What is recruitment brand hijacking?
I'm not sure if it is an actual term but it is something I both speak about and come across on many occasions. And, there is a book called Brand Hijack which itself gets a few comments on this very long blog post.
But I see brand hijacking in the recruitment space as a scurrilous, underhand, unprofessional, cheap method of stealing job applicants from the rightful owner - the employer. And certain job boards are a lot worse than others; and guess who I found taking this approach on many occasions - sister of The disAppointment Magazine - Inretail!
I search for 'jobs at Boots' and what do I get?
So I click on the Inretail advert and guess what - not one single Boots job yet the advert clearly states Boots Jobs.
They also do the same for a few more such as 'jobs at ALDI' (oops, MD is a personal friend of mine) and 'jobs at Morrisons' and 'jobs at Dixons' and on it goes. As we are currently researching the Top 100 Retail Careersites we'll be finding a lot more of these no doubt - maybe time for Inretail to sharpen up their act as I'll be checking back in a few weeks!
Now, this is not only against my professional ethics but also:
- It is a poor use of SEM both for the User but also the company as it is money wasted.
- It is against Google guidelines which could get them blocked (hopefully).
So, I personally can't (maybe) do a lot about this type of activity but the brand owners coupled with the power of Google have a lot more clout than I do.
Bet it's me that gets the threatening letter again though!!
