Posts Tagged “job postings”
As a job seeker, how can you protect yourself from job scams that are posted right alongside legitimate jobs? There are still job scams being posted every single day on sites like Monster, CareerBuilder and especially Craigslist. Why are these people preying on job seekers through job ads? Because they want your personal information. They want your name, your address, your phone number, your email address and your place of employment (or last employment). They compile the information from the resumes they receive from the fake job ads. It’s all part of an elaborate scheme to collect and sell personal information for the purposes of identity theft.
Don’t become a victim! Protect yourself by recognizing the 2 main indicators of a scam job:
1. The job title is basic. Administrative Assistant, Intern, Customer Service, etc. By using very generic job titles they are casting a wide net hoping to catch as many job seekers as possible.
2. The description is basic or seems too good to be true. Everything about their job ads screams “easy”. Again, they are casting the widest net possible.
Here is an actual scam job posting we encountered recently: “This company is seeking an experienced administrative assistant for an immediate opening. You must have direct experience with invoicing, accounts receivable, payroll and general clerical responsibilities. You must be proficient with computer applications including Excel, Word, Outlook and Quickbooks, or similar accounting platform. You must have an outgoing personality, strong attention to details, excellent organization skills, reliable accuracy and be capable of working with minimal direction. We provide a competitive hourly wage that is commensurate with experience. This position is for full time employment. Compensation includes wages, healthcare benefits package, 401K, etc. Applicants must be over 18 yrs old and able to pass both background check and drug screening. You must be free and clear from any existing non-compete agreements.”
It sounds like a legitimate job, right? That’s part of the trick. They want you to have a hard time recognizing it’s a scam. The ad above was for “Stanley Furniture” in Springfield, VA. According to an article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Stanley furniture cut 530 jobs in the last year. That’s a red flag.
The bottom line? Don’t send your resume anywhere without researching the company first. If you can’t identify the name of the company from the job ad, and you value your personal information, we’d advise against sending your resume. This is obviously a personal choice to make/chance to take but the surest way to protect your information is to know who you’re sending it to.
Most recruiters use job postings as a means to an end. They use them as extra hands when they have a full desk, to develop pipelines or for brand representation/perpetuation. Whether you’re posting jobs for any or all of these reasons, it is important to recognize the impact (or lack thereof) that job postings can create.
When I worked in agency recruiting, I frequently used documentation from clients to post jobs. It was easy to copy and paste what they had already put together and get it “out there”. I failed to realize that in doing that, I wasn’t creating much desire for job seekers to reply to my post. I started looking at my job postings more closely and noticed that if I rewrote the posting in my own words, I got much better responses. I would include information about my client that I knew would entice the applicant, without revealing who the client was. After all, I knew from my relationship with my client what they were really looking for – not just skills but candidate personality. I wrote the job postings to attract that type of personality. Sure, re-writing the job posting took more time but it paid off. I got more responses. I got better responses. I got hires. Even if you’re in HR and you’re posting on behalf of a hiring manager, you can still add verbiage to the specs you’re given to attract the right candidate.
Photo courtesy of MotivatedPhotos.com
The emergence of job search engines has directly impacted the importance of good verbiage in job postings. Most recruiters don’t know that cross-posting the exact same job to multiple job boards doesn’t increase the chances of finding a candidate match, nor does it increase the number of postings that show up on the search engines. Indeed and SimplyHired filter out duplicate listings and only list the posting that they indexed first. Accordingly, if you copy and paste the client requisition word for word – and 5 other companies have done the same – there is a big chance that your posting might not even get seen on the job search engines. Write your job specifically for your audience. Are you hiring for a Telephone Answering Service? Then say so.
This means knowing what part of a client requisition is important and what part isn’t. It means including relevant key words that your candidate audience is searching for. It means including information about the environment, the benefits, the hiring process and so on. Many candidates are apprehensive to respond to vague job postings. They fear it’s just another “black hole”, a potential scam job, or in some cases, that it might be their current (or former) employer.
