March 1999 Column

Internet Ad Postings 

This month will be a primer on Internet Job Order postings. By following a few basic rules you will get a better response than the other guy. Keep in mind that your postings are placed up against all your competition’s. Make yourself stand out and get noticed. I try and keep 40-50 active orders at all of the sites we belong to. We want to thank our friend and associate, Mr. David Gant, for contributing to this article. 

Title/Header 

Apply the lessons you’ve learned in print advertising -- the key principles are a great title or header for the ad and strong ad copy, particularly in the first sentence.  Keep it short and sweet. I normally include a skill or two. For example, instead of using the titles: Programmer/Analyst or Accountant – I would use the titles Programmer/Analyst – COBOL/MVS or Accountant – Consolidations.  It also saves the candidate time and makes them more likely to “click through” to read your ad if you mention the type of employment relationship in your Title/Header.  For example: US/TX/Auditor/Direct Hire will encourage a person seeking a “perm job” to read your ad, while a title/header that reads: US/MO/SAP/Contract would encourage a person seeking a contract SAP assignment in Missouri to “click through” to read your ad copy.  The term “click through” refers to the act of the user to click their mouse on the title/header of your ad to open the ad copy for reading.  More and more Internet job sites are keeping statistics on click throughs to help advertisers determine the effectiveness of their ads.  You will reduce your ad response further (actually a good thing on the Internet) by showing that you are an employment agency in the title/header of your ad: US/MO/SAP/Direct Hire/Agency is an example of such a title/header.  Experiment with what works best for your situation – and then keep experimenting periodically to test your conclusions. 

Quick Description 

A one or two liner. Some of the job order search engines will offer a preview of search results, meaning, the first sentence or so of your ad will appear on the search results page. Start out with a catchy one liner. For example, ‘Phenomenal opportunity – stable Fortune 500 corporation seeking Programmer/Analyst’ or ‘Get on the right track – work with the latest technologies.’  This is where you can hook the ideal candidate and compel them to click through to your ad copy.  Put the best appeal of the job or company or location or technology or relevance of the work here. 

Detailed Description 

Here is where you give all the details of the position. This is typically broken down into two sections. The first section is the job description itself. State specifically what the candidate will be doing day-to-day. List technologies and tools used in this position. Possibly list career path if desired. Follow that section with a section on requirements. State the minimum qualifications necessary for this position including years of experience, education requirements, required skills or tools, percentage travel, etc. 

Items of Interest 

You might list company pay range, benefits, location or any other items that might make it easier for the job seeker to determine if he/she is interested in your posting.  The company may have a cafeteria or a great location, or an above average matching contribution to their 401k plan or superior training programs…  dig up whatever you can in taking the job order to help your client compete for top talent and sell it here. 

Think 

Your ad may be seen by more people than a full page coast-to-coast ComputerWorld ad.  It takes time to read all the responses that don’t fit your requirements.  To reduce the volume of response, you might want to include phrases or sentences including: 

‘No entry level positions available’
‘US/Green Card candidates only’
‘No subcontract positions available’
‘No Third Parties Please’ 

Contact Information 

Give them every way of contacting you that you can, including telephone (and 800 number if you have one), email address, web-site URL, and street address. Although faxes are actively discourages these days I still do list my fax number in the ads, as, believe it or not, there are still some people who do not have email. 

P.S. 

As a follow up to our article on developing your own website we touched on getting your website linked to the search engines. I briefly mentioned linking services and thought we would do a mini-review on a couple of the more popular ones. These services are invaluable and we encourage anyone that has gone through all the time and trouble to develop a website to spend a few extra dollars and let the experts link you properly to the major search engines. 

Submit It! – www.submit-it.com 

Helps your customers find you using the top search engines and directories.
Lists your site at all the top search engines including Alta Vista, Excite, HotBot, InfoSeek, MSN, WebCrawler, etc.
Lets you choose among 400 directories (ie Yahoo) for the best places to list your site.
Free reporting to verify your search engine listings.
Unlimited re-submissions for one year.
$59.00 for one year membership.
A free submit service will list you with seven search engines.
Other services include site inspection (for errors), meta tag builders, located sites linked to yours, site rankings on search engines, graphics efficiency analysis, etc.
Search engine tips and web site marketing tips. 

The Central Registry – www.centralregistry.com 

They sell themselves as the ‘Leader in Home Page registration and promotion.’
They will submit you to 610 Internet indexes and directories worldwide.
$249.00 one-time fee for one-time use.
Allows you to customize your submissions to individual sites.
Provide verification reports.