Nicole Bodem HR Search Marketing

"When I asked my accountant if anything could get me out of this mess I am in now he thought for a long time and said, 'Yes, death would help'." - Robert Morley

In this case, I think we all know the current mess we are in. The good news is that things seem to be looking up in the economy. Recent conversations I've had with recruiters seems to support this (the job market is starting to open up). But, it is a long road back, especially for those who are out of work and still looking. That being said, today's post will focus on the Fortune 500 (skipping those companies that have fallen too far to be considered at this point) where there are more than 1,000 job opportunities. Today's list includes Food Ingredients, Retailing, Financial Services, Insurance and home care products.

• Archer Daniels Midland - Ranked 27 on this year's list, AMD produces food ingredients. Their Careers Page has links on the left hand side for Career Opportunities, Diversity, Life at AMD and more. The right hand side of the page has a download (pdf file) for a "make your mark" career information brochure followed by an events calendar link. The Careers Opportunities page has four choices (US, Canada, South America and Europe jobs). When I checked there career opportunities in the US (87), Canada (3) and Europe (9)



• Target - This retailer is ranked 28 on the list. Their main careers page has links to the left hand side for Search Job Openings, Opportunities at Target, Recruiting events and more. There is a larger search section in the center of the page which provides check boxes for filtering followed by a section for Featured Jobs and Campus Recruiting. The link for Resources for Candidates provides a number of resources which are worth a look. There were 787 career opportunities when I checked the site.



• Johnson & Johnson - Number 29 on the list, J&J is known for a number of consumer products, medical products and more. The J&J site is split between Professionals and Students. You must search for jobs by country (rather than across the entire organization). There are additional links for Workforce Diversity, Career Advancement, Shared values and more. There were 309 job opportunities when I checked the site.



• Morgan Stanley - This financial services giant was on the edge (but did not go over) and has since stabilized in the last few months. Ranked 30 on the list, their careers page has links on the left hand side for Careers and company information. This is followed by a map that is interactive (where you can explore the company by location). The center of the page includes a company overview, followed by links for University, Experienced hires and Branch Opportunities. The right hand side of the page has information on Diversity and profiles on several employees. Clicking on the Experienced Level link leads to a full page where jobs must be searched by division where there were 599 career opportunities.
  
  
• State Farm Insurance Cos. - Ranked 31 on this year's list, State Farm is known, of course, for insurance. Their careers page has two main choices center page: Employee and Agent. The left hand side of the page has links for Mission, Career Center, Newsroom and more.

Good luck in your search.
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Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Google announced in a blog post recently that they have opened up their personalized search abilities to everyone. Previously, personalized search only affected users who were signed in to their Gmail or other Google properties. If you we’re signed into Google you would see your email address in the upper right corner. Well, now you know longer need to be signed in.

What the Heck Is Personalized Search?

It means that your search engine results are being modified based on your past history of searching. This is the search engines way of trying to deliver the most relevant results to you…

Example: Two people search on the word ”Beetle”, one gets car results, and the other results for a bug or as another example a search for “apple” could yield results for a fruit or a computer

What’s the Bottom Line?

Purely from an SEO standpoint the bottom line is the listings that get the “clicks” will get the BETTER visibility. If a job seeker searches for jobs and almost always clicks on a result from Indeed, Indeed will be deemed more relevant than monster or other (as an example) for that particular user.

It also means that those who may have achieved decent SEO visibility from having a few keywords in place & a trusted domain are going to have to go back and consider a site stickiness and usability strategy.

Having a “sticky” site just means that people are coming to your site, finding it interesting enough to stick around as well as come back for more – this is accomplished with having a great content & interactive strategy. Not only will you need to have information around benefits, culture and what it’s like to work at your organization but you’ll need to incorporate videos, blogs, Flickr, social media and more! It also means paying more attention to a user’s experience.

In reality though, if you are paying for SEO services and are working with a vendor who knows what they’re doing all of the above elements would have already been part of your SEO strategy or at the very least recommended to you.

