Smart hiring and all things recruitment

zodo:

www.ikrut.com - a shameless plug but it really is great.

If you’re still paying for your ATS…….why?

Try iKrut - an amazing free applicant tracking system.

www.ikrut.com - a shameless plug but it really is great.

If you’re still paying for your ATS…….why?

Try iKrut - an amazing free applicant tracking system.

Here are a few ways you can increase the amount of people visiting the jobs listed on your website. More visitors means more jobs filled directly… and that’s a good thing. I’m going to give you some tips on how to optimize your career website so it gets indexed by search engines and once the likes of Google start showing your job, then job seeking traffic is sure to follow.

1. Make sure the url of the front page of your careers site is correct

Basically, ensure the word jobs is in it, for example: www.bigfirm.com/jobs. Not careers or current vacancies… just the word ‘jobs’. The reason for this is because job seekers searching on search engines type in a job title, location, some key skills and the word jobs:

Finance Manager jobs London management accounts

If the word jobs is in the URL of the page, you’re more likely to be indexed by a search engine.

2. Separate pages for every job

Make sure the job you’re advertising has a separate page dedicated to the full details of the role. If you list all the jobs on 1 page, that’s fine but don’t then allow the text to also appear on that page. The job details must open up as a separate page and (here’s the crucial bit) ensure the job title and location are in the url: www.bigfirm.com/jobs/marketing_manager_miami

or something like that. If a job seeker does a search for Marketing Manager jobs Miami, a search engine will rank a page much more prominently if the search terms are all in the url.

3. Don’t be shy with the keywords

So if the job is a Marketing Manager role and you’re looking for someone with skills in online work, banner advertising, SEO and maybe basic HTML, make sure you mention both the job title and the keywords several times each in the job details on your careers site.

The easiest way of doing it is to have a keyword box at the bottom of the job details:

Keywords:  Marketing Manager HTML online SEO banner adverting

4. Mention all possible job titles and keywords

If you’re job is a Business Development Manager, it will never appear if a job seeker is searching for a Sales Manager job. Similarly if you’re hiring a Digital Marketing Manager, it may not be very high up the ranking on Google if a job seeker has searched for Online Marketing Manager jobs.

So make sure cover this problem but mentioning all possible alternative keywords or job titles in the advert text to maximize your chances of the job being indexed high up.

5. If you’re regularly hiring for a certain job….

Make sure you have profile pages of similar people who work for you listed on your careers site under a separate section ‘What our staff think”. Then get them to write a brief profile on themselves and describe what they do, ideally packing their profile with the job title/keywords that relate to the role you’re trying to hire (and don’t forget the url as well – point 2).

Also, here’s a great tip: on their job title, hyperlink it back to the jobs page of your website (see point 6 below as to why !). If this appears on someone else’s site it will become a back link (more on back-links in point 6).

The more your careers site contains details relating to the role you’re trying to fill (and not just the actual page containing the job details), the more likely your careers site will be indexed high up by Google and others.

6. Create a blog

Get new starters to write articles on your blog about what it’s like to work there, or any topic that relates to your business, then make sure their profile is listed at the bottom of it crammed full of relevant keywords and their job title.

James Smith is a Java Developer at xxxxx. He designs our software in Java and has vast experience in building platforms based on SQL, HTMl etc etc.

Obviously you don’t have to reveal the person’s name if you don’t want to, but every week ask a new member of staff to contribute a brief article.

A blog has several benefits. Articles can be circulated around the internet. The more back links you have to your site from external sites, the more likely a search engine will index your careers pages and if you create a back link relating to a specific search term a job seeker might use… say Java Developer … Google and others rate that highly, thus indexing you even higher. So for example, if you’re regularly looking for Java Developers and one of your existing Java Developers writes an article, as per point 5, their profile at the bottom should have their job title, Java Developer, linked back to the front page of your careers section. The more these articles get published around the Internet, the more back links you’ll get.

Also a blog is a great way of telling job seekers about the business and about the staff which will attract more people to apply.

7. Be smart how you advertise the role on job boards

Again, it’s all about back links. If you advertise the role on a job board try and get the job title into the text linking back to the specific job page on your careers site.

Posting it on a group on LinkedIn or anywhere else… make sure there’s a back link underneath the job title.

Google loves back links from content relevant sites i.e. the sites are connected to the search term put in. So if you advertise the role on Monster, create the job text in a word document making sure that nice little back link is in there, then just copy and paste it into the text editor and on quite a few job boards they’ll allow the link to appear. Links back to your site from relevant recruitment sites, not just job boards, but blog sites, industry bodies, industry sites… all this is great for making Google love your careers pages.

