Where are my jobs - on your careersite!

Quite often I get asked by retailers why they can't find their jobs (and in some cases their careersites) via a search engine. Well, there are two different issues here.

First of all, you have to think about how you want your careersite to be found by applicants and guess what - they don't search very often for careers or vacancies! Your content needs to be optimised for search engines and contain the right keywords or key phrases. That done, you then have to think realistically about how well you will be able to rank in the natural search results as it takes a lot more than just having the right keywords to get to the top.

So, your site is optimised, your jobs don't show up in the search engines yet you've spent all of this money on a new career site and sexy new e-recruitment system. Now, you may have decided to use a job board as part of your e-recruitment strategy which will of course ensure you get a lot of applicants. If you look at one of your jobs on a job board, try searching for the exact job on Google to see what happens.

Not all job boards are equal so you may not find the actual job directly via a search engine. Even worse, if you use more than one job board, plus your own careersite, the only place that has the most up-to-date list is your own careersite yet the search engine spiders cannot find them.

It gets worse! Some retailers who have a really basic careersite actually get better results from search engines than those that have a state-of-the-art e-recruitment system.

What to do? We'll be telling you over the next few weeks so keep watching this space.