Using STAND OUT Job Titles in Your Job Board Advertising

Yesterday I blogged about some of the more "interesting" job titles people have referenced on their linkedin profiles.

Some searching this morning showed me there are some people looking for Ninja’s to join their team. This appears to be an attempt by start-up web companies to make their vacancies more “sexy”. The search results below from a major job board aggregator show that these unconventional titles may not be the most prevalent, but are definitely being used:

Indeed UK – 2 results for Whiz

Indeed UK –0 results for Ninja, but 82 in the US

Indeed UK – 5 results for fanatic

Indeed UK – 98 results for guru

Indeed UK –609 results for expert

(Expert's not really that wacky, but it helps put the numbers into perspective)

You're probably wondering now whether that last position you advertised could have benefited from a more "individual" title. Let's take a look at the pros and cons of this approach. On the positive side your advert is definitely going to stand out from the crowd, and an emotive title like "Javascript Ninja" is just the thing to get potential candidates excited, you could have the most boring position in the world ready to be filled, but who's not going to get at least a little excited when you tell them they're going to be a ninja!

As far as down sides go, you will be very poorly optimised for applicants searching for alternative traditional job titles such as “JavaScript developer”. However, people searching for just the JavaScript stand a good chance of seeing your role. Clearly no one is going to search for “JavaScript ninja”, as demonstrated by a couple of quick keyword searches using Google's keyword tool.

A search on Google Keywords tool (a great way to find out what people are searching for), and none of the following were showing a result:

"ninja jobs"
"geek jobs"
"guru jobs"
"expert jobs"
"fanatic jobs"
"ninja jobs"
"whiz jobs"

For niche searches google just reports that there was not enough searches by UK users in the last month to warrant displaying the result.

I'd advise a certain level of care be taken not to adversely effect the search functionality of your advert. Clearly there are candidates out there who consider themselves a fit for these descriptions, but they're never going to be in the majority and there is no guarantee they'll automatically be the cream of the crop.

In tomorrow's blog I'll take a look at the recent changes Easy Web have made to take advantage of these interesting job titles without harming our core search functionality. I'll also walk through how we strike a balance between attractive copy and search optimisation.

Linkedin Recruitment: Sourcing Monkeys, Ninjas & Village Idiots

Social networks can be funny old places, and while Linkedin's professional leanings clearly differentiate it from places like Bebo, Facebook and Myspace, it can also throw up some suprising (and often amusing) search results.

While doing some research for my next round of Linkedin Training Webinars I came across a profile whose current position was "Office skivvy". Now, aside from wondering what their employers position would be on this, it got me curious as to the other "unusual" job titles I might find...

A quick search turned up some amusing results, here are the numbers along with some of my favourites...

169 users with "monkey" in their job title, including the fantastic "Monkey - With delusions of being an Organ Grinder"

32 Ninjas.

14 idiots, including Chief Idiots, Founder Idiots, Big Idiots, Little Idiots and of course, a Village Idiot.

16 Skivvies.

130 Tea Boys & 6 Tea girls.

Now a large percentage of these profiles are very limited and have clearly been set up and forgotten about without the intention of really using the network, but a worrying number are much more complete and seem to have fairly active users. The million dollar question from an employers point of view is whether this admittedly minor trend can be flipped on it's head to make a vacancy stand out from the crowd.

In tomorrow’s posting I will show you how you can use some of the “stand out” job titles like Ninja and Guru to make your advert jump off the page. I will also highlight some of the pitfalls of this technique.

New Online Recruitment Training Dates Announced

Our free online recruitment training sessions have just gone nationwide. As I look at our Eventbrite account we have 36 events taking place between now and March. Starting in Birmingham tomorrow.

If you want to find out how to recruit for free via social networks like Linkedin and Facebook. Or maximise your return on investment when you post adverts to job boards. We run our half day sessions to between 12-20 direct recruiters at time and we have had some really positive feedback so far.

Here is a full list of dates and a short video giving an example of just one of the tips we look to give away in the session.

Linkedin Opens Up Their Platform

Linkedin has just announced they are opening up their platform for developers to integrate their applications with Linkedin. This is the model that Twitter adopted from the very start and is probably the biggest single factor in explaining their extraordinary growth. So not unsurprising that the other big players in the social networking space have sat up and taken notice.

Tweetdeck is one of the first applications to take advantage of this new development. But you can expect the floodgates to open. Although networks such as facebook have a much larger community of members, marketeers will be far more interested in being able to influence and market to the linkedin membership.

Whilst this is all very exciting, there are some key questions that spring to mind. Will the opening of the network to outside developers mean that marketeers and recruiters find a way to "spam" their messages to large groups? Up until now the use and pricing of inmails has made the network largely free of spam whilst still being reasonably priced.

Will we see federated CV search applications that allow recruiters to search the Linkedin network whilst also searching their own internal talent pool/cv database? Bullhorn and Broadbean already have applications that search multiple databases at once.

One thing that will definitely happen, your average linkedin member will undoubtedly see more approaches from recruiters on the hunt for passive candidates. If you are not recruiting on Linkedin you need to start NOW.

