How to Attract Readers with Lists
December 9, 2008 by Make More Placements Guy · Leave a Comment
Lists are a great way to bring traffic to your blog… but why do they work? Well, it is quite simple, people are impatient and they don’t want to waste time. When someone reads the title of your blog article they evaluate it very quickly to make a value assessment. First they look for a clear subject and test to see that it is a subject that would be of interest to them. If all your title includes is words that convey the subject of the article, then an important piece of information necessary for busy professionals to make a good judgment is missing; the length of the article or at least some indication of the length.
If you make your article title into a “list” style title, then it will quite naturally communicate the length or relative length of the article to people who might see the title in a list somewhere. Say for instance, you want to write a quick article about how to attract top flight candidates, if you title it: “An investigation into methods and practices which will yield a nominal increased in highly qualified candidates.” it is highly unlikely that anyone is going to click on the link… it sounds dry and LOOOOOOOOONNNNNNGGGGGG.
However, if you were to title it “5 Quick Ways to Get More Candidates” anyone seeing the title in a list will at the very least think that it must present a group of concise statements that will address attracting candidates. If that is a topic that is of interest to the person seeing the title, then likely you will get a visitor.
So my advice is to the recruiters out there reading this, keep lists at the top of your ‘list’ as a great way to title your blog posts.
Article courtesy of Carl Chapman - Founder CEC Search, LLC dba
Job Board Engine Co. © Copyright 2008 CEC Search, LLC | All rights reserved
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Make your Blog Sizzle
December 8, 2008 by Make More Placements Guy · Leave a Comment
So you took my advice and you decided to blog instead of using a static website (or maybe in conjunction with one.) But now you are thinking to yourself - “What the heck do I write?” Don’t worry that’s pretty normal. Fortunately you’ve got the Internet to help you.
As I was thinking about what the next topic for my series should be, I did a quick search for blogging ideas on Google. I came up with a great blog called I Help You, where there is a great post that gives 101 ideas about how to make your blog sizzle. As I was reading the list (rather extensive one at that) I saw that there was tons of fabulous information that would be very valuable for even the most experienced pro, let alone someone new to blogging.
One idea that I didn’t’ see on Philip’s list was ‘Do a series of posts on a subject that readers will find interesting.’ Doing a series gives your readers something to look forward to. It also gives them a reason to make your blog a ‘destination.’ Doing a series of articles on your blog is akin to doing a television series and getting the audience involved with the storyline. Building traffic by providing information that is valuable and interesting to your target audience is one of the best ways to ‘Make your Blog Sizzle.’
Article courtesy of Carl Chapman - Founder CEC Search, LLC dba
Job Board Engine Co. © Copyright 2008 CEC Search, LLC | All rights reserved
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Sunday is a Day of Rest - JBE 24 days of Christmas (presents) - Day 7
December 7, 2008 by Make More Placements Guy · Leave a Comment
Sunday is a day of rest… and this Sunday is a very special one. Today is the second Sunday of Advent (and the first Sunday of Advent in December).
Advent is the season in the Christian church where we wait and prepare for the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. It isn’t so much about getting ready for Christmas, as it is remembering the God sent his son who would be called Jesus to be a man and walk among us.
Enjoy your Sunday.
Article courtesy of Carl Chapman - Founder CEC Search, LLC dba
Job Board Engine Co. © Copyright 2008 CEC Search, LLC | All rights reserved
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All Work and No Play Makes You Dull - JBE 24 days of Christmas (presents) - Day 6
December 6, 2008 by Make More Placements Guy · Leave a Comment
I hate to work on the weekends… it makes me think that all I do is work. So I’m not doing it. My present for today (Saturday) was actually to myself. I took the day off and watched my favorite football team beat their hated rivals in a series that goes back 109 years.
Congratulations to the midshipmen of the United States Naval Academy and Navy fans everywhere.
Navy now leads the series 53-49-7 since the first game in 1890.
