Markets are conversations. Their
members communicate in language that
is natural, open and honest, sometimes
even direct.
Most corporations, on the other hand,
only know how to engage in a corporate
monotone of mission statements, product
strategies and marketing brochures.
Everything is now changing. People are
connecting and working together. The
Internet is enabling these conversations Michael Specht in 21st
Century Recruiting e-book
and there is nothing corporations can do (http://inspecht.com.au/pr
to stop it. oducts-page/) citing The
Cluetrain Manifesto by
Chris Locke, Doc Searl,
David Weinberger and Rick
Levine.

The Future of:
Recruitment and the Web
Clayton Wehner

Markets are conversations. Their
members communicate in language that
is natural, open and honest, sometimes
even direct.
Most corporations, on the other hand,
only know how to engage in a corporate
monotone of mission statements, product
strategies and marketing brochures.
Everything is now changing. People are
connecting and working together. The
Internet is enabling these conversations Michael Specht in 21st
Century Recruiting e-book
and there is nothing corporations can do (http://inspecht.com.au/pr
to stop it. oducts-page/) citing The
Cluetrain Manifesto by
Chris Locke, Doc Searl,
David Weinberger and Rick
Levine.

The economic context
• Canberra has been resilient so far, but evidence of
change (ABS, Geoscience)
• Small drop in job advertisements last month in ACT,
compared to Adelaide (the worst) which had 15% drop
• Unlike interstate, no rise in unemployment yet
• First of the states/territories to go into ‘recession’
• Likely to slow down considerably in second half of
2009 as ‘cocooning’ occurs
• Still a good volume of applicants in the market, but are
these likely to be the best candidates? Probably not.

Great time for change
• This economic uncertainty
provides an opportunity for you to
try some new things!
• Implementing a web strategy now
may give you the edge over your
competitors when the economy
turns

Recruitment Today
• A) Employer has a job opening
• B) Employers post job ads on job boards for a fee
– ‘wait and see’
• C) Job seekers visit job boards
• D) Job seekers apply for job by submitting a CV
• E) Employer reviews CV
• F) Employer conduct interviews
• G) Employer offers a job
• Sterile, reactive, not based on a ROI model, not
career oriented, source active seekers only, many
applicants, poor matching

Recruitment Tomorrow
• Jobs found almost exclusively online (not in print)
• Networking – much more referral-based recruitment via
groups, alumni and communities of interest
• Organisations focus on Employment Branding
• Job seekers focus on Employee Branding – individual ‘brands’
showcased through personal websites, video CVs, self-
publishing
• Syndication of information – multiple channels to find jobs
• Rich media– video, audio via hi-speed broadband, wifi &
mobile devices
• Use of search – to find jobs, to check job seekers, to check
organisations
• ‘Reverse’ candidate driven recruitment – advertising people,
rather than advertising jobs
• Interactive, proactive, sources active and passive seekers,
meets short and long term needs, saves time and money

It’s called Web 2.0
• Web 2.0 is a term describing changing
trends in the use of World Wide Web
technology and web design that aims to
enhance creativity, secure information
sharing, collaboration and functionality
of the web. Web 2.0 concepts have led
to the development and evolution of
web-based communities and its hosted
services, such as social networking sites,
video sharing sites, wikis, blogs, etc
– Source - Wikipedia

Topics for Today
• Websites • Virtual communities
• Search engines • Mobile Web
• Search engine • Social networking
optimisation (SEO) • Micro-blogging
• Search engine • Bookmarking /
marketing (SEM) Tagging
• RSS • Employer / Job
• Blogs seeker ‘research’
• Podcasting • Generalist job boards
• Video • Niche job boards
• Instant Messaging / • Job aggregators
Chat • Other job boards
• Wikis • Job posting services

Websites
• Does your business have a
website?
• Are you proud of your website?
• Does it DO anything? Is it just a
‘brochure’?
• Fundamental part of your Web
2.0 strategy
• Fix this first before doing anything
else!