Linkedin Recruiter Professional Services - Review

Linkedin has recently announced that they are rolling out their Recruiter platform to recruitment companies. Initially this product was only available to corporate recruiters. I have spoken to a number of corporate recruiters who have spent a reasonable amount of money on this product and in general their feedback has been very good. So I signed up for the first of the webinars demonstrating it.

Now I need to make an important point. If you contact Linkedin and ask them what profile do I need to upgrade to in order to "see the entire network" they will point you in the direction of the Recruiter Platform, which is their most expensive product. This is wrong and their sales staff are being very canny in how they answer this.

The good news is if you have a linkedin profile, regardless of what account type you or how many connections you have made, YOU CAN ALREADY SEE THE ENTIRE NETWORK. Yes all 52m. I have tested this myself. If you don't believe me do a search of the network just for UK profiles. If will show you a number just over 2.7m. We all see the same number of profiles. The difference being as a corporate account user I can see more of the individual's profile. However, even this is a mute point as in 99% of searches the basic account will show enough data for a recruiter to be able to make a well informed decision on whether the linkedin member is worth contacting about the vacancy.

Right, I feel better now I have got that off my chest.

The RPS (Recruiter Professional Services) is essentially the same product that corporate recruiters have been using for over a year. It looks really good and is very easy to use, and aside from being a nice and simple product it actually has lots of nice features which will enhance your average Linkedin sourcing strategy.

Including:

• You can "pool" inmails. So if multiple users are on RPS all their inmail quotas are shared in one big pot.
  
• Your search results are listed in a summarised format so you can see where the hits are against your search and easily scroll down through multiple profiles on the one page.
• You can shortlist profiles to a folder and then send inmails in batches of up to 10 (Linkedin is very careful not to make it easy for someone to spam inmails, hence the limit of 10).
  
• You can see 1,000 profiles in your results (if you get 1,000 results you are not searching correctly, but technically this is still a benefit if you really want to wade through that many profiles).
• Multiple users can share project folders and collaborate together on campaigns.
• You can add notes against profiles that stay within RPS.
  
• All individual consultant activity is logged in the account. So if someone leaves your employment you do not need access to their Linkedin account to see what roles they have been working on, what inmails they sent and notes they made.

All in all, I was a little sceptical to start off with but in the end I was impressed. It's not meant to be an ATS, although it has many similar features. If you use linkedin on a shoestring as most recruiters seem to, then it probably won't interest you. If like me you use Linkedin as a primary recruitment tool and you send a lot of inmails, then I would give serious consideration to making a purchase.

FREE Training Sessions Start Tomorrow

After a successful pilot of our online recruitment training sessions, we have decided to roll out a new series of events.

You can see the schedule for these events here.

The feedback from the candidates who attended the first series of sessions can be seen here.

The aim of the sessions is to unlock some of the secrets of online recruitment. We openly show you how we use job boards, linkedin, CV databases, job board aggregators, twitter, facebook etc to source candidates in the most cost efficient and time efficient manner. It's also an excellent opportunity to hear how other direct recruiters are currently approaching these issues. A full list of the course content can be found here.

It's a half day session totally free as long as you are a direct recruiter!

Is Social Recruiting a Primary Recruitment Method for You?

I have been completing some research recently into recruiting via Social Networking sites and I reached the conclusion that for most organisations, Social Networking mediums are definitely a secondary recruitment method…

So what do I mean by secondary recruitment method?

Why is there such media attention on these new recruitment methods?

Why are organisations not able to utilise the full potential of many of these networks now?

And can I go back to how I have recruited for the last 10 years and ignore these new mediums?

These are all questions that have been actively debated in our office. I am going to try and answer the first two questions in this article and cover the next two in a few days time.

So what do I mean by secondary recruitment method?

Primary internet recruitment methods would currently include, job boards, corporate careers sites and online CV databases. These are primary methods because they are responsible for most of the hires that come from the organisation’s internet recruitment program. In my experience, and from a straw poll of about 40 people I have spoken with so far, social recruiting is not yet making a significant impact. Only two organisations (both niche software companies) suggested they were recruiting extensively via headhunting on Linkedin.

Why is there such media attention on these new recruitment methods?

Well firstly, there is massive potential. Facebook has 250m users globally. Linkedin has over 40m users. Most Recruiters primary problem of “sourcing the talent” would be solved if it was easy to filter through this information and locate relevant people. As I will cover in my second post though, your ability to recruit just via these two mediums can vary greatly.

Secondly, the media love something new, they jump on wacky stories about the internet such as this one or about how people have lost a job via Facebook. They will bang on about the latest survey that shows X % of people will look to use their social network when looking for a job. This can work, and I’m not disputing the potential of your network to help you find your next position, but this has been happening for centuries. Social networks just make the process easier. It is an evolution not a revolution in recruitment terms.

I am a fan of social networks, particularly Linkedin (which I recruit via extensively) and I believe the revolution might be coming. It just isn’t here yet. On my next post I will answer the remaining two questions:

Why are organisations not able to utilise the full potential of many of these networks now?

And

Can I go back to how I have recruited for the last 10 years and ignore these new mediums?