Navy has won 13 straight times against Air Force and Army since 2002, outscoring the programs 441-205 during the streak. The Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy (which goes to the academy with the best record against the other two schools) remains docked with Navy.
Article courtesy of Carl Chapman - Founder CEC Search, LLC dba
Job Board Engine Co. © Copyright 2008 CEC Search, LLC | All rights reserved
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7 Reasons Recruiters Should NOT Have a Website - JBE 24 days of Christmas (presents) - Day 5
December 5, 2008 by Make More Placements Guy · Leave a Comment
That’s what I said, you shouldn’t have a website.
You should have a blog instead.
Now that you’ve found a web host for your business / recruiter website you have just one question - "What the heck do I put up on my website?" My very best suggestion is is that you put up a blog and not a regular website, at least at first. I would suggest that you use WordPress as your blog software. Here are my 7 reasons you shouldn’t have a website but should use a blog for your website:
Blog software is free - there is nothing wrong with wanting to do things economically, and free is about as economical as you can get. You can go to WordPress.org and download blogging software for free. You can also get them to install it for free on your website. If you use HostGator as your web hosting provider (as I suggested in my article on where to host your site) then you can install WordPress yourself with the click on one button on the control panel.
Blog software is robust - there are several million installs of TypePad and WordPress each, and both have large communities that support them. You can find forums and groups all across the internet just by doing a Google search. With millions of users, the software tends to get bullet proof pretty quickly.
Blog software manages content - actually most people use blog software as a CMS or content management system. What that means is that the blog software takes care of the structure of the website handling most of the coding complexity of building a website, allowing the owner of the site to concentrate on content. Basically the blog creates a framework of static pages and post pages (pages displaying articles) that hold your content. Content creation is about the only work you have to do, and mostly it is about as simple as writing an email.
Blogs are attractive to Google - when it comes to indexing sites and ascribing value to them, Google thinks highly of blogs. At least if they contain original and valuable content. The reason is that blogs tend to have fresh, new, exciting (OK maybe that’s over the top), original, and useful content which is published on a daily basis. That is a lot more frequently than the content changes or additions that happen on most websites. Since they change more often, and Google is in the business of being the best search engine - which means they have to have the best index of sites, naturally Google will index blogs more often than they do a static unchanging site.
Blogs have built in promotion features - most people don’t realize that blogs contain two important features that help your website / blog gain notoriety and importance in Google’s eyes, if not in the eyes of your readers and the features work automatically. These two features are pings / trackbacks and RSS feeds. I won’t go into great detail here because these are large enough subjects to have their own posts, but suffice to say that these features help drive your website to the top of search engine rankings.
Blogs help display your subject matter expertise - if you build a static website chances are very good that you will be limited in the number of pages you can publish. All of the pages together have to say something about your business, your products and services, and your team. There is a limit to how much information can be digested in one reading, and a limit as too how much time any of your website visitors will spend reading one page or group of pages in one sitting. Static websites, therefore, can only dish up a limited amount of information about one topic. Not so with a blog. The model is different . You publish bite-size articles about topics in posts (articles) that can be served up on a regular basis. You have the ability to tailor each of the posts to fit the intended audience and their attention span. For longer topics, you can do a series of articles -as I’m doing here - that are connected and get your readership engaged. Because you can dole out information in small chunks on a regular basis, you have the ability to show the depth and breadth of your subject matter expertise without boring the audience.
Blogs develop valuable traffic - as you create content you build value for your readers. You should be providing information to your audience that they will find useful in their daily lives. As you continue to provide information / value then these folks will continue to return to your blog to find more. When they return, you will have an opportunity to present to them propositions that involve revenue generation. It could be that you provide interview tips that candidates find useful - making them feel comfortable with signing up for outplacement services. It could be that you give tips about resumes - driving candidates to you resume writing / review service. You might also provide staffing / recruiting consultancy, and your status as a subject matter expert in staffing might convince a client customer that your working style would be better suited to them than one of your competitors.
