Hire Strategies Blog

Good traffic, bad traffic....bojliater

Job boards get the quantity, but we all want the quality. So what we gonna do?

I've decided to add a free job listing service to Retailhomepage to see how we can compete with the job boards for the best quality traffic. If the job title is the same as the search phrase we should get pretty high up with no SEM so at virtually zero cost. It takes a lot longer to get to the top of the natural search results for 'retail job' but in reality, do we even want to be there?!

Keep watching this space, it could be a lot of fun particularly if we launch with 2-3,ooo jobs!

Bojliater my friends is the new word on the retail job street!

Google base is making waves in the UK.

I'm a big Google fan - just so you know! I even synchronise my Outlook calendar with Google Calendar and when I receive a meeting invite, Google Calendar automatically checks it with my schedule for me, give me a few options (accept etc) but all within my e-mail view. In my view very cool.

Google Base is also a pretty cool service; so much so that the job boards have already started to post YOUR jobs onto Base. Have a look:

http://base.google.com and then select jobs then job industry: retail

At the moment it's all fine to do this but eventually the employer may start to think a little differently. If the majority of the traffic for job boards comes from Google due to your content, why share it with your competitors by having it go to a job board. Maybe the job board should be paying you for your content as it is your content that drives traffic to their site. Or maybe you need to be thinking a little differently about how and where you advertise your jobs, and if indeed you should even be paying to advertise your jobs on someone else's site who in turn 'resell' your content to make an even greater profit!

The world of the job board is changing, you can be part of that change process or you can just sit back and watch it happen. Enjoy, it's gonna be fun either way!

On brand bollocks.......

Sorry marketing dudes but it really is time that this 'on brand' attitude changed. OK, so I may be a marketing heathen in your minds but lets just think about it for a while.

When your Dad told you to shift your backside off the couch and get yourself a job, he used the word JOB. He didn't tell you to go get a part-time career, or look for a Saturday vacancy, he didn't say 'go find an employer that will give you fun and challenge'; nope he said go get a JOB! So my point is this: when people search for a job, they use the word job, and they primarily get links to job boards rather employer job sites. They also use the employer brand/name as well in their search string. Don't believe me? Check your site logs and you'll see what I mean.

So if you know the value of the brand why not exploit it more. Let HR have a 'jobs' button on the homepage of the corporate site. Retailers need to sell and they need good people, good people know the best brands so the corporate jobs section is already 'on brand' by virtue of the fact that the brand got the traffic there in the first place. Write the job/career section content with the 'customer' in mind otherwise you are not maximising your brand and losing out on job seekers who would work for your brand if only it was presented to them!

Careers and vacancies out, jobs in; use it or lose it! The best retail recruiters are.

Google powers three quarters of UK searches

Google continues to dominate the search market in the UK, powering 74.8% of all UK internet searches for the four weeks ending 1 April. The top four search engines combined powered 95.7% of UK internet searches in the four week period.

MSN.co.uk Search is Google's closest competitor, powering 6.7% of UK internet searches. When combined with its .com property, MSN Search powered 7.8% of searches. Yahoo! Search is the next strongest competitor with searches on Yahoo! Search - UK & Ireland accounting for 5.7% of UK internet searches. Collectively, Yahoo! Search - UK & Ireland and Yahoo! Search powered 7.5% of searches. Ask UK powered 5.4% of UK internet searches. Combining its UK and .com properties, Ask powered 5.6% of searches in the four week period.

So, if you are not getting the results you want from job boards, Google is clearly the best place to start with your SEM/PPC activities. This is where the job boards get most of their traffic from so why not join them!

Back from the desert!

Made it back in one piece and still alive! Read all about it (as I update it a bit each day) at one of my other sites.

Before I went I ordered some last minute gear that has still not arrived. Not the retailers fault though. They had a backlog of orders when I placed my order, it was a Friday when I ordered and they don't work weekends, Royal Mail are slow to deliver, Royal Mail lost my package but I have to call back after 15 days and ring Royal Mail, Royal Mail don't offer a very good service but their hands are tied, they'll give me my money back if I would like it, refund will take 5 days because this is how UK banks work, UK banks are bad but their hands are tied.

How do retailers get by with all these problems that are absolutely nothing to do with them?

Hey Mr MD (yep, the top dude responded to my complaint), try starting with sorry and follow this by doing something about it. If this is customer care I wonder what their recruitment process is like!!

Be remarkable!

Do people work for what you pay or what you stand for? The stronger the brand the easier it is for recruitment. But what if you are not Virgin or Carphone Warehouse or Tesco? What if you are an OK brand, with OK wages, OK stores, OK people and OK products? Can you really compete with big brands for the best talent?

Well, if you are working for one of the OK brands better find something unique to make you remarkable. How about being great recruiters. How about working that little bit harder to convert applicants into hires. Call them first, remember some personal details, get them to remember you. Maybe do something remarkable like call them back if they leave a message. Or maybe join me in Morocco at the Marathon des Sables!!

Don't want to join me? Well, maybe watch what I'm getting up to as Blogging closes here tonight for a couple of weeks but will continue HERE for the next couple of weeks!

Retail Week Recruitment Seminar.

Good turn out, good content, some good, some not so good presenters - as ever!

Everybody is doing the same (if presentations are 100% real) and having the same recruitment problems (they were called challenges on the day!). Always do what you've always done, always get what you've always got.

The level of passion of the presenters was reflective of the passion in the brand which was great when HR were showing some passion for the business. Funny how passion seems to reflect good results; what came first, the results or the passion?!

What was lacking: hard business benefits from whatever had been done yet an hour was spent on the subject.

What was the key message: employee engagement yet only one bullet point was attributed to this issue.