Google Adwords is the biggest pay per click advertising platform online and is used by thousands of businesses worldwide to promote products and services to millions of individuals and businesses. It is both cost effective and targeted as you only pay for those ads that are clicked on and choose the keywords your ads are shown against.

Although Adwords is widely used by every business sector I have found companies wishing to recruit new employees are not utilising it for this function. I can’t help but feel companies are missing this opportunity to attract candidates to their internal career site. The job boards are certainly using Adwords. For example if you type “Sales jobs” into Google, you’re likely to see Sales Target (a niche sales job board in the results.) A massive benefit of using Adwords to promote your job is their geo-targeting feature. This means you can set your ads to only be displayed to people in specific areas.

For example let’s say you were looking to recruit in the London area, Adwords will show you a map of the UK, you can then select London on the map. You can also choose multiple locations to show your ad if you are looking to recruit in different locations as you can see below.

Adwords Geotargeting Feature

One of the big benefits of choosing specific locations to show your ads is that only geographically relevant candidates will see them. This should make your advertising more effective and cheaper as you will not be paying for irrelevant clicks from people not in the right geographic location for your advertised job. Adwords will show your job ad against any keyword you choose as long as you bid high enough for each click.

If you were to advertise for a sales job in London it would be sensible to bid against “Sales jobs London” and other obvious search terms candidates might use to find roles.You should try to be clever with your keyword choices. Why not bid against your competitors.

For example Tesco could bid for the keyword “Sainsbury jobs” and when this or similar searches were entered into Google Tesco’s recruitment ads would be shown.

Also bidding for industry based keywords will help attract the best candidates.

For Example a Web Design firm may want to bid on “new media jobs”. Many jobs now require specific skills and qualifications. We’ve been advertising for a person with a CIM qualification for one of our clients.

They may wish to bid on “CIM marketing jobs” and other related keywords It is also crucial that you choose the right landing page for your ad as the ad copy and landing page copy have to match. I will include more information on this in my step by step guide on how to set up a recruitment ad for Google Adwords which will be up on our blog in the next couple of weeks.

These are just some of the ways to attract candidates using a system like Adwords. Although you will have to pay for every click, you are likely spend a lot less than if you were to hire a traditional recruitment agency and can build your own candidate pool from the candidates that come through to your career page.

Millions of people use Google search every day and it is a resource that is heavily underutilised by employers when advertising for their roles.

The main reason for this is a lack of technical knowledge of the Adwords system and also creative knowledge on how to attract the best candidates by using the right copy and keywords. Hopefully I’ll be able to shed some light for you on both these points in forthcoming posts. In the meantime set up an Adwords account and have an explore.

Had a nice request from Simply Hired to provide an expert advice Q & A session on their new SimplyBlog to discuss recruitment tactics.

The interview can be found here. http://blog.simplyhired.co.uk/2010/09/expert-interview-with-steve-evans-managing-director-of-netnativescouk-and-founder-of-searchnativesco.html

Nice to be asked, is all I’m saying…

Twitter’s is never out of the news, whether with rallying cries against those damn Yankees criticising the NHS or the power of citizen journalism helping mobilise radical thought in Iran.

But I can’t help feeling its mighty PR machine has missed a trick by not ascribing Twitter’s influence over the gradual global recovery from recession.

Twitter has been perfectly placed during this period of slow trade and rising unemployment to be used as the effective business tool for the quick witted. Twitter’s reach and ability to bring together like minded people has provided a platform for business growth for those businesses willing to embrace it.

Though we are not in the same league as Dell, Net Natives can directly attribute £1000s of revenues generated by twitter to our business model. Real revenues for our online recruitment services, not “how to use twitter” or other idiots’ guide and abstract revenues.

And I still haven’t cracked it or think I am using it to its maximum potential. I still think before I tweet (cardinal sin, I know), don’t put out enough personal information; engage enough with my audience, or whatever else I am constantly instructed to do by another twitterers. But, so what…I (and my company) are having a go – getting involved and using the medium.

But, whilst I am an evangelist, I am an old fashioned sort of fella at heart. When I started work, the only means for communication was the phone and fax (why do people still insist on faxes!), so I still use the telephone call as my primary communication tool, where I can. But, we are now in the business of mixed mediums.

I use Twitter, but don’t rely on it. I don’t agree with comments that mandate sole faith in social media and proclaim the end of other mediums. This short term view will not help develop business, but will restrict growth and scope. In my business, online recruitment, the key is to maximise all avenues (be it recruitment advertising, SEO, SEM, social media, referrals – whatever, do it all but do them well).

I started with the question, “Can Twitter end the recession?” I suppose the answer is yes, but not on its own…

I wanted to put down some thoughts about employee referrals as there doesn’t seem to be a lot of information or help out there for businesses. Probably because it erodes the revenues of recruitment companies and the agencies charge a fortune to put something in place. Well, nuts to that. If it’s worth knowing, it’s worth sharing…

We know that sometimes the best person is the friend of the friend already working for you. You just need to make sure you are getting the message out to that you are hiring effectively to your cheerleaders.

Before you put any referral schemes in place consider the five key elements:

1. What type of people are your schemes aimed at?
2. Is there are defined timescale for the schemes?
3. What sort of bonus should the hires reflect?
4. How do the schemes fit with the culture of your company?
5. How will you promote your schemes?

So Rule Number 1. Plan, plan, plan is the name of the game. The more you put in, the more you put out.
Rule Number 2. Create an employee focus group, ask your key stakeholders what would incentivise them to refer people. Empower ownership from day 1.