8. Make it easy for people to socialise your job

Get your IT guys to add “Add this” to your job posts and pages and make it easy for people to forward your vacancy to their friends via their social networks. Remember, the more external sites it appears on (provided you’ve got a nice back link or 2 in there), the higher up the search engines it will appear and that’s not even counting the positive effect of having more eyes see your job on their friends’ Facebook and Twitter pages.

It’s amazing how many companies say that “people are at the heart of our business.” Oh really? So how come so few employers bother to really develop their careers site to try to attract absolutely the best person for the job? How many bother to develop it beyond a simple list of current vacancies?

Most companies don’t have a very good careers site. Some suggestions follow:

Avoid invisibility and Death by Clicks

Have your careers, current vacancies, or a jobs link on the front page of your website. Don’t hide it as a subheading on an “about us” drop down … put the button/link on your homepage slap bang in front of everyone who comes to your site. Someone who isn’t actively looking might just take a peak at your jobs, but only if your site makes it easy to find them. It also makes a clear statement of how important recruiting is to you.

Here’s the rule. If a job seeker can’t find your jobs within one click (yes, only one) you’re making them work too hard to find them. Check your own website. Can a job seeker find your jobs in one click from your homepage? You may well have a careers link on your homepage (which is great) but are you then hiding the jobs somewhere so they have to click, click, and click until they eventually get to them? Don’t make them click more than once to find them. By all means sell the company with lots of content and sections on why you should join (see points below), but first things first: “Show me the jobs.”

Let Me Send My CV to You Speculatively, or Let Me Register for Job Alerts

I’m really interested in working for you and I’ve glanced round your website but can’t see a vacancy that’s quite right. But I want to send you my CV in case you have something suitable coming up shortly. How do I do it?

As a minimum you need some kind of statement: “If you can’t see a suitable vacancy please email your CV to …”

Build up a talent bank of candidates without having to do any work as the candidates just populate it for you.

Very few careers pages allow a job seeker to submit a speculative application into a talent bank, thus missing out on an easy way to fill future roles and even fewer allow them to register for job alerts. If you don’t have this you’re missing out on a great way to let prospective applicants know about your jobs the moment you start hiring them. If you don’t want to use an ATS, get your IT team to put together a very simple job alerts tool, whereby the candidate can sign up for email alerts when you have a matching vacancy.

Add Some Video … to the Job Description

These days it’s not difficult to create a video. You just need a webcam and load them onto YouTube.

People respond to people, so what’s more interesting: a load of words, on a page or a link to a video from your prospective line manager outlining the key things they’re looking for in the perfect applicant?

Job applicants love it. It makes the company look innovative and it makes you look like you’re really trying to impress them as well as giving the applicant a feel for what their boss is like.

Add Some Video … About the Company

The careers section must have a section entitled something like “What’s it’s like to work at (xyz).”

Then instead of dull profiles of a few people or vague statements from the CEO about a ‘fun, work hard/play hard atmosphere,” how about a couple of 30-second interviews/profiles of staff members outlining what it’s like. So everyone knows they will only say positive stuff, but it gives the company a human face and people sell the business more than words on a page ever can. Better yet, get a full company video made and plonk it on your careers site.

Give Your Careers Site a Different Look

Let’s be honest: 99% of companies just list their jobs on a page frame identical to every page on your website. One word: boring.

The marketing bods will have heart failure at this next suggestion (“no, no it has to match the other pages, colors, and style sheets to maintain our brand integrity”). To which I say, “utter tosh!”

If you want to impress candidates, make it obvious that your careers site is different and not the same as all the other sections. Recruiting the right people matters so much to you that you’ve been prepared to build a separate section, a different layout, design, etc, etc. You don’t have to go mad. Just talk to the web guys and girls and ask them to mock up a new layout incorporating some or all the points included in this article but make it look different so the candidate knows you’re trying to impress them.

Get Social

Make it easy for everyone who views your job to be able to spread the word to people they know on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, or good old-fashioned email.

Make sure you get your IT team to include these social options at the top (not the bottom) of every job (don’t worry, they’ll know what to do, but just in case they don’t, see addthis.com).

Tell People It’s New

If the vacancy is a new job, then tell everyone it’s a new job in the job details:

“We’re growing quickly and this is a new role …”

There aren’t many other things you can do to make a job more appealing than stating that. People want to work for a growing company, not one standing still, so if it’s a new job, don’t be shy, tell the world.

Consider a Live Chat Option

I’ll bet you haven’t got a place on your website where a candidate can ask a question anonymously. A live chat option is a great way to allow a job seeker and the employer to talk with each other without either side revealing their email address or who they are. If you don’t offer this, you’ll miss out on candidates who might have applied if their questions were answered.

Everyone will have come across a live chat option at some stage. You visit a website and a box pops up … “Would you like to chat to an operator,” or words to that effect, and if you’re hiring a lot of roles, you’ll be surprised just how many people will have questions. A live chat link is an ideal way to communicate with job seekers who are curious but no more. Answer their questions and you may well get an extra applicant you wouldn’t have otherwise have got.