Those are my 7 reasons why you should have a blog instead of a static website. If you have questions or would like to investigate how you can get blogging websites set up that integrate with your ATS / recruiting software contact us at the Job Board Engine.
Article courtesy of Carl Chapman - Founder CEC Search, LLC dba
Job Board Engine Co. © Copyright 2008 CEC Search, LLC | All rights reserved
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JBE 24 days of Christmas (presents) - Day 4 - The Big “No No” of SEO and How to NOT Get Burned
December 4, 2008 by Make More Placements Guy · Leave a Comment
There are only two ways to have your website optimized so that it ranks well in search engines. The first way, you can do it yourself. It take lots of study and many hours of research to find out what your strategy should be before you even start the implementation of your SEO program. Then it takes a LOT of consistent and tedious effort and constant monitoring to measure results and implement improvement processes. Usually this isn’t a good investment of a recruiter’s time.
The second way is to hire someone or some firm to do the implementation for you. This is probably the methond that is chosen by most recruiters or recruiting firms who are enlightened enough to understand that the actually NEED search engine optimization. There are literally thousands of SEO companies, consultants, and experst who can perform SEO on your website for you. There are some that are good and their are some that are not so good. Then there are some who you should run away from as fast as you can.
The big “no no” of SEO for me is Blackhat SEO. Usually you can tell a vendor of the blackhat variety by how they talk to you about their service or what they say in their advertisements. If you see or hear something like “top 10 on Google guaranteed in 48 hours” or “top Google listings for keywords that you choose in 1 week” then you can be pretty sure these guys are only talking to you for one reason. They want to get into your wallet in a BIG way. These companies are the kind that will say and do anything to separate you from your hard earned cash. The job they do can be categorized into one of two categories - 1) Blackhat techniques or 2) completely worthless.
Blackhat SEO can yeild results, which for a very short time [usually long enough for you to pay the HUGE upfront fee for the SEO consultant], can indeed have your site ranking at the top of Google and the other major search engines. Trouble is that the results are temporary at best. At worst the practice can result in your website being REMOVED from the index altogether so that you don’t show up for ANY searches at all.
The other ‘results’ [and I use the term very loosely] that you may get from some of the nefarious vendors of ‘guaranteed’ search engine optimization programs are what I call ‘worthless.’ These results are actual high ranking of your site in the major search engines for keyword search terms that don’t receive any actual usage or searches. An example of such ‘result’ would be ranking highly for the term “concrete scuba tanks.“ I use this as an example because as an experiment, I bet a colleague that I could rank #1 on Google for a search term within 7 days. {here is my article on the SEO attaining #1 on Google} which I actually did in 6 days. The only trouble is for SEO to be effective the keywords that you rank highly for have to be actually used by people on the Internet. And I can guarantee that, other than the people who I have pointed to my article, NO ONE in the world is looking for concrete scuba tanks on the Internet… or anywhere else for that matter.
So here are the top three things that you should use to evaluate a potential vendore of SEO for your website:
- The SEO vendor should not offer an OUTRAGEOUS guarantee of performance
- The SEO consultant should be able to point you to successful websites they have optimized
- The search optimization company should be able to provide positive, glowing references
My number one rule for making the right pick is avoid at all costs the clowns who guarantee quick number 1 listings on Google - they’re crooks.
Article courtesy of Carl Chapman - Founder CEC Search, LLC dba
Job Board Engine Co. © Copyright 2008 CEC Search, LLC | All rights reserved
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JBE 24 days of Christmas (presents) - Day 3 - Where to Host Your Recruiting Website
December 3, 2008 by Make More Placements Guy · Leave a Comment
Where to Host Your Recruiting Website
There are innumerable places on the web to host a website, far too many for me to make reviews of all of them; so I won’t. Having worked with numerous hosting companies over the past decade, I have some personal preferences based on my own experiences that I will share with you. Based upon how much technical talent you have in your corporate knowledge store the wise choices for you will vary.