Websites
• Things you can do:
– Show all your vacant jobs on your own
website!
– Register candidates through your
website and link it with your internal
database
– Offer useful content on your website
designed to attract candidates and
clients – CV templates, ‘how to’ guides
– Build an Employment Portal containing
video, case studies, FAQs, testimonials
about working at your company

Search Engines
• Websites that retrieve
information based on specific
keyword search terms
• What are the three big ones in
Australia??
– Google
– Yahoo!
– Windows Live/MSN (NineMSN)

Effective Search Techniques
• Search all
– project manager SAP canberra
• Remove job ads
– project manager SAP canberra -site:seek.com.au
• Limit your search to a particular site
– project manager SAP canberra site:linkedin.com
• Remove references to ‘jobs’ in results
– project manager SAP canberra -jobs -job
• Get results containing resume/CV
– project manager SAP canberra -jobs -job
~resume OR cv
• Use of quotes returns exact keyword matches
– “project manager” SAP canberra -jobs -job
~resume OR cv

Search Engine Optimisation
(SEO)
• Optimising a website so that it achieves a higher
ranking in the search engines for particular
keyword combinations
• This is a big topic – and we can’t do it justice
here…
• Things that you can do:
– Review your page copy, metadata and include
keywords
– Get links to your site from thematically similar sites
– Submit your site to Google, Yahoo, MSN, dmoz.org
– Submit your site to Google Local Business Center
– Consider listing with TrueLocal.com.au and
YellowPages.com.au sites
• Speak to me after if you are interested in further
information about this

Paid results
Organic results

Search Engine Marketing
(SEM)
• Pay-per-click advertising in search
engines
– Google Adwords
– Yahoo! Search Submit
– Facebook advertising
• Instant traffic
• Trackable for ROI
• Relatively cost-effective
• $60 of free Adwords – go to:
– www.google.com.au/contactadwords

RSS
• RSS = ‘really simple syndication’
• A ‘push’ method of content distribution
• Allows users to receive automatic
updates
• RSS feeds generally viewed in RSS
readers – inc. browsers, Outlook
• Can also distribute to mobile devices
and social networking sites
• All recruitment companies should be
using RSS!

Blogs
• Blog = ‘web log’
• An online diary or journal
• Anybody can be a content generator
and an expert in their field – bad for
traditional media
• Can be setup within minutes online:
– Wordpress.com
– Blogger.com
– TypePad.com

Blogs
• Things you can do:
– Have your staff contribute to a weekly
blog about their area of expertise
– Write a blog for job seekers – CV,
interview, career tips
– For larger organisations, have the CEO
write a blog as an internal
communication tool
– Syndicate your blog content
– DO NOT start a blog if you are willing
to make regular, useful contributions

Industry Blogs
• Things you can do with Industry Blogs:
– Monitor industry blogs via RSS or email subscription
– Make friends with an industry blogger and glean information from
them
– Sponsor or advertise on an industry blog
– Contribute to an industry blog as a guest poster
– Write comments on blog posts (ensure you include your website
URL for SEO effect) and set yourself up as an expert
• Industry blogs:
– http://www.capitaljobs.com.au/blog
– http://www.recruitmentblogs.com.au
– http://www.destinationtalent.com.au/blog/
– http://rossclennett.blogspot.com/
– http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog
– http://geoffjennings.com/
– http://specht.com.au/michael/
– http://familyandworkflexiblity.blogspot.com/
– http://blog.sixfigures.com.au/

Podcasting
• An audio file distributed over the
internet
• Can be downloaded for playback
on portable media devices
• Takes some effort to podcast
effectively and video is often a
better solution

Online Video
• YouTube, Google Video, etc.
• Higher bandwidth = more video, better
video
• TV via internet protocol very shortly…
• Organisations increasingly using video
for recruitment
• Video services for candidates:
– HireVue
– Candidates Alive
– VisualCV.com

Online Video
• Things you can do:
– Release a clever viral video and watch it spread!
– Interview your staff on video for use as
testimonials
– Tour of your premises on video
– Interview your clients about their vacancies and
post on job boards
– Offer a candidate video CV production service for a
fee
– Improve morale by creating a video library of funny
company events on your intranet and elsewhere
– Create a YouTube channel to house all of your
videos
– Embed videos into your website and into your job
advertisements on CapitalJobs.com.au

Videos…

Instant Messaging (IM)
• Real time communication between
two or more people
• Services include:
– AIM
– ICQ
– MSN Messenger
– Yahoo Messenger
– Google Talk
– Facebook Chat
– Skype (great for voice over IP too)

Instant Messaging (IM) &
Chat
• Things that you can do:
– Integrate chat or IM into your
website so that prospects can ‘talk’
to you straight away
– Use instant messaging internally for
quick communication
– Adopt voice over IP for your external
telephone communication

Wikis
• Hawaiian term for ‘quick’
• A website created by a group of people
who have the ability to contribute and
modify content
• Often used to create collaborative and
community sites – best known site is
Wikipedia
• Great for internal collaboration – think
intranets, knowledge management
• What you can do:
– Set up an internal wiki for your in-house
processes, forms, policies

