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Great article on how to more effectively post a job and use employment Web sites. Use these tips as a guide for posting your jobs on MinnesotaJobs.com

Turning Your Internet Recruiting WOES into WOWS

By Karen Osofsky

As a consultant and lecturer on Internet Recruiting, I hear many of the success stories and woes associated with Internet Recruiting. The success stories are wonderful to hear. The woes are typically easy to remedy. This article focuses on techniques that we've learned along the way that can help you turn those WOES into WOWS.

WOE: "I've posted all over the Internet to many different sites, including all the top rated job boards, technical sites, and newsgroups but my results are disappointing."

Just because you've posted on the Internet is not enough. Just because you've spent your entire recruiting budget on Internet postings is also not enough. It's how you've posted that separates the successes from the failures.

There are several factors that create a fine line between success and failure using a job board.

WOW 1: The Subject Heading is the key to generating views of your job ad.

Spending the time up front to write descriptive, thorough, and creative job titles will lead to better results in the end. The actual content of your job posting becomes meaningless if no candidate clicks through your hyperlink to read your ad.

Use all available characters: Job Boards typically allow between 30-50 characters for the Job Title. Use every available character. The more descriptive, and better
written the title, the more likely a candidate will be to click on it. Marketing, marketing, marketing...

Disguising myself as a job seeker with a technical background, I went out to one of the major career sites and conducted a search for a position matching my "persona's" strongest skills sets: Perl & Unix. I limited my search to Chicago and requested postings from the last 30 days - 125 jobs resulted. As a job seeker I now have to determine which of these 125 positions I want to click into. With only a few minutes to search, before my manager comes by and sees me, I want to click on the most interesting jobs first. Logically I will click through based on the Subject Headings that are most attractive to me (assuming I am not attracted to any particular company).

The range of subject headings from which to choose included:

- Developer
- Software Engineer
- Programmer
- Consulting Engineer High Speed Systems Design
- Unix/c++ Developer (Perl)
- E-Commerce Software Developers

Based on the above - which job would you click on first? Each of these subject headings could be describing the exact same position. The last 3 titles are much more informative and eye catching than the first three. Marketing, marketing, marketing...

By simply spending a few extra minutes focusing on the wording of your Job Title you could immediately turn those WOES into WOWS!

Bonus WOW: If you have extra characters available, add in something about the opportunity. Using the example above I created a new subject heading by adding to one of the existing headings: Unix/c++ Developer (Perl) - Hot Company. The added words "Hot Company" gives the impression that the company is technologically advanced, growing, and aggressive. The title went from 27 to 40 characters, fitting exactly into the allowable range for most sites. A candidate's curiosity will have peaked by this subject heading.

Homework - Don't you hate it?

You be the job seeker. Visit sites to which you post jobs and do a search for a position similar to the ones for which are seeking candidates. Then assess:

- Does your job show up in the listings?
- How does the subject-heading look compared to competitive ads?
- Would a job seeker be equally attracted to your ad compared to your competitors'?
- Where does it show up in the order of job listings?
- Is there an opportunity for you to add some WOW to this ad?

Bonus Project: If you are using any of the career sites that track page views you can simulate your own "Subject Heading" test. Take the exact same job description and post it 3 separate times on the same site, changing only the subject heading with each posting. During a three-week period check the page views for each ad. During the first week, which ad had the most page views? At the end of the three-week period which ad had the most page views? What was the ratio of resume submissions to page views for each of the ads?

WOE: "I post to sites that give me statistics on the number of times my job was viewed and the number of responses to my ads. My response to job views ratio is really low. People are reading my ads but they aren't submitting their resumes."

WOW: Thorough, informative Job Posting Content is the key to motivating candidates to submit their resumes.

Unlike print advertising, you are not paying by the line for your Job advertisements. This gives you the opportunity to provide much more information on the job and your company than is reasonable in a print ad. While most job boards have some limit to the amount of content you are allowed to put in a job ad, there is sufficient space to outline enough information for the candidate to draw a picture of the specific job content and the company.

I tested the limits on several sites and a few of them allowed me to post over 1,600 words. As a point of reference, this is equivalent to about 2 full pages of single spaced 10-point text. While 1,600 words are much too long for an ad, about 400-500 words can present a solid story for the candidate. If written correctly, by the time the candidate is done reading the ad, they should know exactly what skills are required, what the working environment is like, company benefits, and a general view of the company goals and direction. It should be thorough, yet to the point. You can include a sufficient amount of valuable information without being too wordy.

