LatinOcean – Digital Marketing Consulting

I quickly reported on Second Life (SL) and recruitment in this post. I then read that Hyro had already set up a careers centre in SL. And yesterday I hear about Outback Online via the Herald, a virtual world Aussie project which is meant to leave SL, well, in second place.

As with most talent sourcing and attraction, it is always about the appropriateness of the channel to communicate and engage with the people you want and need. Hyro being in the online services space (design, development, etc) may just be able to tap into a crowd of professionals who just don’t go to job boards or look at the paper ads to find a career.

In any case, let me know if you want to team up to put on the first human talent sourcing operation at Outback

I always wondered if hairdressers do their own hair, or if dentists sort themselves out using a mirror; I’ll ask next time I see one of either. What I am more certain of is that advertisers such as the job boards you may be using, need in turn additional advertising platforms to generate the traffic that hopefully is going to produce results to you.

Products like Adwords enable advertisers to market their wares on sites which are part of what is called their ad distribution network; the idea is to expand the reach within relevant sites or portions thereof (e.g. advertise on a social website when the users comes from an Australian IP address only)

The points of the rant were

- If you think that sites like myspace and youtube are too “exotic” to advertise your jobs ads because there’s only teens or freaks or geeks there, don’t. Job boards in Australia are getting you traffic from these sites day in and day out (via themselves of course). Wouldn’t it be great if you were able to work out what are the job board traffic sources that produce the largest amount of applications, or the highest quality to you?

- There is no restriction for you to advertise in the same platforms if you want to further customise/target your advertising, or take people straight to your site, etc. The exercise is operationally straight forward but not trivial: there is a science and art to showing the right keywords and managing to budgets, and obviously producing the desired results. Search consultants are making a life out of advising companies on how to do that. I think that is the case because it does pay off.

Have a great week

I wanted to (officially) share my good news; and I do hope it’s good news for the whole online recruitment advertising space in Australia. I have been given the opportunity to run a business development project for Recruit.net, a job search engine (think Google for jobs) headquartered in Hong Kong and focused on the Asia and Oceania regions.

Recruit.net soft-launched in June last year and has slowly but surely been aggregating and indexing job ads from job boards, recruitment agencies listings, online networks and employer career websites. If you visit the Australia channel today you will find around half a million searchable local job ads from all the abovementioned sources. In the context of such volumes, which are only going to grow, relevancy of search results will be key to add value to the job seeking experience.

My brief in Australia is to spread the word to agencies and corporate recruiters on the features and benefits of vertical search and its impact on recruitment advertising on the web. In the process, I hope to add to the options both job seekers and advertisers have at their disposal online.

If you want me to come and see you to talk further about Recruit.net, don’t be shy and shoot me an email jorge@recruit.net

I recently prepared a brochure insert to let agencies and employers know how LatinOcean can help them maximise the return on their online advertising spend. As I was articulating our capability, I thought I’d actually create an Adwords ad to ensure the insert’s copy was understandable and accurate.

This morning, I went for a quick look at the ad stats and did a search myself the context in which it was appearing, check competing advertisers, etc. And then it just hit me: people doing the search I did would see my ad in the same screen as they saw ads for companies with multi-million budgets. That could never happen in print. All I needed to do was ensure that people glanced to find a point of difference.

Your ticket to the dance is one click away.

Here’s the insert on pdf, just in case

Mum brought me up on phrases and sayings destined to shape my behavior. I can tell you, repetition and reinforcement worked like a charm for her. That’s how I still remember that if you bite your nails you’ re gonna go crazy and if you don’t wash your teeth at night, spiders will come and eat the leftovers in my mouth.

A less traumatic brainwashing pill from her was ‘what you can do today, don’t leave for tomorrow’. I recalled that as I left a note to the CEO of a national industry body yesterday at around midnight, after resisting the idea of leaving it until the next day, possibly after a quick final review when i was fresh.

Today I found a response from her. it was time-stamped 4am as she checked mail before going to the airport. She’s already triggered some actions that may end in very exciting writing and speaking assignments for LatinOcean. If I had left it for 9am I would have missed and lost her attention, at least until later (you ever checked emails on the berry and do nothing ’til you can think again?)