If you don’t think you’re doing enough hiring to justify a live chat option, at the very least offer a separate email address just for communicating with job seekers: jobseekerhelp@mycompany.com or something similar.

Using an ATS? Stop Making People Jump Through a Thousand Hoops

This is a real big one. If you’re using an ATS, please remember that most are not very candidate friendly. All candidates complain about this, and yet the big ATS providers persist in creating painful application processes, typically starting with the dreaded “Please register to apply.”

STOP MAKING CANDIDATES LOGIN/REGISTER/FILL OUT A BILLION PAGES BEFORE THEY CAN APPLY.

If a candidate has to register before they can apply, an awful lot of very good candidates who are maybe just browsing and not actively looking will just walk away. Far from helping you, your clunky ATS is losing you top applicants.

We always work to the 60-second rule. If it takes more than one minute to apply, the application process is too long. Yes it’s perfectly reasonable to include screening questions, but not so many as to make the process arduous. Two or three at most.

I recently looked at an application process that said at the beginning, “this application will take you no more than 25 minutes to complete.” Nothing more needs to be said.

Add a Bit of Fun

It doesn’t really matter how, but try to add a bit of fun to the careers site. A list of job vacancies is all well and good, but a prospective applicant wants to know the company has a lighter side.

Try a quiz or an online game and then put the scores up in a box score showing how your employees have done with the teaser: “Can you get into the top 10?” Jobseekers will give it a try to see where they rank amongst your employees. It doesn’t have to be part of the application process; it’s just a bit of fun but it gives a clear message that not only have you got great jobs on offer, but you’re also a fun place to work.

Get Some Photos

If you can’t do a corporate video, make sure you post some photos of the office environment. The more a candidate knows about what it’s like to work at your company, the more likely they are to apply.

Have a “5 Reasons to Join Us” Section

It could be a 10 reasons to join, but create a separate section and list all the unique features that will appeal to a job seeker. Ask existing employees if they had to sell the company to a friend of theirs what they’d say to impress them. “We’ve doubled headcount in the last 12 months.” “You can work from home two days a week.” “You get free childcare.” “We have a team night out every month.” “We’re the market leader …” “We’ve just opened three new offices/sites in the last two months alone.” Get creative. Remember you’re selling to them as much as they are selling to you.

Following up our recent article about the 12 things you could do to improve your careers pages, we’ve listed 10 companies with great looking careers sites and one in particular that we really like. We’ll also give a few details on why we like them so much. So if your careers site is lacking a certain something and you’re not making enough direct hires, take a look at how this group do it and start copying !

My company, iKrut, reviewed more than 500 corporate careers sites which represented a cross section of as many industry sectors and types of organisation as possible. The criteria we judged them against were ease of use, the quality and quantity of information provided, how likely the site would be found by a search engine and it’s overall attractiveness. Here are the sites, alphabetically:

Apple:  (The Apple site doesn’t actually tick off too many of our guidelines but we dare you to watch their corporate careers video without then wanting to work for them. Key learning point: make a careers video with a serious wow factor).

General Mills: (we love the “Fit Finder tool”)

Google: (just packed full of good stuff to impress job seekers)

ITV: (fantastic dedicated careers site. We particularly like the Linkedin networking tool which allows a jobseeker to see who they know within the company)

Metaswitch: (we love the puzzle)

Netapp: (we hadn’t heard of them, but with a site this good they’ll be hiring some top people)

Pepsi: (we love the detailed video profiles of their employees)

PWC: (we love the “Our people” section tracking career progression. Great idea.)

Spotify: (puzzle, staff profiles, videos, jobs easy to find …it’s all here)

But the site which fuses ease of use, information, and attractiveness as well as any we’ve seen is Hymans: Proof that you don’t have to be a global brand to be an attractive one:

Almost everything it should be doing, it is doing. Here’s why we like it:

• We love the fact that the careers link is clearly visible on the front page of the corporate site.

• We love the fact that the design for the careers site is a little different to the main site. This makes it look like they’ve made a real effort to impress job seekers.

• We love the FAQs section. Simple but packed with relevant information.

• We love the video testimonials from staff. Nothing is more powerful that seeing your potential colleagues raving about why it’s a great place to work.

• We love the interactive blog where potential new recruits can comment and ask questions.

• We love that the company Twitter page is on the careers site.

• We love the fact that the careers site is littered with keywords relevant to their business

• We love the fact that each job is a separate page and the job title is in the URL. This makes it easy for Google and other search engines to index it generating more direct hires. We found several of their jobs just through a simple Google search.

• But above all we love the uncluttered look and navigation, making it easy to find and return to the content relevant for you.