Outlined below is a template that we find very useful in writing Internet job postings:

Paragraph 1:

JOB DESCRIPTION: Discuss the content of the actual job. First and foremost, candidates want to know what they will be doing on the job. Include the following:

* Brief description of the company and the product or service it provides.
* General scope of work.
* Will they be planning and developing something new or improving on something already in existence?
* What is their "end product" and who is the recipient - external clients, retail customers, or co-workers and other internal clients?
* Will they be part of a team, managing a team, or working independently?

When the candidate is done reading this paragraph they will have a mental picture of the type of work they will be doing.

Paragraph 2:

REQUIRED SKILLS: Outline skills required for consideration for this position. Be sure to delineate between the actual required skills and the "nice to have" skills. For technical positions, are there specific software packages, platforms, databases, and other tools with which the must have experience?

* Should they have primarily functional or technical experience?
* Are there any certifications required? CPA, CFA, MCSE, CNE...?
* Are there a minimum number of years they need to have using these skills?
* Are they required to have the legal authorization to work in the United States or will you provide the necessary sponsorships?

Hint: Using an outline format rather than paragraph format will help the candidate read the required skills more easily. If you do this, be sure to use - dashes - , not bullet points because bullet points don't convert well to some of the posting site's formats.

Paragraph 3:

OTHER QUALIFICATIONS: Include any soft skills, communications skills, ability to interact with clients, organization skills, willingness to travel, flexibility etc.

Paragraph 4:

EDUCATIONAL REQUIREMENTS: If there is something specific required, spell it out here- CPA, MBA, Masters in Engineering, BA in journalism, etc.

Paragraph 5:

WORK ENVIRONMENT: What is the company/department like? Is it casual, team-centered, highly competitive? Do you offer unique working conditions or special benefits like day care, telecommuting, health club, flex hours?

Paragraph 6:

CLOSING: Include an e-mail address, fax number and snail mail address (if you still use one) to send in a resume. Always include your Web page address so they can learn more about the company. If possible, create a link to your web page directly in the ad. If you have a well-developed career section of your web page, then create a link directly to this section of your site. Candidates want to learn about opportunity first, then they want to learn more about the company. You should make it as easy as possible for them to do this.

Always include your company's standard EEO statement.

KEY WORDS: Develop a list of key words that pertain to the position and skills required/desired. Include all the synonyms to the key words as well. For instance, GUI
developer, visual basic programmer, VB, front end programmer, and user interface developer all mean the same thing. While you might not have all of these words in the body of the job ad, if you have them listed at the end of the ad, your job will appear in the results if any of these key words are entered into the candidate's query. This will help reach qualified candidates that may describe their skills with synonyms to those used in your ad content.

Developing the Job Ad Content:

Now that you have a template for the "perfect" Internet job ad, where are you going to get all this information? Many companies rely on "formal" job descriptions to create their job ads. Often times these were written years ago, are very broad, and cover several jobs that may fit under one general skill set. For example, a company may have a job description for a Senior Electrical Engineer. This job description could be generic enough to cover all senior electrical engineering positions while in reality one job may include electrical engineering design, one may focus on analysis, and another on verification and validation.

Highlighting the unique differences between jobs requiring similar skills and education is critical to attracting "right fit" candidates. To do this you must talk to the hiring managers to find out the specifics of each job. Walk them through the template as a guide to uncover the essential information.

Job ads are like any product advertisement. In order to attract "buyers," they need to feature a product description, unique features and benefits, and a strong selling proposition. Developing a detailed job ad will accomplish this and help you turn those Internet recruiting WOES into WOWs.

WOE: "This job posting stuff is an organizational nightmare! I post to many sites and it is practically a full time job to manage it all. Also, I notice that even though my jobs stay posted for a month or more on each site, the response rate drops off dramatically after the first few weeks."

Managing the job posting process is very time consuming and if not organized systematically can turn into an overwhelming and daunting task. Here are a few tips to help stay efficient.

WOW 1: Keep All of Your Postings in a Central File and in a Similar Format

When writing your postings, follow the Job Content format outlined in Part 2 of this article. Keep these postings in an MS Word or other word processing file. Within the document itself, create additional sections that pertain to the idiosyncrasies of each site to which you post. Some sites ask for zip codes, some for special key words, some for exact city or area code etc... If all of these "special requests" are outlined on the job description form, you can easily copy and paste the appropriate sections for each site. This is also extremely helpful to an administrative assistant who may be handling the posting for several recruiters. If all the job postings are written in a consistent format, covering all the essential information for each posting site, the task of actually posting the jobs will become much more efficient.