For Super Technologically Talented Firms - If your firm has all the technical talent you need, then you may already be developing and administering your own website. I would just make a recommendation to you that you try HostGator as your web hosting service - they are terrific. I would also recommend that you DO NOT USE Ipower.
For Modestly Technologically Talented Firms - If you think that you have the talent within your team to do some of your own development, or at least maintenance I would make the following suggestions - use HostGator as your web host, use GoDaddy as your registrar, and use DreamWeaver as your development tool. Make heavy use of CSS driven templates - as good source is Lucky Marble.
For Very Light Technologically Talented Firms - If you have light technical talents, you may want to check out the web templates that are available from web hosting services. My best advice to people in this category is to pretend that you are ‘clueless; and follow the suggestions that I make for that group. If you’re stubborn, then us GoDaddy as your registrar, your host, and use their overnight website templates to get your site up. You won’t get the advantage of being able to get your jobs posted easily, but you CAN get a site up that can accomplish some of the goals that I outlined in my first article in the series.
For Clueless Technologically Talented Firms (or those who know how to maximize their intrinsic talents) - If you are ‘clueless’ technologically or if you are brilliant in realizing that you can make more money by spending your time on the things that you do extremely well and let third parties do the work of implementing the technical innards of your website, then the best thing you can do is find a third party source for “turn-key” website implementation.
There are a number of companies that provide websites as part of their service offerings. Some companies that produce ATS or back-end recruiting software will provide their clients turnkey websites which are integrated with their software package. You should check out BigBiller, Attract HR, Recruiters Online Network, or look into the service offerings for recruiters of Job Board Engine.
Article courtesy of Carl Chapman - Founder CEC Search, LLC dba
Job Board Engine Co. © Copyright 2008 CEC Search, LLC | All rights reserved
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JBE 24 days of Christmas (presents) - Day 2 - Attract Candidates with Your Recruiting Website
December 2, 2008 by Make More Placements Guy · Leave a Comment
It seems simple enough when you read it “Attract Candidates with Your Recruiting Website” but why are their so many recruiters that don’t even think about it?
Many of the clients that we first start working with are in one of two camps [as I alluded to yesterday] - either they have no website at all or they have a website that is nothing more than an electronic business card. Neither does anything to attract candidates.
If you think about the recruiting process, the one that you go through hundreds of times monthly as you try to find a candidate to match your search assignment, it always involves a presentation of an opportunity. The presentation must be attractive, it must be interesting, and it must be of interest to the candidate because it is a match for his background and skill set. If you never make a presentation, all your “smiling and dialing” will accomplish is raising your phone bill.
It’s much the same with your recruiting website - you must make a presentation. The best way to utilize your recruiter website is to post jobs to it. That’s it. Post all of your jobs, and do it in a way that the job details and job title contain keywords that will match the words that candidates will most likely use to search the Internet when hunting for their next career position. When properly post your jobs with great keywords they will be indexed in search engines using something called ‘long-tail search engine optimization.’ What that means is your jobs won’t dominate search engine results for terms like ‘manager’ or ’sales manager’ but they will do extremely well when someone does a search like ‘Capital Equipment Sales into Clinical Lab - Toronto Canada.’ This leads to a great, often unexpected benefit. Instead of getting a bunch of plumbers. painters, and mechanics applying to your job titled ‘Sales’ when a candidate who searches for something as specific as the example above, you can bet that the candidate is as close to ‘pre-qualified’ as they can be.
“So“, you may be asking yourself, “how do I get my jobs posted to my website?” Heck some of you may be asking “How the heck do I get a website?” Well there are quite a number of ways for you to get a website and to get jobs posted to them. Tomorrow I’ll go into some detail about alternatives for getting a website setup for your recruiting agency. Right now I’ll give you some ideas on how to get jobs posted to your website.
