bet is that medium sized companies will get the most out of it, as it lends itself nicely to a small HR team being in communication. However, it’s completely useful as a tool for a small business as well, keeping everything web based and easy to access, while allowing a small company to advertise intangibles such as culture and flex time. I am thinking the market for big companies will be as an alternative job site, to capture top shelf talent, the type that knows she shouldn’t have to enter her mother’s maiden name or take a typing test five times to secure a phone interview.

A quick thank you to Maren Hogan for the insightful review, and an extended thank you to Fistful of Talent for writing a great HR blog.

Standout Jobs was featured in the Montreal Gazette in a story titled, Employers can attract top talent through their websites.

The story talks about a few of the lessons we’ve learned since launching Standout Jobs in January 2008, as well as our current go-to-market strategy with channel partners.

There’s a great quote from Annick Vinet, marketing managet at headhunting giant Adecco:

Companies need to consider the expectations of candidates relative to the organization of the company. What are candidates looking for besides a job? We should see not only job offers, but also the adventure they are offering.

I couldn’t agree more.