July 1999 Column
INTERNET
RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING - IS IT WORTH IT?
Last
month we discussed the virtues of searching through Internet resume databases.
Discussed the pro’s and con’s, management techniques and its general
worthiness as a bona fide recruiting tool. This month we will talk about
Internet advertising, the plusses and minuses, the costs, the returns and help
you to make a more informed decision as to whether this is a good way to go.
These
days I think print media is taking a beating at the expense of growing Internet
advertising budgets. For the price of a couple of display ads in the metro
‘want ads’ you can purchase Internet ad space for a year at some sites. We
do sometimes advertise in specialized publications, but the budget for newspaper
advertising has dropped drastically. Know your marketplace. There are still a
number of people who will use the ‘want ads’ as a source of job leads, but
Internet advertising has firmly supplanted print advertising at our firm, and
many others I know.
Two
basic types of services.
You
can post job orders directly to several large job order services including
Monster, DICE, Career Mosaic, etc. These are heavily traveled sites that can
produce a number of resumes (daily) if properly placed and worded. Most do
charge an annual, monthly or per ad fee. I always ask for a free trial before I
use a service. Thank goodness that most services do offer a two to four week
trial. My email Inbox probably sees three to four free trials per week. During
your free trial, use it to the maximum. Post as many job orders as you can. Keep
in mind many candidates that would never post their resume on the Internet for
all to see would be happy to email you a resume.
You
can also try a ‘job posting service’, such as Net-Temps, Inc. although it is
certain there are many services of this nature. Net-Temps costs a hefty $395.00
per month (discounts for multi-office accounts) but they do what could never be
done by one person alone. They take each job posting sent to them (using their
proprietary Windows software that resides on your local hard drive) and re-post
that order to over 400 other job-posting sites. Resumes come in all the time
from candidates saying they saw an ad on this board or that board, places we
would have never thought to post an ad. You can email Chris Currie from
Net-Temps at chris@net-temps.com (or
call at 978-251-7272 x30) for more information.
A
key to Internet advertising success and please believe me, more art than
science. We have changed directions several times trying to find the best way to
go and will probably change again in the future. At present each
computer/internet savvy recruiter is assigned an ad posting board to tend to.
The recruiters will receive all the resumes that come in from that board. The
posting are done in the evening so as not to take away from our use of more
traditional recruiting methods during the day. To make things easier, the orders
are all placed in a MS/Word document and then cut and pasted into the Internet
forms. At best, a tedious, time consuming process. We try and keep anywhere from
30-50 jobs posted on each site and find this give us a continuous supply of
resumes on a daily basis. Frankly,
most are deleted immediately but enough get through to make it worthwhile. The
recruiter-posted ads are periodically reviewed and assessed. Closed jobs are
removed and new jobs are posted. Be careful how you word your ads. Be specific.
Note job location, job title, pay ranges, employment status (i.e.
contractor/employee), any skills required and then you would list the day to day
duties. In other words, you will post most of the information that you use on
your job order form, sans the client information.
Being too vague will result in you being inundated with unqualified
wannabe’s that will reply to you with numerous copies of their resume, call
you repeatedly and waste your time. Management still reviews all the ad
responses and makes sure they are at least close to a marketable candidate
before forwarding to the recruiters.
Another
hint I would advise you to use is to place a statement on your job order as to
your willingness to accept certain types of resumes. No Entry Level Positions or
No Sponsorships Available come to mind. Even
with these statements you will receive numerous resumes from entry level
candidates and many resumes from candidates in need of sponsorship. You will
also receive many replies from other vendors. Maybe sub-contracting firms or
other agencies wanting to split fees. You need to learn how to recognize these
time wasters and deal with them. I can delete email messages faster than anyone
I know can. I have my Outlook window set to Preview mode where I can see the
first line or two of a message without opening it up. I do get fooled but have
learned to recognize to the needle in the haystack, a skill you need to develop.
Many
services will offer free job postings. One of the larger services,
Headhunter.Net is one service that does not (as of this writing) charge for job
order postings (or their resume database). For the price of one large, display
ad in your metro paper, you could also get access to their ‘Friends’ status
that gives your job orders a higher priority that those that post for free.
It
is sometimes hard to pin down an exact cost for a resume-posting site as many of
the services are priced as a package. You can post jobs to Monster or DICE but
the cost of their expensive service also includes access to their large resume
databases.
Of
those sites that do charge, the costs are all over the board. Many will ask that
you purchase an annual membership, sometimes running into the thousands of
dollars. Monster and Career Mosaic
are good examples. Other services will offer you a monthly fee without forcing a
long-term commitment, DICE being a good example. There are a few sites where you
can pay per posting, some as low as $20.00 per ad per month.
A
service for every budget.
Again,
we come to the point where we ask ourselves…Is it worth it?
Again, we say…of course – what did you think we were going to say?
Managing the resource properly is probably the biggest challenge. Realize it can
be a huge time waster if not managed.
Our clients are advertising right along side us on the Internet more and more. How can we compete? Be better. Work harder. Write better ads. Respond faster to candidates. Sell more. Be knowledgeable. Call people at home in the evening. Can I say any more? Frankly, if our friends on the hiring side show the same sense of urgency towards Internet responses as they do to our referrals at times, we have nothing to worry about.
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In
last month’s article we referred to several websites including www.isjobbank.com.
This should have read www.monster.com
(although www.occ.com still works).
One
of our industries great trainers, Steve Finkel, has a website where you can read
or print several of his articles for free. Locate this website at www.stevefinkel.com.
I have seen Steve in action and have also read his books. You might as well take
advantage of this free resource.