Admittedly this news is from February, but we think that it’s very important and worth mentioning it again.  

NORAS 2009 was launched on 23^rd February 2009 and was the largest online recruitment survey to date. Over 50,000 job seekers were surveyed between September and December 2008 and the results show that 1 in 7 online job seekers now use only the internet to look for a job. That’s more than double the number from 2007.  Even better is the fact that the internet is still an effective medium for job seekers. 1 in 4 online job seekers have been successful and obtained a job that they searched for, found and applied to online.  

There’s a lot more so download the new results by logging into NORAS and using the free interactive tool. 

Welcome back to Enhance Media’s Online Recruitment blog. 

Sorry for the lack of updates this year. It has been a busy few months here at Enhance Media and with all the excitement the blog has been woefully neglected. But no more. 

More details will follow later in the week, but here is a quick update on the latest goings on:   

- NORAS 2009 was launched at the end of February. This is the largest ever online recruitment survey to date and the results show that the number of people exclusively using the internet to look for a job has doubled since 2007.

You can download the new results by logging into NORAS. 

- The acquisition of Enhance Media by Giles Guest was completed in March and the business has embarked on a series of exciting new initiatives. Tim and Al have now moved on to pastures new and we wish them the very best of luck with their new pursuits.

- Enhance Media HQ has relocated to Woking. Yes we are outside London now, but not too far and it is actually quicker and easier to get to central London.

Be sure to come back soon for more details and the latest news from the online recruitment industry.    

We’ve just announced the line up for our annual conference ‘Online Recruitment - the year ahead’, next year’s conference is ingeniously titled ‘Online Recruitment 2009 - the year ahead’ (do you see what we’ve done there?).

Anyway we’ve got some great speakers, including Facebook, YouTube, PwC and Daxtra who are going to be looking at the key issues facing the online recruitment sector in the next 12 months including engaging with candidates via social networking sites, online recruitment videos, blogging on corporate careers sites and the use of technology to sort and sift candidates (especailly relevant in a candidate rich market).

As I’m sure previous delegates will testify, it’s a really interesting day, there’s plenty of time to network, we’re expecting about 250 delegates. You can take a look at last year’s conference on Flickr, YouTube and as reported on Ri5.

Please drop us an email if you’d like to know more, it’s £349 + VAT per delegate, on 29th January and takes places at the Royal Geographical Society - a great venue, 10 minutes walk from South Kensington tube and next to the Albert Hall - hope to see you there!

I’m often engaged in heated debate with potential clients on how ads on Google are ranked and how we can ensure that ads are displayed at the top of page one on Google.  

Well firstly I just want to clear up one common misconception about Google Adwords.  

- The amount of money you spend on Google will affect how OFTEN your ads are viewed, but NOT necessarily how HIGH up the page your ads are ranked. 

So how can we ensure that ads are prominently displayed? A keyword-targeted ad is ranked on a search result page based on the matched keyword’s cost-per-click (CPC) bid and Quality Score.

Ad Rank = CPC bid × Quality Score

The Quality Score for Ad Rank on Google and the search network is determined by:

• 1. The historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on Google
• 2. Account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
• 3. The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group
• 4. The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
• 5. The relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query
• 6. Your account’s performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown
• 7. The relevancy of the landing page 

When we run a report in Google, scores (1-10) are attributed to every keyword so that we can see which ads are performing well and which ads need reworking. Good news for us all!     

Admittedly this is last week’s news http://www.broadbean.com/issues/news/256-14/dmgt-acquires-broadbean.html. But it has got me thinking… 

1. Will all the other job boards (not owned by DMGT) now reconsider linking to Broadbean? After all one of their major competitors will now have access to all their response data and more.  

2. Will this allow another independent provider in the market to establish themselves?  

The short answers to the above are: Yes and No.  

Personally I am not convinced on the long-term validity of third party multi-posting software. My reasons being:  

1. Unless you are recruiting across a huge variety of roles and sectors, you shouldn’t be advertising on more than 3-4 job boards. Now admittedly this is unhelpfully ambiguous, but you get my point I hope.  

2. The search engines of all job boards work differently. Ideally you should tailor your copy to each individual job board. There isn’t a one size fits all.  

There is already a trend we are seeing where companies are spending more money on job board advertising, but that spend is being concentrated across fewer job boards. As the market matures I also anticipate that more companies will invest in their own applicant tracking and candidate management systems, these systems should provide their own multi-posting functionality.   It will be interesting to see where we are this time next year. But I can’t see the likes of Totaljobs and Monster being very happy about Jobsite having access to all their response data.   

Linkedin.com seems to be adding functionality by the day; it is a site I am using more and more as an investigative tool but also as a networking tool.

I have recently started some discussions on the NORAS Group on Linkedin. We welcome everyone to join the Group and enter into the discussions. NORAS is there to provide independently audited job board data to the recruitment and HR community, the Group on Linkedin.com will (hopefully) provide everybody with the forum to air their views and exchange ideas and best practice in the industry.

The join the group click here - NORAS Group on Linkedin

Saw this very interesting post on the Jobsgopublic Blog…

http://blog.jobsgopublic.com/2008/10/17/has-traditional-recruitment-advertising-ever-changed/

Amazing that in 216 years the classified print ad really hasn’t evolved, at all!

I’ve been writing a lot recently about the IAB / PwC spend figures that show online recruitment advertising in the UK was worth £195 million in the first six months of 2008 and have just realised that this equates to more than £1 million per day. Very exciting. All of a sudden this seems like quite a lot - £1 million spent on UK job boards every day, wow! Read more about the IAB research here.

The Masterclass, held on the 25^th July at the Royal Geographical Society in London, was the first annual half day masterclass in Enhance Media’s arsenal of training services. Within days of the tickets being on sale, the Masterclass quickly sold out.

Being such a great event I’ve decided to give a very quick roundup of the half day’s events:

Enhance Media’s own Tim Elkington first delved into the world of the average online job seeker before Ben Wood (Head of Recruitment Channel for Google) discussed the different aspects of targeting the average online jobseeker through Search Engine Marketing. Simon Kelly, the Director of Corporate Solutions for Europe from LinkedIn, then told us how we can target online job seekers though LinkedIn followed by Jez Langhorn, the Head of Talent at McDonalds, who discussed McDonalds’ new careers website and the benefits of having a tailored site for the employee. The Sales Director of Educate, Richard Badley, closed the seminar by educating us on the do’s and don’t’s when targeting online jobseekers through various social media platforms, blogs and forums like Bebo, Facebook and Myspace.

Please feel free to have a look at some of the pictures from the Masterclass in our Photo Gallery.

Great news for all those who have booked on our Masterclass, apologies to all those who wanted to attend but missed out.

Our Masterclass on 24th July has sold out

http://www.enhancemedia.co.uk/services/training/open.php?pid=15

We will be running our annual “Online recruitment - The year ahead” conference in January next year, we will obviously keep you posted.

I will literally be able to say “Book now to avoid disappointment”!!

Cheesey!