PPC, widgets and vertical search

Article By Simon Appleton, Workcircle

In internet terms, the online recruitment industry isnít quick to adapt to advances in technology. The basic mechanics of a jobsite are no different now to when we created our first jobboard, PlanetRecruit, eight years ago.

But now thereís a shift occurring as the models that are driving change in other e-business sectors reach the online recruitment space. Three key drivers - pay per click, vertical search and widgets - are beginning to change the landscape. While none of these concepts on its own will change the world, together their commercial impact could be significant. Specifically candidates who until now have been elusive become easily reachable - and thereís a lot more accountability for online marketing and advertising spend.

Paying by performance
Pay per click (PPC) is perhaps the best known of the three. Pioneered by Google and its ëadwordsí system, pay per click means that an advertiser only pays for each click they get. In Googleís case, businesses bid on the amount they pay per click to appear as one of the Sponsored Links on the right-hand side of a list of Google search results or on Googleís syndicated Adsense network.

In online recruitment, PPC is just taking hold. For a recruitment advertiser, the advantage of PPC is that youíre paying for performance ñ per click received, rather than a flat ëdisplayí advertising price or a subscription. If you donít get candidates or traffic, you donít pay.
A step further than PPC is pay per action (PPA), which in online recruitment terms could be pay per job application or CV registration. This hasnít taken off, because tracking applications would require a level of integration between the PPA site and the advertiser which isnít usually commercially viable. It also doesnít recognise the value of a candidate who may just be browsing now but who will return to take action in the future.

While PPC will account for a portion of any smart companyís online marketing spend, itís essential to value it against the right metrics. So if your measure of success is a candidate applying for a job, then you need to know what each application is costing you. This will allow you to work out if itís worth bidding, say, 50p for a certain keyword if only one candidate in a hundred applies for a job. Unfortunately analysing to this level can be time consuming, especially if you have hundreds of keywords. This leads us on to how PPC can be made simpler, yet even more powerful ñ vertical search.



Filling the space
Sometimes called ëaggregatorsí, vertical search sites are already starting to dominate in sectors such as travel and property. A vertical search site is a search engine that focuses on a particular sector. Workcircle is an example of a vertical search site for jobs. It enables the candidate easily to search across multiple sites simultaneously instead of having to keep track of many different jobboards, agencies and recruiters.

Vertical search sites fill the space between generalist search engines and job sites. Google is a great way to find places to find jobs, but not a great way to find jobs. Typically a job site or agency may list from a few hundred to a few thousand, perhaps tens of thousands of vacancies. By contrast a vertical search site will list several hundred thousand live vacancies.

For a recruiter thereís measurable business benefit to using PPC with vertical search sites. Youíre able to pull in large volumes of targeted candidates directly to your site, and the cost is visible: youíre only paying when they come to you.

You may already be spending on Google and others directly. The advantage of working with a PPC vertical search site is the breadth and sophistication of their campaigns, together with flat-rate pricing. For example Workcircle sponsors over half a million key words and phrases across MSN, Yahoo and Google and their syndication networks. And these campaigns adjust dynamically on a daily basis as the jobs listed change.

Whether youíre already investing in PPC advertising or not, a PPC vertical search site should be evaluated as an important part of the mix because these sites will increasingly be the gateways for jobseekers to find work. The limitation of vertical search is youíre still reaching jobseekers who are already actively looking for work. This is where widgets come in.

Widening the net
A widget is a small piece of code placed on a website, blog or personalised home page, which pulls in some form of content or functionality from another site. A good example is Googleís ëAdsenseí ads which youíll see on many websites. The site owner puts the code on their website and Google serves up relevant ads.

Workcircle uses widgets to syndicate jobs out to the ëedgesí - to special interest groups, sector-focussed blogs and so on. In other words, weíre able to put job ads in front of truly passive candidates.

Any site owner can easily add a Workcircle widget to their site to display relevant jobs and get a share of the PPC revenue. For example a special interest site about working abroad could display listings of international vacancies. The advantage to the site owner is that they donít have the overhead of running their own jobboard.

Recruitment 3.0
Before the internet, a recruiterís range was limited. With the advent of online recruitment this was widened dramatically to anyone actively looking for a job online. These new innovations makes this process more efficient while broadening the reach even further to anyone online regardless of whether theyíre looking for a job. When taken together, theyíre comparable to the changes that took place when internet recruitment first emerged, a decade ago.

Simon Appleton is CEO of Workcircle and can be contacted at simon.appleton@workcircle.com

The jargon at a glance

Pay per click (PPC)
Pay per click means what it says. Advertisers pay by performance ñ per click received, rather than a flat ëdisplayí advertising price or a subscription. If you donít get candidates or traffic, you donít pay.

Vertical search
Sometimes called ëaggregationí, vertical search is a single gateway to large numbers of sites within a single sector. Itís a great way for jobseekers to follow a large number of job sites.

Widgets
A widget (sometimes called a ëgadgetí) is a piece of code on a website that pulls in dynamic content or functionality from another site. In effect, widgets are part of a distribution network that recruiters can access through their online marketing spend. The great advantage of widgets is they get jobs in front of the elusive passive candidate.