Confidential postings really turn job seekers off. If you want to remain confidential about the search, then hire a headhunter – don’t post the job on the internet. Don’t expect a job posting to be a silver platter, either. If you have a hard to fill position, a job posting is just another vehicle to perpetuate the message that you’re looking for that person. It still doesn’t mean that person is looking for your job. In other words, you’re still going to have to work on it. In some cases though, using appropriate key words to attract passive candidates can work. For instance, your job posting could turn up in a Google search when they are searching for other things pertaining to their industry or career. Pick your key words carefully! Don’t just dump them all into a meaningless paragraph at the bottom of your job posting.
The information you include in your job postings speaks volumes about your company, your recruiting practices and your professionalism. The bottom line is – job postings are advertisements for your company; represent yourself well.
The title of this blog might seem ridiculous; of course you want ROI from recruiting budget. ROI might be added functionality, added scalability, added hires, added something which ultimately adds to the bottom line. What about job boards? How are you measuring your ROI on those? For years there has been debate among recruiting professionals about measurable ROI from job boards.
As a former recruiter, my ROI from job boards was nearly nil. Job postings became more time consuming than time saving. Every year the job boards got more expensive and every year I had more unqualified candidates to sift through. What’s wrong with that equation? My objective was to place as many people as possible as quickly as possible; that’s the only way I generated revenue for both my employer and my wallet. The job boards didn’t seem to care. They just continued to get more expensive and impose more limitations. What do you mean I’ve exceeded the number of searches allowed? It was just BOGUS.
Someone needed to change it all and I got tired of waiting for it to happen.
I’m sure there are those that think I only talk so much about JobShouts! because it’s my company. While that’s true to some extent, a larger part of why I talk about it so much is because I get really excited about changing the experience for recruiters. And producing results! I’m excited to be a pioneer in this industry. After years of using job boards and knowing what didn’t work, I’m now in the thick of creating what works. It’s working so well, that the “big” job boards ought to be running scared.
It’s a well known fact that our job postings are indexed by job search engines. We’ve continued to perfect the “formula” by which we operate – including quality of job ads, categorization, link love and so on. Apparently, we’re pretty attractive not only to the job search engines but also to candidates as well. I was so excited about our latest report from Indeed which showed we averaged 4.5 clicks for every 1 click on non-sponsored ads. Essentially, the only way to get better exposure for job ads with the job search engines is to pay for sponsorship on those sites.
Good Stuff:
This is only 1 of our distribution channels and we are highly successful on so many more.
Sharing metrics is important to me. I want our customers to expect a better recruiting experience. I want them to pay less and receive better quality candidates. I want them to have access to the most innovative and effective recruiting tools available. After 15 years of pounding the internet, learning and using Boolean and other x-ray techniques, I’ve learned a thing or 2 about what’s actually effective. My knowledge is your pearl in the oyster. Get that elusive ROI you’ve been after for so long. Use it, love it, share it!
There are a lot of job boards to choose from. Sometime last year it was estimated that over 100,000 boards were competing for a slice of an employers recruiting budget. JobShouts happens to share that vertical with several large and deep pocketed competitors.
Since there are so many players in this space, we felt it was necessary to build value and keep out the trash. When we speak of trash, we are talking about the kind of job ads that are geared towards fleecing the jobseeker or job ads that are either plain out scams or that require an investment from the candidate.
This has built trust with candidates, it has also paid off immensely in click traffic from our aggregate partners Indeed and Simply Hired. There are no complaints of scams, and the most important part? Our ads get clicks.
After all when it really comes down to it, filling that position may depend on how many people ‘see’ your ad and either apply or pass it along socially. That is where we are different, we employ many technologies and our network is vast and growing. Tap into the power of social media without having to learn twitter. Use our social media recruiting tool to locate potential candidates where they are most active – their social networking pages on twitter, linkedin, and facebook.
This graph shows our most recent numbers from jobs posted to Indeed. It does not take a rocket scientist to see that JobShouts! is crushing the competition and performing nearly as well as sponsored ads on the Indeed network. This data is a representative comparison of all jobs indexed and is for the month of April 2010. Yes that is a %450 better click rate than “All Job Boards”.