Virtual Communities
• Anybody heard of Second Life?
• Initially well supported, but no
longer flavour of the month
• Think about how you could
influence communities through
other ‘virtual’ pursuits – eg. video
game players

The Mobile Web
• Still a way to go before we see
wholesale take-up of mobile content
consumption
• Will candidates use mobile devices
to view job information?
• Technologies include Google
Android, HTC, Blackberry and
Apple’s iPhone
• Use of SMS is already quite
widespread in the recruitment
industry

The Mobile Web
• Things that you can do:
– Consider getting a mobile-enabled
version of your organisation website
– Check the mobile version of your
existing site here: http://ready.mobi
– If you don’t use SMS yet, then consider
it because it is useful for job
notification, inteview reminders etc.
– Keep your eye on technology in this
area….it’s evolving quickly

Social Networking
• Web based services that allow users to create
online communities based on shared interests
and activities – there are over 2,000 of them!

Facebook
• Who has NOT got a Facebook account?
• Straw poll – number of Friends?
• Over 175 million users worldwide
• Has beaten MySpace in Australia – 41.88% of social
networking traffic goes to Facebook (Source: Hitwise)
• Are any of your organisations blocking access to
Facebook?
• Over 90% of people in a recent survey said they would
prefer to work for an employer who gives them access
to Facebook and similar tools
• What does banning Facebook say about your
organisation? It says you don’t trust your staff
• But most people remain dubious that Facebook can be
of any benefit to business…

Facebook
• Rubbish – we’re in the business of people and MOST
people love Facebook!
• Things you can do:
– Create a Facebook Group or Page for your staff and
encourage them to publish work-related news, photos
and video (and invite prospective applicants to join too)
– demonstrates that you are an Employer of Choice and
boosts employee loyalty/morale
– Start an alumni group on Facebook to stay in contact
with past employees
– Create a group for a graduate recruitment round
– Join Facebook Groups that relate to your industry and
join in the conversation
– Trial pay-per-click advertising on Facebook, limiting the
ads to your geographic region

Examples of Facebook PPC Ads

LinkedIn
• Who uses LinkedIn here?
• Over 8 million users worldwide
• Unlike Facebook, it is a professional network that uses
the ‘six degrees of separation’ principle
• Things you can do:
– Create a company profile (good for SEO)
– Actively ‘recruit’ people to link to you after you deal
with them – send a LinkedIn invite after a meeting, add a
link button to your email signature
– Respond to Q&A and set yourself up as an expert in your
field
– Let people know if you are after staff
– Recommend others and get recommended – good for
your own individual ‘brand’
– Ask for introductions to key people via your network

Twitter
• Fastest growing, hottest property right
now – anybody using it?
• Micro-blogging; 140 character limit –
basically ‘SMS on the web’ (but also can
be done via mobile device)
• You follow people, they follow you; your
‘tweets’ are seen by your followers, you
see the ‘tweets’ of people you follow
• But who would be interested in this
seemingly banal, nebulous information?

Twitter
• Trick is to ‘tweet’ useful information, not things
like: “I am eating a pie”
• Things you can do:
– Sign up and experiment!
– Syndicate a feed of jobs through Twitter
– Notify followers about vacancies and ask them to
‘retweet’ to their followers (viral effect)
– Offer a referral fee for candidates referred via
Twitter
– Notify followers about new blog posts, articles or
useful links
– Connect to job seekers and industry specialists –
approaching somebody on Twitter is less intrusive
than other networks

Bookmarking/Tagging

Bookmarking/Tagging
• Basically these sites help to sort
the good stuff from the bad on
the web by user ‘votes’
• Things you can do:
– Add social networking buttons to
your content so that readers can
bookmark your content (eg AddThis
toolbar)
– Bookmark your own content using
some of these sites (good for SEO)

Employers researching
Candidates
• Who has googled themselves?
• Who has googled a candidate?
• Ethical? Legal? Why wouldn’t you?
• My recommendation – make sure that
your own internet ‘footprint’ is ‘above
board’!
• And educate candidates and employees
about this too (particularly Facebook!)
• Be aware that it is sometimes impossible
to erase information posted to the
internet…think twice before posting
those drunken images

\"Kyle Doyle is not going to work, f*** it
I'm still trashed. SICKIE WOO!\"

Employers researching
Candidates
• Try these tools:
– Google
– Yahoo!
– Live Search
– Facebook – of course!
– Spock
– ZoomInfo
– Pipl
– Spokeo
– ZabaSearch
– Checkster
– 123People
– PeekYou
– KnowX