Some other ideas they and others might like to consider? Make it easy for people to share the jobs on their social networks. How about being able to log my CV into the talent pool or sign up for job alerts?

It’s not good enough just to list your jobs. Yes there are plenty of people competing for your jobs but there are still the same number of really top candidates out there as there were five years ago and if you want those top 5% applying to you then you have to go beyond a mere list of jobs. Ask yourself what you’d like to see if you were applying for a job and now compare that with your current careers site. Does it stack up?

Looking for a new job? Relatively happy where you are but could be tempted? Well however actively looking you are, here’s how to find the hidden jobs you might never hear about and then create an application so good they’ve just got to interview you.

Tip 1: Write your own CV/resume

Don’t go and pay $50 to have someone write one for you. It’s a waste of money. How on earth can a complete stranger do a better job than you can of summarising your career to date?

Writing a cv is easy, you just need to know what recruiters are looking for. The key thing is not to be taken in by those who suggest you need to load your cv with lots of dynamic words: initiated, managed, started, etc etc and don’t pack your cv with lots of management blurb and the latest buzz words. With the exception of possibly school leavers and graduates, 99% of what a good recruiter will look for in your cv is what type of work you’ve done and who you’ve done it for. You can pay someone to add in all the clever layout, design, graphics and buzz phrases you like but it will make absolutely no difference if you don’t match the job requirements. So avoid jargon, cliches or trying too hard to impress and try to mimic the key word and phrases the employer has used in the job description, but above all, it’s your career history so you should write it.

Oh and 1 more thing, when you list the companies you’ve worked for, please explain what they do. Ok, we’ve all heard of Walmart but don’t assume the recruiter knows about every company.

Tip 2: Create an elevator pitch…….on video

If you want to stand out to an employer, send your cv containing a link to a video of you. Record a video of you outlining the core skills you have to offer, your 2 biggest achievements to date and the type of role you’re most interested in. No more than 60 seconds, upload it to Youtube, get the link and then embed it onto your cv under this heading:

Watch my 1 minute pitch

A potential employer is more likely to interview you and not someone else if they can actually get a feel for who you are and how you come across.

Oh, and look smart when you do it !

Tip 3: Attach a proper covering letter

Whether asked to or not, always submit a covering letter.

Don’t just put…

“Dear Sir/Madam,

Enclosed is my cv for the role of xxx yyyy……

kind regards….

etc”

You need to really sell yourself. Outline exactly how your experience matches the key criteria set out in job description.

Tip 4: Make sure you’re on Linkedin

Even for if you’re not very senior, get a profile added to Linkedin and select the option that says you’re open to hearing about career opportunities.

If you already have a Linkedin profile update it to say you’re not working for xxxxx anymore and are actively pursuing a new role. You don’t have to say the dreaded word…..”unemployed’ but you do have to make it clear that you’re in the job market.

Ideally you want to try to build up your network of Linkedin contacts before you start needing to look for a new job, so every chance you get of connecting with someone you meet/contact make sure you connect with them to build up your personal network of contacts. Job hunting is and always has been as much about who you know rather than just what you know.

Tip 5: Send speculative cvs……..lots of them……..but not to HR

Go on to Linkedin, identify the companies nearby that you think could be interested in you. Then search Linkedin to find out who the head of the relevant department is and try to connect with them on Linkedin. Just make sure you alter the standard Linkedin connection message to let them know you’re looking for a new job.

Whatever you do don’t try to contact HR. They are invariably very busy doing something else and will just put your details ‘on file’. In addition the HR team won’t necessarily know all the roles coming up in the business in the next 6 months. The head of the department will.

If you can get an introduction to that person, so much the better so look out for any connections, even tenuous ones and try to get them to introduce you. A referral from someone is much more likely to get a response.

Oh and make sure you ask that they forward this on to anyone they know. They might not be hiring directly but they will probably know someone who is.

Tip 6: Spy on your target list of companies

Assuming you’ve drawn up a list of companies who might be interested in you, either sign up for job alerts or an RSS feed from them. If they don’t have those facilities (many won’t), use a service like http://watchthatpage.com . It allows you to add in urls of company career sites and as soon as a page changes (i.e. a new job is added), you’ll get alerted. It’s not perfect as there’s no guarantee the job will be what you’re interested in so you may wish to use this tool for only the companies you’re very keen on working for.

Alternatively follow their company pages of Twitter. Bigger companies often have a separate account just for their jobs so follow those. Tweetdeck is a great way to follow numerous different Twitter feeds in one go.

Tip 7: Use a resume distribution tool

There are companies out there where you can upload your cv and they’ll distribute it to lots of job boards for you so your details get stored into their cv databases ready for employers to search and contact you.