My advice – don’t worry about it. Work on creating the best site possible. What’s good for users is good for search engines.

Check out Google’s help center for more details on personalized search, how they customize results and how you can turn off personalization. Alternatively, you can learn more by watching the below video.

I’ve been doing SEO and SEM for over 7 years now and I dedicate A LOT of time keeping up to date on best practices. One of the aspects I am most passionate about is educating people on the capabilities of SEO and SEM as well as what they can expect an SEO/SEM strategy to deliver in terms of return on investment.

Each week, I have the opportunity to talk with many organizations and a lot of time they have already done their home work by researching other SEO/SEM providers. Yesterday was one of those days. I spent a few hours on the phone with someone who had already talked to an “SEO Expert” (not in the recruiting space) and was questioning some of the information they we’re given.

It never ceases to amaze me some of the completely inaccurate information these so called SEO experts are giving out to organizations. Today I wanted to share with you a few of these “untruths”

Two SEO Untruths

SEO Untruth - An SEO provider told me that I needed to completely redo my website because it was done in Dreamweaver. They said that Dreamweaver is not good for search engine visibility, is this true?

My response: This is completely untrue. The use of Dreamweaver in itself is not bad for SEO. In fact, Dreamweaver is a very popular web development tool. It also has some really great features.

SEO Untruth – An SEO provider told me that having my job content on my site was “confusing” the search engines, they suggested putting our jobs on a blog instead.

My Response: Not true, in fact, unless you have technical barriers that are preventing search engines from being able to get to your jobs content (which was NOT a factor in this instance) it would not make sense to move the jobs onto an entirely different URL/website. That other website will just be another online property that you’ll have to devote resources to. When it comes to SEO (Where possible) it’s better to concentrate your time and energy on building one awesome online property.

To Their Defense

Granted I did not talk to these experts directly so I don’t know exactly what they meant by "search engines being confused" or "Dreamweaver being bad for SEO". Maybe they were referring to a technical barrier such as the use of frames or drop down menus and didn’t know enough to explain what the real problem was.

In recruitment, SEO and SEM still remain the buzz and probably will for a while. A few weeks back I wrote a white paper entitled "What C level executives need to know about SEO"

This white paper will give you some important questions to ask potential SEO providers as well as what types of responses you should be hearing back. If ever unsure about what you’ve been told, email me. I am more than happy to provide input based on my experience. SEO in the wrong hands can be detrimental. Just read what happen to BMW Germany a few years back.

Happy Holidays!!!

Courtesy of the Recruiting BlogSwap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter. Article by: Lorraine Russo of the Underground Job Network

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I was reading the New York Times this morning and came across an interview with William D. Green, chairman and C.E.O. of Accenture. One of the things that caught my eye in this article was his statement:

“This year…we built a human capital strategy for the future…refreshed our corporate-wide strategy, and I moved my leadership people around into different positions and promoted some new people into leadership roles to infuse energy.”

This statement alone suggests a number of things happening at Accenture:

1. They are changing the way they attract and retain employees.
2. People are being moved laterally within the company.
3. A few folks were promoted
4. With all these internal changes and employee movement, opportunities could be awaiting you at this global consulting firm.

When you get to know Mr. Green a bit better through this article, you’ll find that he is a plumber’s son who made good. He appears to be a down-to-earth person who looks for qualities in his employees that speak to character and integrity—characteristics that are often challenging to convey on a resume or cover letter.

He also mentions that Accenture “gets two million CVs a year and…hire[s] between 40,000 and 60,000 people...we need people who are analytical, and have common sense, good judgment and the ability to get along with other people.” So if Accenture hires around 40,000 people per year, let’s see what's on their website.

A visit to Accenture's career pages shows HUNDREDS of openings in the US, including quite a few entry level opportunities. Click on the <more> button on the left side of the screen to see all US openings by location. So with what you now about the TYPE of people Accenture likes to hire, how will you describe yourself when applying? As Mr. Green says:

“We’re taking a more scientific approach to how we recruit. We do something called “critical behavior interviewing.” It’s based on the premise that past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior… essentially what we’re looking for is, have you faced any adversity and what did you do about it?