WOW 2: Develop a Spreadsheet to Track All of Your Postings.

Most jobs are posted to several "general" job boards like Monster.com, Career Mosaic, Career Magazine and Headhunter.net. Then each job is posted to several technology or industry specific sites like ComputerJobs.com, networkengineer.com, Oracle Job Network, Association sites, specific trade journal sites, regional sites etc... Keeping track of each site and the dates posted to each site can be very time consuming and can quickly become disorganized, particularly if you are posting more than 10 jobs at any given time.

The best way to track this is to create a spreadsheet to track each job posted, the sites to which they were posted, the date originally posted, the date the posting expires, and the date to update the posting. Along the left column of the chart list each job either by title or requisition numbers (whatever works best for you). Along the top list each career site to which you post. Under each site create three columns: Original post date, Expiration Date, Date to Re-post. Then simply insert the appropriate dates into each column. There may be some sites to which you only post a few of your jobs. If you are entering a job that is not posted to that site and no dates need to be entered into those columns. If you post to many sites, the spreadsheet can get fairly large, but that is ok - Excel and Lotus can handle large spreadsheets.

If this is developed in an Excel or Lotus file the columns can be sorted by date so that the jobs that need to be re-posted or that have expired are highlighted. The benefits to a chart like this are that it allows you to easily track exactly when you started posting a position on a particular board, all the boards to which you've posted, how long you've had it posted (some you may keep posted indefinitely), and when to re-post to keep the jobs fresh to the candidates.

Also, when it comes to tracking metrics on success with job sites, you will have additional information on the sites used and the efficiency of use. This will help in refining your posting strategies in the future.

WOW 3: Re-Posting to Sites on a Weekly Basis Will Keep Your Jobs Fresh and Improve Your Response Rate.

If you ever visit a career site as a job seeker (or pretending to be a job seeker), notice the posting dates of the first 20 or more jobs that show in your query results. Typically they have been posted within the last week. If your position is listed below the top 30 jobs in the query results, there is less likelihood that the majority of the candidates will see it or will click through to read it more thoroughly. For this reason re-posting your jobs so that they are close to the top of the list is critical. This, combined with well-written subject headings, will attract candidates to
click through and read further about your opportunity.

Weekly re-posting sounds like a very tedious process and to some degree it can be. However, the opportunity costs of not re-posting far outweigh the cost of the time spend doing it. Check with the job boards to which you post. Depending on the package purchased by your company, most do not charge a penalty for re-posting within the term of your contract. Some even allow you simply hit a "refresh" button without having to copy and paste all of the job content.

WOW 4: Consider Using Automated Tools to Assist in the Job Posting Function.

Innovative technology experts have recognized the need to assist in the posting process. There is now a handful of companies that have developed products that will manage all or part of the posting process for you. These products include, Smart Post www.smartpost.com; Resumix's Internet Recruiter Product, www.irecruiter.com; CareerCast, www.careercast.com; GoJobs, www.gojobs.com; and Webhire (formerly Restrac), www.webhire.com. Each product has its own unique features and pricing structures. These companies are constantly improving and upgrading their technologies. If you've evaluated or tried any of these products in the past without the best results we recommend taking a second look. We like what we've seen in 1999 vs. the earlier versions.

Using automated tools is not going to solve all of the issues associated with managing multiple job postings to multiple sites. When you use these tools remember that they, too, need to be managed and updated by someone. They are simply tools to assist in the somewhat tedious process and not the be all and end all to your Internet posting needs.

To summarize, managing the job posting process does not need to be an overwhelming, time-consuming, nightmarish task. If you keep all of your postings in a central file, develop a tracking form for the sites to which you post, re-post on a weekly basis, and consider using automated posting tools to assist you, you will be several steps closer to turning those Internet recruiting WOES into WOWS.

Karen Osofsky, karen.o@tiburongroup.com, is a principal with the Tiburon Group Inc.
www.tiburongroup.com . Tiburon Group provides Internet Recruitment solutions to Fortune 1000 companies, consulting firms, and start-up organizations. They provide a broad range of recruitment consulting, sourcing and screening services. Tiburon Group manages the recruiting resource site www.RecruiterResources.com and is a Certified AIRS Solutions Partner.