Here’s a good example: www.resumerabbit.com

Tip 8: Use social media and become your own career PR agent

If you don’t have one, get a Twitter account. Tell the world, via a tweet, that you’re looking for a new job…..”interested in #marketingmanager roles” or whatever target job title you have. Also make sure you say this as both a tweet but also in the summary section of your Twitter profile as it’s more likely to be found.

Then do the same on any blogs you write, Facebook, Google+ etc etc. No need to be proud, just tell everyone you’re looking for a new job.

Post a question on relevant groups on Linkedin………”What were the most effective channels you used to find your last job”. This way you don’t necessarily sound like you’re begging for someone to interview you but a. you’re letting people know you’re in the market and b. you could well get some very useful feedback from others who have recently just gone through the exact same job hunting process.

Do the same on any websites in your industry. Usually they will have a blog post or a forums section for general discussions. Also make sure you ask the same question on www.quora.com or Yahoo answers.

Tip 9: Create a website all about you

If you have any technical skills buy a domain with your name on it then create a page with your name and target job title in the url:

www.fredmsith.com/marketing-manager

Then post your cv to that domain and make sure you mention your target job title and all the key skills you’ve got several times so it’s got a chance of being picked up by the search engines. If any recruiters search on Google for people with that job title they may well find you.

If you don’t have any technical skills, any competent web developer could copy your cv and post it to your new career site in a matter of minutes.

Try a site like this to build your careers site: freehosting.com

Tip 10: Try a Google / Search engine search

Whichever search engine you use, type this in:

(careers or current vacancies) and “your preferred job title” and location

The search engine will then produce a list of companies recruiting the job title you list, in the approximate location you list. If that location or job title doesn’t yield much, try a different mix.

Nick Leigh-Morgan is the MD and founder of iKrut, a free applicant tracking system. Nick has over 16 years experience in the recruiting industry, covering staffing firms, direct employers and now web based recruitment software. A graduate of Economics and Politics, Nick specializes in publishing articles on the future of recruitment.

Visit Nick’s website at www.ikrut.com

Job boards are dying. Job boards are outdated, old hat. The future is social (whatever that means). The doomsayers have been at this for years.

It’s interesting that the “job boards are dying” crowds have gotten louder and louder over the last few years, mainly prompted by announcements of profit warnings and layoffs at the big boards. But, and this is an elephant-in-the-room-sized but, virtually all countries where these big boards have a large presence have been in a whopping great recession, which has dragged on and on. All the job boards that were growing quickly pre-2008, have stagnated during the downturn (no real surprise there!) but they are now starting to pick up again as economies slowly rebound.

Monster’s 2012 Q2 results were mixed. North America came up and International went down. Monster is the poster boy of job boards and too often people see one company’s relative weakness and extrapolate incorrectly that this is reflected across the whole industry. If Monster was in its death throes would they—as of September 2012—have 171 internal vacancies listed on their site? Doesn’t sound like a company that’s dying to me. Changing, perhaps but dying? No.

Dice is up 22 percent year-on-year for Q2 2012 earnings. LinkedIn, revenue from their hiring solutions product, up 107 percent (I count LinkedIn as a job board; you pay to advertise jobs so that’s a job board to me). Indeed is now the largest ‘job board’ with seemingly exponential growth in terms of number of jobs listed and resumes stored. All of this is surely evidence that job boards are not going the way of the Dodo.

Job boards are not dying. Possibly yes they are evolving, possibly a few are stagnating but surely even those die hard social media pluggers (usually with a vested interest) would be stretching credibility to say that job boards are dead or even dying. Job boards are a fantastically simple way for an employer and employee to connect. While they may not be terribly effective (our own conservative estimate is of getting around a 10 – 15 percent success rate when using one job board in isolation) they most definitely retain an important role in sourcing candidates. But they can and should be more successful and that’s what this article would like to focus on: What job boards need to do to adapt in the 21st century and, more important, to be more successful for the average recruiter.

First, I hate the way job boards price. Why should all the risk be on the person submitting the advert? Google has shown the way when it comes to success based advertising and cleaned up. Be warned job boards, the Indeed model is not a one off. Some are tinkering with pay per click model but this is not really what recruiters want. Why would I want to pay $1 a click for 200 applicants to come in and none are suitable?

So here’s my first suggestion to job boards:  Charge per interview

You should let your clients post all their jobs free of charge. The client can then login to a simple back office system to review the candidate’s full resume but minus any contact details. A ‘release contact details’ button triggers a charge of x amount of dollars per candidate the recruiter wants to talk to.

Sometimes the client might just zero in on the best candidate and not bother to interview any others but for every one that does that, there will probably be others who interview several, happily paying extra for a good quality shortlist. It would be up to the job board to price accordingly but I know for a fact (having asked them) that companies we work with would be far more inclined to use job boards as their default recruitment setting if the pricing model was more results based.