Candidates researching
Employers
• Beware! It works in reverse
• Candidates are connected and
informed
• Somebody is watching you…
• Take a look at:
– http://www.jobvent.com
– http://www.glassdoor.com
– http://forums.whirlpool.net.au
– Blogs like http://geoffjennings.com

Monitoring the Chatter
• People are going to blog, comment,
tweet about your organisation
• People are going to learn about your
organisation through Google and other
online tools
• Things that you can do:
– Monitor ‘chatter’ about your brand by
using Google Alerts, Twitter Search,
Hitwise, Buzznumbers or other monitoring
services
– Actively respond to criticism where you
believe it is warranted
– Sometimes it’s best to ignore it…

Job Boards
• 200 in Australia
• 40,000 worldwide
• 88% of Australians use them
• 86% say that they will use them
for their next job
• Will continue to take market share
from print – why pay $1,000+
when you can pay less than $100?

Generalist/National Job
Boards
• Majors
– SEEK – clear market leader
– MyCareer.com.au - Fairfax
– CareerOne.com.au – News Corp
• Minors
– JobsJobsJobs
– JobX – merging??
• Trends:
– Likely to be consolidation – market too small
to sustain more than 3
– Upheavel in print media will flow through to
online media at Fairfax and News Corp (job
losses, internal consolidation)

Niche/Regional Job Boards
• Proliferation of these in recent times
• 90% of boards fighting for 20% of advertising revenue
• But niche boards are also uncovering new markets that
haven’t used a generalist board or newspaper for advertising
• Major positive – more qualified traffic = better quality
applicants
• Niche boards
– Hippo – for teens
– Six Figures - $100K+ jobs
– OlderWorkers – middle aged
– CareerMums – for mums
– RagTradeJobs – for the fashion industry
• Geographic boards
– CapitalJobs.com.au!

Other types of Job Boards
• Candidate driven job boards / CV
repositories
– LinkMe
– nt3
– NowHiring
– CapitalJobs.com.au
• Referral services – new phenomena
– Hoojano
– 2Vouch
– Jobster

Job Aggregators
• Sites that pull content from existing sites to
‘aggregate’ content in one place for convenience,
and then redirect the job seeker to the source
website
• They make money from pay per click and banner
advertising
• There has been a proliferation of them in recent
times:
– SimplyHired
– jSeeker
– WorkCircle
– Recruit.net
– CareerJet
– Indeed.com

Job Posting Services
• Services that post jobs to multiple
job boards at once
• Useful if you advertise on multiple
sites because it saves time and effort
• Two major services in Australia:
– AdLogic / PostJobsOnce
– JobAdder
• More innovation likely; efforts will
be made to integrate in-house
recruitment systems and posting
services

Job Boards
• Things you can do:
– Write good job ads!!
– Keep your eye on the job board industry
– Understand the benefits of each type of
job board – and ‘value’ is more important
than ‘cost’
– Use the full benefits of job boards – eg. CV
repositories
– Understand where your traffic comes from
and measure your ROI
– If you have an RSS feed of jobs, contact job
aggregators and they will generally add
your jobs for free

What now?
• Information overload – my head hurts
• Review this presentation
• Do some independent research
• Write a strategy and implement it
• Your strategy should include:
– Need to identify target market
– Need to concentrate on what will work for you
– Need to be transparent, honest and open
– Need to engage, engage, engage
– Need to ‘push’ information and content
– Need to devote time to doing it properly – it takes time
and effort
– Need to keep an eye on what your competitors are
doing
– Need to manage your online reputation

Thank You
• Email me: info@capitaljobs.com.au
• Read my blogs:
– http://www.capitaljobs.com.au/blog
– http://www.netpreneur.com.au
• Follow me on Twitter:
– http://www.twitter.com/bluetrain
– http://www.twitter.com/canberrajobs Thank you to Thomas Shaw,
Michael Specht & Philip
• You’ll also find me on Facebook, YouTube, Tusing for elements of this
presentation
LinkedIn, Skype…

Markets are conversations. Their
members communicate in language that
is natural, open and honest, sometimes
even direct.
Most corporations, on the other hand,
only know how to engage in a corporate
monotone of mission statements, product
strategies and marketing brochures.
Everything is now changing. People are
connecting and working together. The
Internet is enabling these conversations Michael Specht in 21st
Century Recruiting e-book
and there is nothing corporations can do (http://inspecht.com.au/pr
to stop it. oducts-page/) citing The
Cluetrain Manifesto by
Chris Locke, Doc Searl,
David Weinberger and Rick
Levine.