“…It’s what have you learned, what have you demonstrated, what behaviors do you have? Have you shown intuition? Have you shown the ability to synthesize and act? Have you shown the ability to step up and make a choice? How have you dealt with the hand in front of you, played it out?”

“What critical behavior interviewing does is get at people’s character, and you get to see where work fits in their value system, where pride fits in their value system, where making hard decisions or sacrificing fits in their value system. I mean, you sacrifice and you’re a victim, or you sacrifice because it’s the right thing to do and you have pride in it. Huge difference. Simple thing. Huge difference.”

Hopefully the above quotes will give you some insight as to the traits and characteristics of an Accenture employee. Knowing this, take a closer look at your resume...does it read like someone William Green would like to hire? Does it tell the story of what you've accomplished and how you got there? Take a moment and read the NYT article in its entirety here.

A few days back I saw the first ever job posting on Indeed advertising for a “Talent Community Manager”. (Kudos to Deluxe for taking a huge step forward in recruiting and leveraging this opportunity) Using social media for recruitment takes time, technology and people and they “get that”

Considering Facebook alone as over 300 million users, ½ of which log in to their account in a given day it would not be surprised to see other organizations follow their lead and take advantage of this untapped source of finding and engaging candidates.

Being that this is a VERY new type of position to any industry, let alone recruiting I can imagine how finding someone to fill such a position would be challenging.

Social Media Communities – It’s Not a Waste of Time

In addition to the enormous challenge of finding someone who can successfully build, manage and engage members of a community how do you convince the powers that be that social media is more than a big playground? The way I see it, there are a few different ways social media tools can be used in recruiting including;

• Finding candidates
• Building relationships with potential candidates
• Enhancing your employment brand

I don’t think many would argue with the above bullet points but how do you create a business case for allocating resources?

Measuring the ROI of Social Media used as a Recruiting Tool

Measuring the effectiveness of social media is another challenge because it means that people need to shift their way of thinking from quantitative to something more qualitative. That said, below are some ways to measure your social media success:

• Career Site Traffic – The more people coming to your career site and specific job postings the more people that are applying for your jobs. A free analytics tool like Google Analytics will help you track referrals. If you are sharing links to specific jobs on Facebook and Twitter, URL shortening tools like Bit.ly and Traceurl can measure click through rates
  
  
• Influence – The greater influence you have in social media, the bigger your reach and of course audience and the more visibility your organizations employment brand gets. Your Twitter influence can be measured with tools like Twinfluence and Twitter Grader. Facebook has a similar tool that lets you measure the influence of your business pages.
  
  
• Buzz & Chatter – Are people talking about your organization? What are they saying? With any luck their talking about your career opportunities, what interviewing is like and how great your company culture is. Other important things are how often people are linking to you or mentioning you on Twitter. In addition to the tools mentioned above, you’ll want to use Google alerts to monitor both positive and negative buzz.
  

Social media is more of a long term investment; results won’t happen overnight. Simply creating a Twitter account and a Facebook business page won’t cut it – You have to take time to get to know people, the RIGHT people, listen, contribute and be transparent.

At the end of the day social media is an opportunity for your organizations to have engaging conversations with potential & current employees. Don’t be left behind.

Feel free to post a comment if you are actively engaging in a social media strategy, I'd love to hear what's working and not working for you!

You figure you’re in the right job or business. But you’re not fully satisfied. You feel you could be doing a bit better. And things may be set to change in your market or company. What should you be doing now to prepare for such change?

You need a robust strategy for success. Here you would do well to borrow from business. Whether you’re employed by a company or self-employed, think of yourself as a business and adopt one of the tried-and-tested strategies used by business to achieve competitive success.

• Envision what the ideal provider of your services would look like in three to five years’ time. Do some brainstorming. You need to think creatively about how your marketplace may change over the next three to five years and how the needs of your employer or customers may be affected. What will the ideal provider of your services look like? To what extent will he or she be different from the ideal provider of today? More qualified? In what? Better trained? In what way? More experienced? In which areas? More skilful? How?
  