This leads me nicely to change number two: Resume database – pay per download

Indeed is looking at this strategy and it is clearly the way forward. Perhaps not for big staffing agencies or employers who require constant access, but for the majority of small and medium sized employers. These type of businesses would like to be able to access the resume database behind many job boards but are put off by the crazy pricing, which means they have to buy weekly or monthly access.

Like the application to a job methodology stated above, simply restrict the contact details so anyone can review as many resumes as they like and if they want to contact that candidate they simply click a ‘release contact details’ button using up one credit, or however the job board wishes to price it. Thus an occasional recruiter isn’t put off by the astronomic fees.

Change number 3: Focus on the candidate experience

Doing a quick search for web developers in New York on a well known board, page one yielded 21 results of which just six were from direct employers. So 75 percent are agency jobs. Once, a job board MD gave me an anecdotal evidence that 90 percent is a more realistic figure. Now with all due respect to agency jobs, they do little for the candidate, particularly the ones who are not actively looking but just curious.

If I’m looking for a job I want to be able to search quickly and apply direct to an employer, not to an agency who may or may not be working for the end client (assuming one exists). I don’t want to have to wade through all these agencies jobs to find the proverbial needle in the haystack.

So job boards must prioritise direct employer jobs in the listings over those from the staffing agencies. You might have to offer the staffing firms a lower price as a result but to offset this you could charge more (see per interview pricing) to direct employers.Giving priority to their jobs will increase the likelihood of a successful hire because more job seekers (both active and ‘glancers’) will notice the job provided it’s not drowning amongst agency listings. There’s nothing wrong with agency jobs. They perform an important fall back option for candidates but direct employer jobs should always get premium positioning.

Change four: Build a search algorithm that works

Who on earth builds those search algorithms? I conducted a search for sales manager positions on a well-known job board and store manager and project manager jobs ranked higher than sales manager roles. This is not good enough. On your search algorithm, make sure the job title of the candidate or the role gets a higher rating than the same word or phrase listed somewhere else.

To be fair, it’s not easy to build an algorithm that works with even 80 percent accuracy but to help, make sure every candidate logs the industry sectors they have worked in. If I’m searching your resume database for someone with marketing experience in retail please don’t make me use the keywords retail and marketing. That’s hopeless. A structured search by industry (retail) supplemented by a keyword search by marketing is much, much better.

Undeniably the job board industry is facing tougher times than when they first appeared more than 15 years ago, but there is no sustained evidence to suggest they are dying out. Far from it. But job boards need to improve how they price their products and the quality of the experience that they deliver for both recruiters and candidates to ensure their long term prosperity.

I read a blog post a couple of years ago that was the most interesting blog post idea I’ve ever read. Two years later still no one has seriously made it happen. What was it? Well it was a pretty simple idea: create a website where any employer can post their vacancies and any job seeker could post their career history for an employer to find ……….. free.

No one pays anything. It’s like the old Roman market place idea where labor looking for work would congregate each morning and employers would come along and offer them some work for the day. The only difference is this is up in the cloud and in the 21st century it would be known as a free job board and free resume database. To quote the author of the original post, it would be a “sort of people board.”

So the $1,500 ? Well this is what it would cost to put it together. Trust me on that one. Now before everyone jumps up and down saying there are lots of free job boards floating around, yes there are, and yet none of them have really taken off. Can you name one that you use regularly? Thought not. It seems odd to me that such a simple idea hasn’t taken off. Facebook is free and provides a social service and that’s done phenomenally well (share price excluded) so why haven’t these free sites had the same revolutionary effect?

Here are a few ideas:

1. People don’t want to post career profiles when anyone could login and view them. I don’t think so because LinkedIn disproves that.

2. Employers are worried about their brand if they post to a free board. This idea fails too because Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites all regularly get posted to with jobs.

3. It’s a loss leader so why would anyone bother doing it. While a fair point, you could still sell advertising or related recruitment services, which should at least cover the server costs.

So why hasn’t anyone done it?

Why isn’t there one website where every employer on the planet goes to to let people know they’re hiring and why isn’t there somewhere where a job seeker can go to tell the world they’re looking for a job? There are tens of thousands of job boards, most paid, some free……but wouldn’t the world just work better if there was just one, almighty, default setting, omnipotent board that absolutely everyone who’s anyone has heard of? Google is virtually the default setting if you want to search, Wikipedia for ‘facts’, Facebook to post your embarrassing wedding photos, and eBay to get a second-hand bargain.

In some respects, Indeed is beginning to have that feel except it will never truly fill the above definition. Indeed has some charges and the people board is not about making money, it’s about altruism, or helping those looking for work to meet those who are hiring. There must be a ton of jobseekers who never get to hear about their perfect job as they’re not looking on the right job board, but if there was just one board, the mother of all job boards, then everyone would be able to find his or her perfect job with a few clicks. I’m not claiming we could end global unemployment, but surely having  just one portal where employers and job seekers could meet would help get people back into work more quickly.