So, send that email, make that call, say hi to that contact now. And watch out for those spiders. Happy Friday!

Recruiter daily via editor Jo Knox, was kind enough to accept my article on candidate sources above and beyond job boards (not sure id you will be prompted to register, which is free). The post briefly outlines what other site types can offer you to lure talent in, and hopefully will get you interested enough to test-drive some of the options available.

Nice grab line in an ad for St George careers (SMH 13.02.06)

” Work for four years – take your fifth year off”

I like it a lot. But, I am sure it’s got its terms and conditions, which is more than fine. So I want to find out more about the terms on the site (which is also in the ad)

I go to the site and – you know – i expect a banner or the same grab line in bold font supporting the paper campaign. what happens? i find zilch, nada, not even a mention about the 4-1 deal on the benefits section. mmm.

Opportunity lost to get cv’s, registrations and all those good things that a solid career website offers. Maybe marketing or HR did not talk to the web content manager.

Things are cracking hot, huh. Unemployment is at is lowest in decades, stocks are ever-rising, no sight of interest rates hikes in the immediate future, and online recruitment advertising continues to grow aggressively. In this context, are you getting your share of the activity? More precisely, are you getting your fair share of placeable candidates from your online vendors?

In case you feel you are not (never enough talent, right?), or if you want to get a better grip to understand your investment on recruitment advertising via the web you might want to keep a few things in mind:

1.Eyeballs are great, but you need the whole person to make a placement. Ensure your vendor understands that ‘unique visitors’ may not be a suitable success measure to you.

2.The key word in placeable candidate is “placeable”. Volumes of applications are important but quality as you know is what is going to enable you to fill a role. Help your vendor understand how you will measure their effectiveness

3. Make a small investment of time to understand where your quality (placeable) candidates are coming from:

- Are you getting the national coverage you need to fill roles interstate?
- Are you receiving applications that you already have in the database? This may not be bad in itself, as you may receive applications with fresher/updated resumes
- Are some vendors performing better than others over time? Are you changing your budgets accordingly?

4. Spend a bit of time and go to the job board that you advertise the most on and do a search on your own jobs:
- Are they coming up in the first 2-4 pages of the results?
- Do they look at least a bit different in content compared to other roles
- Can you see anything in your ads (compelling grab-lines, branding) that might sway individuals to apply to your role as opposed to others

5. Inquiry about the activities that your vendor is taking up to disseminate your jobs (campaigns, affiliate advertising, site optimisation, etc.) This might give you an idea on which jobs might be better suited for that job board

Probe these things. Remember: if you cannot measure you cannot manage.

If you want to have a further chat about how you can track the effectiveness of your recruitment advertising drop me a line

Have a good weekend

This called my attention this morning. It made me wonder what is it that the ad was trying to sell: the house or the furniture?

Though the answer is obvious given the ad context, etc. it worried me that the pic did not feature the real estate more preeminently. And no, i did not find this being an inviting teaser to organise an inspection and get into the detail. Instead it made me kinda wonder whether there was something wrong with the property.

If you think of your career or jobs website, are you bothering with rich and heavy images that have sleek desks and slim computers in every page? Or are you listing your jobs, selling the benefits of joining as an employee and giving candidates clear pointers to get in contact with your recruiter?

I mean, are you selling the house or the furniture?

article from News reporting the up trends of job advertisements.

“January job ads were a firm 21.8 per cent higher than 12 months ago”
“This suggests that the slowdown in trend employment has run its course, and that employment growth will accelerate over coming months.”

Expectedly online is out-pacing print but – leaving aside the method behind the ANZ series – are larger advert volumes an accurate reflection of the employment growth prospects? Is the economy creating as many jobs at the rate that ads are being posted, normalising for the usual macro-lag?

An answer supporting the view of the local piece is provided via the latest McKinsey Global Survey of Business Executives, which outlines a strong positive economic/employment outlook especially in the region. Get the survey from the McKinsey Quarterly site; registration is free but valuable.

Link to the survey via the Taleo blog