  
• Next, set your sights. To what extent do you wish to become like the ideal provider? You’ll never get there, of course. No one is perfect. You may not want to get there, given the impact this could have on other aspects of your life. But you may want to stretch your sights and narrow the gap. You need to pinpoint your goal.
  
  
• Finally, adopt one of the three generic strategies for success, detailed below, needed to bridge the gap. The first two are based on generic business strategies. To develop a sustainable competitive advantage, companies generally follow either a differentiation strategy or a low-cost strategy. They either do something distinctive and well, or do more or less the same as others but at lower cost. What they would be well advised not to do is exactly the same as other companies do, the so-called me-too recipe for lack of success. The third is a strategy not recommended for business, but appropriate for individuals in certain circumstances: working on your weaknesses.
  
  
• Differentiate with the Stand Out! strategy.
  You can use this differentiation strategy whether you’re employed or self-employed. Stand Out! is about making what you offer distinctive and different from others in your position. It builds on your strengths and circumvents your weaknesses.
  
  A study by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton found that people’s greatest room for improvement is in the area of their greatest strength. Identify your greatest strengths, and figure out ways to build on them to set yourself apart from others or become special to someone or some group of people (customers, for instance). Think Madonna. Love her or loathe her, her sustained Stand Out! strategy since the 1980s of image reinvention and self-publicity has yielded extraordinary success.
  
  
• Go low cost, with the easyU! strategy.
  If you’re self-employed, your earnings are typically a reflection of your charges on the one hand and your volume of work on the other. Are your rates keeping you from being as busy as you want to be? If you’ve researched the market, as suggested above, you probably have a good idea of what the market can bear. Sometimes, to maximize your exposure in the market, get more clients, and generate more free advertising via word-of-mouth, lowering your rates can be a sound growth strategy. Perhaps you need to make it easy for clients to call you first, before anyone else. (Think Southwest, which found a way to do it cheaper—and stole customers from the rest of the airline industry.)
  
  
• Improve your competitiveness with the Sharpen Act! strategy.
  You may not be able to differentiate sufficiently in your job, and you may not choose to become the lowest cost provider, but you do need to stay in that job. To pre-empt being squeezed out, you need to improve your competitiveness. In the Sharpen Act! strategy, you build on your strengths to the extent that you’re able to in the circumstances, but meanwhile you work on some of the weaknesses that are holding you down. These could, for example, be presentation/public speaking skills, computer skills, appearance, leadership skills, marketing, networking, or organization. Identify one or two and work on raising your capabilities, narrowing the gap with the ideal provider. Who knows, you could even transform a weakness into a strength.

EXAMPLE: Take Debbi - She works in the marketing department of a professional services company. Her brainstorming reveals that the ideal employee a few years’ hence will need to be adept at presenting on her feet. Yet public speaking is one of Debi’s greatest fears. What should she do? She can’t carry on as is. She has either to look elsewhere, or bite the bullet. She joins Toastmasters International. As for thousands of others, worldwide, it transforms her life, and is a huge amount of fun to boot. Her Sharpen Act! strategy enhances, possibly even saves, her job.

Many people feel stuck in their jobs. But they know they could do better, for themselves, for their company. The best way to boost your performance, pay, and job satisfaction is to follow a robust strategy, whether Stand-Out!, easyU!, or Sharpen Act! Such strategies work for companies, and they can for work for you as well.

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Vaughan Evans is a renowned economist, business strategist, sought-after speaker, and the author of Backing U! A Business-Oriented Guide to Backing Your Passion and Achieving Career Success - Business and Careers Press, 2009, http://www.backingu.com/

Article courtesy of the recruiting blogspot a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Although the economy may not be the best for job seekers right now, there are jobs out there...YES, really great companies are looking for talent.

