There are an increasing number of candidates using their mobiles to browse the web and look for jobs on the go.  Potential candidates could be showing interest in your company anywhere, anytime.  Recruiters currently have two options: mobile friendly websites and mobile applications.

Mobile Friendly Websites

There are a number of ways to allow mobile users to view your site.  The main objective is to make your website readable on a 3 inch screen.  The range of technology available is already fairly widespread and it allows you to show different versions of your site to different users.  Mobile phones are no exception and they can show a simpler, smaller resolution version.

Mobile Applications

They can be used in more interactive ways and provide a range of different features that are closely linked with customers needs.  For example, recruiters could set up a job application app where job seekers can apply directly rather than searching through a complex website on a small screen.

However, mobile apps can restrict you to the iPhone market when you might want to include other parts of the market such as Nokia or Blackberry users.  The increased functionality comes at a price – apps must be well planned and are relatively expensive to develop.

So… To App or not to App?

Ultimately developing any application that is specific to a certain platform (i.e iPhones or Nokia phones) is potentially less practical than making sure your website can be viewed by all of these devices without downloads or plugins. With an increasing proportion of candidates using mobile devices it is increasingly important to make your recruitment website mobile friendly – an app is no substitute.

When it comes to apps – make sure you have a specific goal which makes use of the additional functionality and justifies the development cost, and plan it very carefully (or call us!).

The future of online recruitment is arguably in social media and new methods of interaction with candidates.

Social Media provides a new candidate channel where brands can increase their visibility to candidates and find high quality, niche candidates. It can also provide additional SEO benefit increasing your Google rankings and helping you to win new business.

Our new social media in recruitment course has been a fantastic success.   We are the only company in the UK accredited by the UK government to deliver formal qualifications in online recruitment. Our training provides delegates with a nationally recognised BTEC qualification in online recruitment.

We have limited spaces available on our next course on the 7^th May in central London.  The course covers a whole range of social media subjects including building a strategy, creating content and connecting with candidates through new social media channels.

For more information contact Chris O’Brien on 01483 719020.

Social media as a recruitment tool is here to stay.

This is not a phase that the industry is going through, far from it, Social Media is a very real, tangible and measurable way to source and engage with high quality candidates.

Enhance Media research shows that 55% of online Jobseekers that use social media do so in the first week of their job search.

This presents a huge opportunity for employers to get their message to candidates before they’ve used a job board or registered with an agency.

One of the traditional challenges in recruitment has revolved getting your message to your audience; a researched and targeted social media strategy shortens the time and the distance between you and your candidates and carries with it such a high benefit level that you can’t afford not to have a social media strategy.

Enhance Media’s social media division continues to pioneer the way forward in online recruitment. For more information please get in touch with Chris O’Brien 01483 719 020

1997 - Six Degrees was launched – widely held as the first social network.

1999 - Friends Reunited was launched.

2003 - Linked In, Photobucket, Delicious and My Space were launched.

2004 - Digg was founded, Facebook launched as a Harvard Only Social Network.

2005 - Bebo, YouTube and Simply Hired were launched.

2006 - Facebook was launched to everyone. Twitter was founded.

2008 - Facebook was recognized as the most popular social networking site.

2009 - Flickr claimed to host more than 3.6 billion images. Posterous was launched.

2010 - Enhance Media launches the UK’s first research led Social Media strategy service.

Enhance Media’s Social Media division is pioneering the way forward in online recruitment.

· We work exclusively within online recruitment and are a specialist strategy and social media organisation.

· We own the three largest pieces of online recruitment social media research in the UK. Uniquely, our work is based on data and fact rather than opinion.

For more details contact Chris O’Brien at Enhance Media 01483 719 020.

Enhance Media today announced the launch of the NORAS 2010 results.  The results form the largest piece of online recruitment research in the world and help identify where to find the most relevant candidates online.

The 2010 NORAS survey includes research taken from 95,000 candidates spread across 62 job boards - the widest sample ever used in the NORAS research.

Key 2010 findings include massive variations in visitor demographics across the job boards, making NORAS even more powerful as a way of identifying where candidates reside online.  Data such as the average salary across the job boards varying between £11,409 and £108,415 is used by employers, recruitment consultancies and advertising agencies to identify the ideal job board to advertise on.

The results were also launched today on the NORAS website (www.noras.co.uk). The website provides a free resource giving recruiters access to 4 million answers essential to candidate sourcing questions.

The NORAS website allows free statistical comparison of over 50 online recruitment questions and a new 2010 NORAS interface makes searching easier than ever before.

The NORAS 2010 results are available to download free at www.noras.co.uk.   Clients who register free on the NORAS website in the next month will also receive free industry updates through the NORAS newsletter.

For more information about NORAS, please contact Thomas Prince on 01483 719020 or email Thomas.Prince @enhancemedia.co.uk

Today is our last post on the future of online recruitment SEO. We thought we would end this series looking at the advances in how search engines are reading Flash.