I think the reason such a job board doesn’t exist is simple: You’d need a ton of cash and a staff of hundreds to make it truly work. That type of platform would require extensive promotion—beyond the US and UK to France, Germany, Spain, Mexico and China. If employers actually knew about it I’m sure they’d post jobs providing there were lots of job seekers visiting it prompting  plenty of job seekers to visit the site as well.

Now you may be referring back to the title and saying, “well, you clearly can’t do this for $1,500,” and any sensible person would probably agree but stay with me a moment. Now I’m no viral marketing expert but surely there must be a way we could tell everyone, both employer and prospective employee that we’ve built a free people board for the world to use. Surely there must be a way we can spread the word across the whole world that we’re trying to put people back to work without needing to spend vast amounts of money.

If anyone knows how you could do it, let me know because I, for one, would like to try. So here’s the challenge: how do we tell the entire planet about the people board without spending any money?

Come and join the crusade because the ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. RIP Steve.

We’ve been doing some recruiting recently and let’s not mince words: it’s a gigantic pain in the backside. Come on…..hands up who’d rather not have to do it. Well me for one. My company is now entering a real growth situation and we’re starting to staff up and when starting the hiring process the other day it occurred to me just how backward and upside down the whole hiring malarkey is. So it got me thinking……’we’re hiring a web developer, in a perfect world, how would I like it to happen’ and this is what I came up with.

Wouldn’t it be great if somehow everyone on the planet of working age was legally obliged to create a profile stored on some kind of gigantic database which lists everything you’ve achieved in your career to date, including the companies you’ve worked for and job titles etc. It would be a legal requirement to keep your profile up to date and accurate to ensure that when you did apply for a job, rather like testifying in a court of law, you’re vouching that this is a true and accurate record of your career history and if you lie you’re committing recruitment perjury with a criminal record to follow punishable by fines, time behind bars etc etc. That would stop the little white lies we all know exist ‘Honest I do have a computer science degree’. 

So there we are with 4 billion workers all listed on said uber database. Think Linkedin on steroids. Next challenge would be to ensure that all employers are connected to it. Well that’s not too difficult given the growing ubiquity of smartphones, they can just register and use it. The potentially tricky bit is, as ever, sorting out the data so it can be searched accurately by the recruiter. Location shouldn’t be too difficult. Job title, key word searches and current salary……all can be filtered quite easily (take note big job boards it really isn’t that difficult to create an easily searchable resume database - sort it out, I’m bored of wading through 95% of irrelevant profiles). Sure it wouldn’t be perfect but data analysis is getting better each year so it wouldn’t take long for the system to learn to be incredibly accurate when retrieving profiles.

Now here comes the clever bit. When hiring the other day I thought to myself, ok I’ve added in the job to our free applicant tracking system now ideally what I’d like it to do is immediately produce a list of matching candidates in descending order of suitability, not just from Linkedin or Monster’s resume pile, no I want it to search the super database in the sky that holds every profile of every person of working age on the planet. In fact I’m so darn lazy I don’t even want to have to type in a search string…….I just want ‘the system’ to do it for me. So it reads the job title, salary, location, key words extracting all the key data from everyone’s profile and then automatically produces the list for me by best match. But I don’t want to have to go and contact them either, that would require work. I want said system to do it for me, not with anything so crude as an email…..’we’re hiring a web developer etc’, no I’m talking about a system which is preintegrated into everyone’s smartphone as an ‘Interesting jobs app’ or the same on your desktop via a browser based app built into Chrome, IE, Firefox etc. That way the moment I start to hire a role ‘the system’ automatically works out who the best people from the database of every single employee on the planet, automatically alerts them to the vacancy via our cool new global job alerts app and allows them to express an interest in the role via a 1 click button. We can’t have the job seeker doing anything so tiresome as actually submitting a resume. Perish the thought. No, what is best for the truly lazy jobseeker (read passive job seeker) is just 1 button which when pressed highlights their profile to me on my list of possible matches as someone who’d like to be considered for the role. Then comes the time consuming bit……….I’ve actually got to interview them.

Ok, ok….I can hear all the liberals out there foaming at the mouth…..’what an invasion of privacy’  ’ I don’t want my career history made public’. Well there are ways around that. Once you become a registered company or organisation/charity etc, you get a password to access the system and that’s restricted to just selected people within each organisation so the general public can’t view them at will. You could also remove the person’s name, just leaving their career history as an added level of privacy.

Think about it, everyone who works has to submit a tax return of some kind. Why not simply add on, as a legal requirement, that they must also fill in their career profile online at this system. A basic career history can be put together in 5 minutes so it’s not exactly a great hassle and each time you leave a job and go elsewhere it’s your responsibility to keep it updated and accurate.