Here are some quick internet tips to help find a job. Courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:
From: Matthew Warzel, MJW Careers

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When a job seeker says "I don't have Internet access or I'm not Internet savvy," it cannot be an excuse in this competitive environment the job market has become. Here are some quick thoughts:

• Sorry, but faxing doesn't cut it anymore
  
  
• Get email account for FREE at Yahoo, Hotmail or Google
  
  
• Go to a friend's house with Internet or to your local library because they have internet!
  
  
• Enroll in a free or sometimes very cheap, local "Learn How to Use Internet" classes at Library or community colleges, high schools, etc.
  
  
• sign up for a $25/class to learn basics of internet terms, navigation, etc. Even Microsoft Word to develop your resume and cover letter.
  
  
• Post your resume onto general and niche specific job boards as well as company portals.
  
  
• Almost all companies post their job openings on their website...so go to a company website, find the CAREERS section and enter that career section (called a portal)...sometimes you can even setup an account before applying to a job, post your resume onto that company career account and setup keyword alerts....thus, if you're a mechanical engineer and they post a job a month later for an mechanical engineer, the company will let you know via this alert to your email, which will allow for you to apply as soon as it's posted...this can allow for you to be on top of the application list too for recruiters, because sometimes recruiters at companies will only look at the top 100 applicants as opposed to all 1000 candidates who applied (and being one of the 1st to apply, can make you higher on that list, thus in the top 100)
  
  
• Setup Google news and Yahoo news alerts for the word "'relocating' or 'relocation' and the job seeker's city or near-city's name" to find companies who are relocating to the job seeker's area; "expansion" and "growth" to identify growth companies and emerging opportunities for you to seek out hiring decision makers and recruiters at those companies
  
  
• Review leading online and published newspapers like Forbes and Wall St. Journal to keep up on those growth industries (as well as your local paper)- DON'T BE INTIMIDATED OR ASHAMED! You want and need to learn and you are bettering yourself. This is the right step forward. IF YOU AREN'T DOING IT, YOUR COMPETITION IS!
  
  
• Finally (non-Internet related), try to place yourself into growth industries (biotech, nutrition, energy & renewable energies, photonics, and IT) that you can fit into in respect to your transferable skills as opposed to dying industries (textile, printing, apparel manufacturing & general manufacturing such as steel, and airlines)
  

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

The following post is courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap:
From: Candice Arnold
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Starting a new job can be nerve-racking, especially when it comes to adapting to a new work environment. It's as important for new hires to be able to mesh well with their coworkers as it is for them to be able to quickly learn how to do their new jobs. So what's the best way for a new employee to endear himself to his coworkers? Should he strive to be likable or nice?

"I would say that the phrase 'being likable' implies that you are easy to get along with and that you respect other people, whereas, 'being nice' denotes a lack of sincerity," said Holly Stokes, author of "Train Your Brain, Get Results."

Melody Brooke,author of "Oh WOW, This Changes Everything," agrees that nice people seem insincere and untrustworthy. "Being likable is a personality thing ..." she said. "There is something about the person you feel warmly toward. Likable definitely gets you further than being nice."

Mark Stevens, president of MSCO and author of "Your Marketing Sucks," is also in support of being likable instead of nice, if forced to choose. "Nice people are often treated disrespectfully. Is this fair? Of course not. But human nature isn't always fair. Boy by a long shot," said Stevens. "On the other hand, people are often 'likable' because they are self-confident, exude charm and power. They may or may not be 'nice' but they are 'liked' because they are interesting or exhilerating to be around. You don't have to choose between nice and likable, you can be both, but push come to shove, take the latter. It's a lot more fun."

"If you work to be kind, the people who are worth their salt will like you," said Dick Cheatham of Living History Associates, Ltd. "Thus, you get both ... being kind and being liked."

Psychotherapist, Dr. Nancy Irwin gave a broader perspective, pointing out that each has its benefits in the professional world. "Each quality has its place. There is not one that is better than another, inherently. Different businesses and jobs have different qualities that are needed. [For example], public speakers should come across as likable, as should most performers. Yet, being nice (authentic, real), is more important for teachers, health professionals, etc."