Search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing have previously been unable to take content from Flash files. This has been a stumbling block preventing some excellent, relevant and interesting content being found via search engines, upsetting designers, developers and searchers in the process! It is common knowledge that Google have been able to crawl Flash files for years but the main problem with the current technology is its error proneness.

Recent developments from both Adobe and Google indicate that this may well be changing in the near future with Adobe looking to supply specialist flash reading technology to Google. This change is predicted to improve search ranking results for users and give website owners a better return on their investment. The new technology will enable Google to read more versions of Flash, in a large variety of languages.

So what do these developments mean to the SEO community? As websites and users develop it is important that search engines constantly evolve at a similar rate to enable them to provide the optimum results possible. With this in mind we are pleased to see Google and Adobe working together to combat an unpopular problem and we believe that working on Flash based websites in the future should become an easier process.

Future of Online Recruitment SEO - Part 1

Future of Online Recruitment SEO - Part 2

Future of Online Recruitment SEO - Part 3

Future of Online Recruitment SEO - Part 4

Future of Online Recruitment SEO - Part 5

Future of Online Recruitment SEO - Part 6 

We are pleased to release the timetable for tomorrow’s much anticipated conference.

9.00 – 9.45    Registration and light breakfast
9.50 – 10:00    Conference Welcome – Giles Guest

10:00 – 10.30    Jobg8 - Robbie Cowling
10.30 – 11:00    Madgex – Simon Conroy

11:00 – 11.40    Tea / Coffee

11.45 – 12.15    Linked In
12.15 – 12.45    Enhance Media – Giles Guest

12.45 – 13.55    Lunch
14:00 – 14.10    Welcome Back - Afternoon Session

14.10 – 14.40    Lawspeed - Adrian Marlow
14.40 – 15.10    CAPITA – Steve Newson

15.10 – 15.40    Tea / Coffee

15.40 – 16.40    Expert Panel: Google, Microsoft Bing, Monster, Trinity Mirror

16.45    Conference Close

We look forward to seeing you all there.

Today in part 5 of 6 we are going through some recent SEO techniques that are going to change the world of SEO in 2010!

Website References

Already part of the Google algorithm for local search. A web reference is made when a person writes about a website or business that isn’t shown as a link for example me writing about how NORAS is the largest online recruitment research project in Europe is a web reference. Web references are believed to be counted in a similar way to how links are (although they will probably have less importance than links currently do for the Google algorithm) and will indicate trust to a search engine. Interestingly this opens up a new can of worms with no-followed links meaning that search engines will now be taking note of no followed links from trusted/authoritative sources like Wikipedia.

Click through data

Josh Cohen of Google has recently revealed that Google News are using clicks and not links as an indication of popularity and quality. If the click data from Google News proves to be a successful way of ranking information then be ready to see it hitting the main search engine over the next 12 months!

Page Loading Time

It is generally believed in the world of search that a website that loads quickly vastly improves user experience. Popular Google engineer and blogging king Matt Cutts has discussed using this as a ranking factor and if it can increase the quality of results for a user then I’d expect this to be a part of Google’s search algorithm by the end of 2010.

Future of Online Recruitment SEO - Part 1

Future of Online Recruitment SEO - Part 2

Future of Online Recruitment SEO - Part 3

Future of Online Recruitment SEO - Part 4

Future of Online Recruitment SEO - Part 5

Future of Online Recruitment SEO - Part 6 

Following a tough year for the recruitment industry in 2009 we begin 2010 looking ahead to the key issues that will be faced by all parties in the online recruitment space in the coming year.

From job boards to business networking to social media there is certain to be many developments that will affect the way we search and apply for jobs and the way we recruit.

There will be plenty of discussion on the future of online recruitment at the Enhance Media year ahead conference on January 28th. Topics will include: the legalities of using social media to recruit, the move of recruitment from job boards to search engines to Twitter and some bold predictions for 2010.

Last year was surprisingly good for Enhance Media. Our focus on providing online recruitment research and consultancy to enable employers to make better decisions (and therefore save money!) proved very popular.

Equally, the demand for online recruitment training courses increased as more employers wanted to upskill their internal staff to recruit directly. We’re looking forward to 2010 for the same reasons; more employers wanting to understand online recruitment and hire internally which fits our research, strategy and training market position very well.

The management of instantaneous large scale communication with clients and customers, and the brand protection that goes with this, are now key parts of the Enhance Media service.

Here’s hoping that we all have a very profitable 2010!

We are delighted to announce that Google and Microsoft Bing will be speaking at Online Recruitment 2010 – The Year Ahead Conference.

In an exclusive industry first, the world’s leading search engines will participate in an expert panel and discuss their vision of the industry and the direction of online hiring in 2010. With one third of all job searches starting in a search engine, this insight is not to be missed!

Google and Bing are joining an outstanding line-up of speakers and topics including: Linked In, Capita, Madgex, Jobg8, Lawspeed and Enhance Media.

The conference looks set to be a fantastic day and we hope to see you there.

For more information and to book your place visit the Online Recruitment Conference website.