How to use the Web to recruit

As Internet Recruitment Advertising continues to gain in popularity the UK market becomes increasingly saturated by Internet Job Boards, how can recruiters ensure that their vacancy receives top billing to attract the right candidates? Angela Fagan, consultant at online recruitment specialist www.jobbroker.co.uk looks at how employers can make the most of their Web recruitment efforts.

There are a number of key factors that recruiters should consider when choosing which Job Board(s) to advertise their vacancies with to ensure optimum success levels. In particular there are two important starting points to consider when deciding on which Job Board to choose:

Ascertain your best estimate of the likely number of vacancies your organisation will advertise over the next 12 months.

-Are your vacancies likely to be focussed on a specialist sector, such as financial services, or do you have a wide generalist variety of vacancies?

Consider your previous 12 months recruitment activity to indicate your projection in terms of budget, numbers and type of vacancy. When you are armed with this information, only then can you go forward to ensure that you get the very best circulation and results for your organisation.

Dealing with the Job Boards direct can be very time consuming as well as confusing ñ every one will no doubt claim to be the most popular and successful in the UK, so who do you choose?

Which Job Board to Choose?
NORAS is the National Online Recruitment Audience Survey (www.noras.co.uk). They provide recruitment advertisers with comparable information on the users of job boards so they can make informed advertising decisions and get a more targeted response to online recruitment advertisements.
Currently 17 of the UK Top Job Boards participate in NORAS surveys, which although covering only a small percentage of the online job market, can greatly assist Recruiters to choose the Job Board which best fulfils their needs. For more information on NORAS please visit. NORAS provides two important types of information:  A comprehensive demographic profile of each job boardís users.
ABC E audited Unique User figures for each participating job board.
Combining these two pieces of information can tell you how many candidates (that match your specific requirements) each site can deliver.

Job Posting and CV Searching

Once you have made the decision which Job Boards to advertise your vacancy with, the next key element in getting it right is to ensure that your Jobs are posted in a particular manner to ensure that they receive top billing and attract the right candidates.

Each Job Board has very specific criteria to enhance Job Board billing and recruiters are advised to read up on the information pages provided by the Job Boards at the point of posting.

CV Searching is an excellent method to proactively source suitable candidates for your vacancy. Instead of posting your job and waiting on the response, recruiters can take advantage of the many thousands of CVís posted by candidates actively seeking new positions.

At this point, it is important to consider a small range of factors which can hold the key to an effective posting, relevant response and ultimately job vacancies that are filled by the right candidates:

-Try to use your keyword(s) as many times as possible in your written advertisement to ensure a high level of keyword saturation. Advertisements which have a higher matching ratio against keyword searched will normally appear higher than those with a low saturation level. For example, SALES EXECUTIVES, 45k basic, uncapped SALES commission. Are you a top performing SALES EXECUTIVE? SALES professionals for a top UK SALES organisation. Fantastic opportunity for high achieving SALES professionalsÖ

-Check the duration of your Job Posting. Each site differs in the length of time your vacancy will be displayed, normally ranging from 7 to 28 days. As new jobs are posted it is likely that your vacancy will make its way down the list of matches. To ensure top billing check your vacancy every couple of days, and if necessary repost using a new description to attract attention.

-Ensure that your vacancy is attractive. One of the most common mistakes made by recruiters is to focus on list of organisation needs and wants without paying enough attention to candidate attraction. Why would the candidate want to come and work for you? Use at least one third of your advertisement to inform the candidate of the benefits and increase your chances of attracting the best.

-Use Boolean Logic when conducting keyword candidate CV searches to find more accurate results. The Boolean logic ensures that you can search for specific keywords which are likely to appear in your target candidate CVís. For example: searching for a Sales Professional in the Pharmaceutical Industry would be ìSalesî and ìPharmaceuticalî. You can screen matches in and out by the use of linking words such as ëandí, ëorí, ënotí etc

-Monitor end results from Job Boards. To ensure that your organisation is getting good value from your chosen Job Board(s) it is vital to monitor the end results. Many recruiters find that the response levels from Internet Job Boards are far higher than found through traditional methods such as newspapers and Industry magazines, and this is expected to increase as more and more jobseekers take their search online. With an overwhelming response recruiters can very quickly find themselves swamped by applicants and take their focus off of the desired end result of a candidate placement.

-Use screening criteria when conducting keyword Candidate CV searches to increase quality matches. With hundreds of thousands of CVís posted on to many of the job sites, recruiters can find themselves very quickly overwhelmed by the responses to both their candidate searches and job postings. To ensure a higher level of accuracy many Job Boards provide screening criteria which candidates must answer correctly in order to apply for the vacancy.

-Take professional advice when choosing your Job Board(s). Use the knowledge provided by the online recruitment industry and specialist providers when deciding on the best Job Board for your business. Conducting research into the best Job Board(s) for your vacancies can be a very time consuming business, putting further stress on internal resources.

-Use free Job Boards. Many organisations take advantage of the free Job Boards available online in the UK. Free Boards cost your organisation only the time it takes to post your vacancies online and are an extremely effective method of advertising, especially for first time users. An example can be found at www.cvmonkey.co.uk

-Consider outsourcing your vacancy responses. Outsourcing parts of your recruitment campaign to a third party is becoming more and more popular within the UK. Whether you have a single or multiple vacancies to advertise, using a Job Board together with a specialist outsourcing organisation can provide a real cost effective alternative to traditional bricks and mortar professional recruitment organisations.

-Donít put all of your eggs in one basket. With literally thousands of Job Boards to choose from, finding the right one(s) for your vacancies can take some time without some specialist advice. Whether you recruit within a specialist field or across a range of vacancy types there will almost certainly be a number of providers to choose from. Try out single vacancy postings across a selection and closely monitor the results from each, only then will you be in a position to ascertain where your target audience resides.

Following this type of guidance can make the difference between a Web-based recruitment drive that is hit and hope and one which is well planned and effectively executed.

Angela Fagan, Job Broker