How best to promote, what schemes would be best, are league table relevant, that sort of thing.
Remember that everyone is motivated differently, mix up the schemes and what people can get out of them.

Have fun with the process.

Rule Number 3. Give the scheme an identity, a name and maybe even a logo. Make it stand out, make everyone know what they are talking about.

Establish timeframes and cut off points.

Be clear with the message and incentives

Rule Number 4. Promote Promote Promote You can offer your employees amazing incentives but if they don’t know your referral scheme exists you won’t get any referrals. Pretty obvious, really…
1. Cleary explain the schemes with everyone in companywide of team meetings. Keep the schemes on the agendas.
2. Use email, work notice boards, newsletters, whatever it takes to keep everyone informed
3. Inform every new employee the scheme exists when they start working for your organisation
4. Even at interview stage, let your candidates know about the scheme
5. If you use them, send out the details of the scheme with employee payslips (this is a great medium with sales people!)

Rule Number 5. Embrace and use relevant social media networks. I may make this a seperate post, as this could be such a big topic because social media sites are perfectly designed for you to promote a referral scheme.

Take advantage of the fact that many of your employees will already be using them and it is direct. USE SOCIAL MEDIA!

Not only should you encourage your guys to use their own LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook network to promote the jobs and scheme you should at the very least…

1. Create a Referral Scheme Page on your Company page on Facebook and LinkedIn.
The page should have:
a. Details of the incentives offered for successful referrals
b. Information on all the jobs that you are trying to fill.
c. Details of all the methods staff can refer people .
e.g. email, phone, facebook application form etc.
d. Clear and eye catching imagery to get everyone engaged
e.g. images and video.
2. Regularly tweet about your scheme on Twitter making sure you engage with your network.

Rule Number 6. Keep your career page up to date – Again, I may expand on this later as this is a massive subject. Suffice to say, make sure that your career site (or work for us page) reflects the fact that you are hiring and is as clear as possible as to your recruitment process.

Rule Number 7. Always respond to every referral – you should ALWAYS respond to every applicant, but even more so when it is a friend of an employee!

Final Rule. Measure & Review - the only way you’ll know if your referral scheme has been a success is if you can measure all the referrals you receive. Simple.
1. Add all referred candidates to your applicant tracking system, even if it is just an excel spreadsheet. Even if they aren’t suitable for the role you’re recruiting for now, who knows, they could be perfect for a job you want to fill later on. Your candidates are your clients
2. Keep a referral database with a record of every referral made and who made the referral. This will be useful when you want to find out who to reward for the most successful referrals.
3. Measure which methods work and increase that exposure. If you find a lot of people through, say, Facebook, maybe try some focused Facebook advertising next time round?

I hope this has been useful. I think the key message is to give it a go and have a bit of fun with the format. I would love to hear about other ideas and schemes , though, so please get involved or get in contact.

I am going to expand on some of these points later (especially the effective referral schemes and social media strategy), but wanted to get out there some simple recruitment tips and advice that we know help in the hiring process and will keep costs down.

These are some key points to a successful recruitment strategy;

1. Question yourself  – work out why you need to fill the role, what is the key purpose and what is the key outcome? Do you need to create a new hire or can you promote or manage internally?
2. Analysis of your recruitment spend– work out how much you have spent on recruitment, where you have spent it and which spend has been successful. Track your recruitment marketing spend.
3. Write an effective job description – this is different to the job advert, it is the list of key objectives and points of measurable success that will determine if that new hire has been successful. There are no such things as bad employees, only bad hires!
4. Get input – should you be the only person to write the job description or would it be more relevant to get input from other people – current team members, perhaps?
5. Centralise your recruitment – if you have a number of hiring managers all recruiting separately, you will be putting forward mixed messages and you certainly will have increased your recruitment costs.
6. Utilise your own talent pool – have you established an effective referral scheme? Look at ways in which your own talent will put forward your company as the best place to work. Work out how to get that message across effectively to your employees.
7. Use your network – ask your peers and clients if they know of anyone suitable. Promote the fact that you are hiring, people want to hear good news and will want to help.
8. Ask for referrals in final interviews – if someone is good and you are hiring for more than one role, ask them if they know of anyone. They will probably know people in their network.
9. Free advertising – There are a number of free job board advertising routes you can place your ads. If the role is relevant you could even advertise on the Jobcentre plus site.
10. Create a talent pool – track all people who you have hired or interviewed in the past and ask them if  they can be registered. Adhere to data protection with opting in tools, but keep in touch with relevant people with emails and contacts. Remember these aren’t just candidates these could be clients.
11. Create a social media strategy – – create LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook accounts and market your roles to your network. You’ll be amazed by the results. Done effectively, it will also improve your business leads as well.
12. Create a PPC (Pay Per Click) Google Adwords campaign to drive traffic to your site. Highlight the words you think people would search on and then buy those phrases for the Google campaign.
13. Respond quickly – if you are running an online advertised campaign, make sure you identify the good people quickly and respond quickly before they are hired by someone else.
14. Track all of your candidates – always keep them informed of the process. Remember, your candidates are your clients. You may want to consider inputting a candidate management system. If you hire more than 10 staff a year, this can be very useful and not as expensive as you may think.
15. Plan – establish a recruitment strategy, so you can work out when you could potentially be looking at your next hire.
16. Motivate – keep your staff motivated and informed of your business plans, keep your star players on the field.

There is a lot to take in here and I would welcome any comments as to what works, what doesn’t and if anyone else has any other ideas to contribute…