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Advice - RECRUITERS NEED TO GET WEBWISE!There is no doubt that the internet has radically changed the ways in which organizations recruit staff – recent research shows that there are now an estimated 11.1m online job seekers in India and Worldwide – an increase of 76% in the last two years. And yet many recruiters in India waste this valuable resource by not appreciating the difference between print media recruitment advertising and advertisements placed on the web. From the candidate’s perspective the main difference is time – they are not sitting on the train browsing through a newspaper or a magazine. They are at their PC – maybe at work, maybe at home, maybe at cyber cafe– either way you have about 5 seconds to grab their attention. From your perspective, as an employer, there are two main differences. First, you are up against a lot of competition. In the print media, your ad may be one of ten similar roles. On the web – it may be one of thousands. Second, you are relying on your vacancy to come up in a list generated by a search engines like Google or Yahoo – a key element in writing effective advertisements for the web (Note: writing for the Web is a specialised skill and is different from the print medium. Visit www.mygoogly.com for web content writing services). So what does this mean? Well, basically it means that you’d better have the right keywords in your title to catch the attention of job search engines like 123oye.com and candidates. A simple employment ad title such as Regional Manager will be fairly ineffective. A much better job ad title is "Regional Marketing Manager, Health Club Chain" which describes the type of manager and mentions the industry requirements. Remember the job ad title is often the first job descriptor that a candidate sees. From the title a candidate decides whether or not to click for more information. If the candidate does not click for more information, then your job ad might as well be invisible. According to Akanksha, Head of Content at 123oye.com, when writing your copy, put yourself in the candidate’s shoes – if you were looking for the type of role that you are advertising – what key words would you be putting into search engines – and then make sure that you include as many of them as possible in your advertisement. In a web ad the first 15 words are key – this is because no matter how much detail follows, the first fifteen are probably the only ones that will show up in the initial search. If they don’t grab attention – you won’t get the click through for more detail. Consequently you need to ensure the first fifteen words are tempting enough to make the candidate want to find out more. Requirements are also important. Try to avoid a wish list as this will just encourage unsuitable applicants to apply – be very specific in what the candidate MUST have and leave out the mere desirables. Finally take advantage of the unique opportunity the web and sites like 123oye.com give you of being able to test your advertisements. In print advertising you get one shot – on the web there is a real opportunity to trial ads so look at the statistics – how many people have clicked through? Of those how many have applied? If the click throughs are high and the applications are low, it’s time to change the ad!
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