Truly, the best way for any new employee to work well and get along with his coworkers is to first be himself, whether it's his nature to be nice or to be likable. In time, his colleagues will see for themselves who he really is and any preconceived notions they may have had about "nice" vs. "likable" will go right out the window ... at least in his case.

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

One of the biggest challenges with blogs is coming up with new and fresh content on a regular basis and you are not alone, note the date on my last blog post. It’s especially challenging in this economy where resources are completely tapped.

One solution is to use a resource called The Recruiting blogswap. The Recruiting Blogswap is a FREE service of job board, CollegeRecruiter.com, but is used by an international collection of job boards, recruiting blogs, and other career sites.

How it Works:

Once you register as a publisher, you'll receive articles from authors who specialize in recruiting, career counseling and more, which you may choose to accept or decline based on the needs of your career site. The great thing is that you’re never obligated to publish an article so you don't have to worry about publishing content that isn't appropriate for your site. I just signed up for this service and you can to, registration takes less than a minute!

Other Content Re-purposing Strategies

• Turn Press Releases Into Conversational Pieces – Let’s face it sometimes press release can be pretty boring to the everyday person. Try taking key messages within the press release and write them in a more conversational way, cite examples, offer helpful tips even link out to an additional resource.

• Old is the New….New – If you have years of content on your blog or website peek through some of it to see where update opportunities may present themselves. The recruiting industry changes pretty quickly creating the need for content to be update frequently. Especially “Tip” type articles. The first article title might have been “5 strategies for finding the best talent on the web” Your new title could be “5 NEW tips for finding the best talent” etc.

• Leverage Your PowerPoint Decks – Try turning your PowerPoint decks into articles and blog posts. If you’ve spoken at recruitment industry conferences you could always build out supporting visibility on that topic. Do you routinely do public webinars? That’s another re-purposing opportunity.

Do you have content re-purposing ideas you’d like to share, feel free to leave a comment.

It’s no big secret that a having a recruitment SEO strategy in place can help an organization tap into the candidate pool that starts their job search within search engines.

A good portion of the success of your SEO campaign revolves around the content of your career site. In the eyes of the search engines, quality content is king. The more you have of it, the better.

If you’ve ever wondered why your competitor has better search engine visibility than you do, check out how many pages of content they have. Career Builder for instance has over 1.2 million pages indexed in Google.

This does not necessarily mean you’ll need as many pages to be on the same playing field, others factors come into play such as incoming links.

Tell me more about Linkbuilding

There are many techniques that can be used to garner inbound links to your career site however; the most favored by search engines is building links naturally by having unique content on your website. The kind of content that makes people naturally want to link to.

In addition to having content on a company’s culture, benefits, first interview advice there are some content strategies your competition may be ignoring.

3 Content Strategies your competitors may not know

1. Contests – the trick with contests is to find ways for the contestants to promote the content online themselves. This technique naturally results in lots of incoming links. Combine this with user generated content, where people are encouraged to promote their own contest submission it’s a magic win-win formula. Some great examples of leveraging this are:
   
   - The Talent Buzz – blog contest
   - Best Buy – Help us write the job description
   
   


2. Unique Research – Finding and publishing research is probably the most difficult to master. It requires thinking about all the industry information you have available and determining what insights you may be able to garner from it. This type of project may require looking to a market research firm to help. A good example of a company undertaking this type of strategy is Arbita with their recruitment genome project. The report is a multi-year research project but the first installment is ready to download now.
   
   


3. Awards with Badges – Posting awards has been one of the best ways for a business to establish themselves as credible in the online world. Awards that are represented with badges usually contain a link back to the site offering the award.
   
   A great example of this type of strategy would be the recruiting blogs blog contest in 2007. All recruitment industry bloggers we're talking about this contest and in turn linked back to the Recruiting Blogs website.
   

The above content strategies alone will not guarantee that you will outperform your online competitors but when done properly, can accomplish a lot for your career site.

If you have examples you’d like to share feel free to post comments.