- Use an ATS or recruiting software package that has job post integration with websites as a feature. This could be problematic as it could mean that change of your recruiting software if your current vendor’s product doesn’t have the feature, and sometimes, despite Obamaniacs, change is not good. There are a couple that I’m personally familiar with that do a pretty good job of post jobs and allowing for candidate applications - Big Biller and MaxHire. I have friends that use both, the Medical Sales Recruiter uses Big Biller (you can see the integration here) and GLI/Grimes Legal, Inc. uses MaxHire (you can see the integration here).
- Buy job board software and install it on your domain. This option may require a commitment to a larger technology and knowledge budget than you may desire. If you try to do it yourself, chances are it will cost you more than having someone do it for you. If you bring someone in or add someone to staff, the cost will likely become prohibitive.
- Have someone build you a website and custom program the job posting function. Really expensive and not recommended.
- Use a service that provides websites and job posting software as a turnkey service. I’m not aware of very many of these companies. There is a company called Attract HR that charges about $10k up front and about $1000 per month for hosting, maintenance, and SEO for the recruiter website. The service provided by us here at the Job Board Engine comes in varying levels, the least expensive of which provides members with 5 custom websites with unlimited job postings for $300 setup fee and $150 per month which includes hosting and maintenance and search engine optimization.
So whatever you choose, make sure that you are posting jobs on your website. It will attract candidates who can turn into placements. You only need one placement to more than pay for all of the costs associated with setting up, maintaining, and using the your recruiter website. Actually, depending upon your particular market niche and average fees, one placement generated by your recruiter website with jobs posted to it might pay for two, three, or more years of website related costs.
Article courtesy of Carl Chapman - Founder CEC Search, LLC dba
Job Board Engine Co. © Copyright 2008 CEC Search, LLC | All rights reserved
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JBE 24 days of Christmas (presents) - Day 1 - Why recruiters need a REAL website
December 1, 2008 by Make More Placements Guy · Leave a Comment
Now that most of the technical work and tweaking with the Job Board Engine sales site, the Job Board Engine membership site, and the underpinning software of the job board engine itself is mostly complete I thought that I would spend the next few weeks on a series of articles that would help recruiters understand the value of the web to their core business. I’m going to write an article a day until Christmas Eve, giving recruiters (both third party and corporate) information about how the web can be used to help boost their business - should be 24 articles in all. Hopefully you will find them valuable.
Recruiter’s Present Day 1 - Why you need a website.
Having been a recruiter for the better part of a decade (even though it feels MUCH longer) I’ve met all kinds of recruiters. From kitchen table recruiters, corporate ‘in-house’ recruiters, to franchise recruiters - each of them had different levels of websites. Mostly their websites fall into one of three categories: non-existent, electronic business cards, and completely ineffective. We’ll cover the latter two categories in later posts, but for now let’s talk about the non-existent category and the benefits of fixing that problem.
Benefits of having a website:
- Recruiter websites lend your company weight and air of legitimacy
- Recruiter websites attract candidates
- Recruiter websites attract potential clients
- Recruiter websites attract potential split partners
- Recruiter websites can be a way of building community
- Recruiter websites can help build your authority as a subject matter expert
- Recruiter websites work tirelessly, for pennies per hour
Without a real website, you recruiting efforts are pretty much solely dependent on your personal effort. Candidates and clients are attracted only by your direct contact if you don’t have some form of advertising. And while advertising in most media is VERY expensive, advertising yourself by having a professional website is extremely inexpensive.
There are lots of pluses to having a custom website if you are a recruiter and few minuses. One of the main roadblocks that you may encounter is the lack of technical ability within your organization to develop and maintain a website. There are many companies that can put a website up for you if you are a recruiter. I would recommend (not claiming that there isn’t a tiny bit of self-interest) that you check out our service at the Job Board Engine and compare Job Board Engine with what you would get from your run of the mill web host.