Yeah, I know……what about the people who are retiring, working part time, maternity leave, just don’t want to work etc. There are probably a hundred quibbles you could produce but I don’t think the broad idea is that daft. Think about how incredible it would be if you just added a job into this system and it automatically searches every single possible person who could do the job and alerts them to your vacancy?

Now job boards, staffing agencies etc would be up in arms as they’d be out of business within days as every job is sourced directly so they’d fight tooth and nail to stop it and I can’t see it being much of a vote winner (other than the clique of dedicated in house recruiters) so there wouldn’t be much in it for a politician to add it to the statute book but you never know. As someone once said………’the ones who are craziest enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do’.

Much rubbish is being spoken about how the CV (or resume to our American readers) is now dead. You know, that static, slightly dull thing that lists all the stuff you’ve done for work. I read recently on a blog that in a resume you’re just a piece of paper but in a profile you’re a human being. What? Has someone swallowed a dictionary full off management cliches? Someone get me a bucket.

It seems to be the trend that we in recruitment always feel the need to pronounce something that is dead. You remember how job boards were dead a few years ago……well they’re still here. You remember how dead staffing agencies were………well they’re still here and now the doomsayers are turning their sights on the poor old humble resume.

A cv in some form will always exist. Whenever you apply for a job there will have to be a mechanism for the potential recruiter to assess whether your background means it’s likely that you will have the skill set required to do the job. The only likely exception to this will be very low skilled jobs where previous experience of any kind is not required beyond possibly basic physical coordination.

A much more sensible argument is that the cv will always exist but that it is likely to change somewhat and quite possibly be presented to the employer in a different way. So here’s our list of things we’d like to see on every cv. These are pretty unlikely but in an ideal world the perfect cv would include:

1. The basics you get now with details on employment etc.
2. A video presentation from the candidate outlining why they think they are suitable for the job including specific examples of how their previous experience could help the potential employer.
3. Details of your education and grades supplied directly by the schools/colleges you attended
4. Your score in a standard intelligence test which everyone on the planet must sit
5. A copy of all your past appraisals
6. Comments from your current/past colleagues who’ve worked above, below and alongside you, giving their input into your likely suitability for the role
7. Your precise current or last salary
8. References from other companies that you have come into contact with: clients,partners, suppliers which is interactive allowing the potential recruiting company to ask these people questions

Points 3 - 8 could not be edited by the candidate in any way and the information would be electronically sucked into the candidate’s resume into a predetermined set of fields that can only be viewed by someone that candidate authorises.

Which brings me nicely onto the delivery of the cv.

The future cv (ideally) would be a web based piece of work. Not a word document or pdf but a page or pages which the candidate can update point 1 above. The video section could be created a dozen different times and tweaked to suit the specific job applied for in essence creating multiple version of the same cv….except the video content would differ from application to application. Points 3 - 8 could then be inserted into the candidate’s cv and there would be no hiding place from the results. Which means of course that every employer and educational establishment would have to sign up to use some great big central repository of candidate information on appraisals, a gold standard intelligence test, and partners/clients could login when prompted and update the information on the candidate if they had come into contact with them.

The problem with the cv is that it’s written by the candidate. Most are full of half truths,  lies, damned lies and statistics (job at Yahoo anyone?). So imagine an interactive profile where at least 80% of the information is provided by others and the candidate can’t control what is said.

Now that would be interesting ! Think of all those duff hires you’ve made, you know….. the bluffers who’ve either misled you by massaging the truth on their resume or just talked a phenomenally good game during the interview. Come on, admit it, we’ve all hired at least one shocker. But with an online cv like this, it just wouldn’t happen. The bluffers would be exposed before they even got to interview and if they chose not to submit this new 360 degree profile, instead opting for the self penned traditional cv…….well you’d know they’be trying to hide something. In fact when you think about it, the entire cv (with the exception of the personal stuff like contact details) could theoretically be inserted by different organisations and sets of people…….and not by the applicant themselves. What we would need is some king of gargantuan online life database where your life could be gradually listed. Get a degree……the University updates your file. Get an accounting qualification, your employer updates your file. Got a pay rise, good/bad appraisal, new job etc etc….your employer updates your online profile. A kind of Facebook timeline for employment…..but written by others.

So is the cv dead? No, of course it isn’t but it will likely adapt as sites like Linkedin become the de facto storage facility for everyone’s career history. Already you can boost your credibility with references from people you’ve worked alongside and one wonders how long it will be before they allow users to post video profiles as well. Will it ever contain the other stuff outlined above………….watch this space.

Nick Leigh-Morgan is the MD and founder of Zodo. Provider of free recruitment software, iKrut.