Digital Recruiting

A better, more grown up future for online advertising? I think / hope so

The web is a wonderful wonderful place. But, as we all know, good god it’s crowded and cluttered. Which is where strong brands come in. I’ve long berated the obsession with blatant short termism from any sector – but not least from web publishers who have a knack for panicking about all the cheap knock-off's taking traffic away from them. If you play the long game and stay true to quality and being true to your visitors / readers then the more rubbish that the web hosts, the more people will look for "beacon destinations" (not sure if I've just made that up - but probably not as I think it's quite catchy) . Publishers get caught into thinking they want volume volume volume, not caring whether it’s transient or not. But where the real value comes in any open market is in establishing a brand that resonates with a target audience and breeds loyalty.

Everything about the “standard” income/advertising model we see played out across the internet perpetuates this – ads being sold on the number of views (CPM) or volume of click throughs, and as many slots on a page as you can fit with often scant regard for the user experience. Is it any wonder that we all become "banner blind" (which is of course highly counter productive for the volume merchants anyway)?

What’s most ridiculous is that for however many pre-web decades advertising space has been bought and sold, it was always done on the basis it was largely about “influencing” target audience through brand recognition and/or product recall. Along comes the internet and all of a sudden those considerations are forgotten altogether because you can track a view or a click - an immediate interaction with your advertising message. That’s just nonsense. One proven methodology (and it is proven over hundreds of years) for increasing sales through promoting your product/service in a more gradual influencing manner does not become worthless just because there's a medium with a way to measure a more instant reaction to your messaging.

So with that all said you’ll hopefully see why the following article really resonated with me – not least the “cost per influence” part. Is this where the balance starts to return to the market and exposure to a clear message is valued in at least similar ways, irrespective of the medium? I hope so.

The Ad Network of Creative, Web and Design Culture

(from http://decknetwork.net/)

The premier network for reaching creative, web and design professionals, The Deck serves up tens of millions of page views each month and is uniquely configured to connect the right marketers to a targeted, influential audience.

Well-Vetted

We’re picky about the advertising we’ll accept. We won’t take an ad unless we have paid for and/or used the product or service. Sell us something relevant to our audience and we’ll sell you an ad.

One Impression at a Time

With the exception of “roadblocks,” which we’ll discuss later, there are only thirty advertising slots available each month for the entire Deck. Only a single ad will be shown for each page viewed.
In essence, buying a month on The Deck gives you an exclusive showing on 3.3 percent of all the pages viewed for that month across all forty-six sites and services. And there won’t be Google or other third-party ads diluting your exposure. The Deck ad is the only ad on the page.

A buy in The Deck reaches the creative community on the web in an uncluttered, controlled environment, far more valuable than a standard banner or a single text ad among dozens of others. Current Deck ads are also listed on this page and displayed here.

Cost Per Influence

We’re not selling The Deck based on page views or hits or click-through, but if we were, the CPM for a buy here would be priced well below industry norms. Most media who say “we don’t sell on the numbers” do so because they don’t have the numbers to support their rates. That’s certainly not the case with The Deck, as a group the network serves up tens of millions of impressions each month. All that being said, it’s not about “cost-per-thousand,” it’s about “cost-per-influence.”

The loyal, regular readers of the forty-six sites and services consist of web publishers, writers, developers, editors, reporters and bloggers as well as influential designers and art directors. Plus, the aggregate audience is made up of writers, photographers, illustrators, students, filmmakers, typographers, artists, animators, musicians, coders, designers and many other creative professionals.

In the Details

The thirty ads each month are in rotation across all forty-six sites and services. The ads are 120 pixels wide by 90 pixels tall and also allow for up to 80 characters of text to accompany the image which allows advertisers to make their ads a bit more graphic, so to speak.
Pricing and Roadblocks

The current rate for ads is $7900 USD per ad per month and this rate is valid through June 30, 2010. Additionally, marketers who desire 100% of the page views on the network for a given day or days may be able to purchase a “roadblock” for $7900 USD per day. Roadblocks are ideal for product or service launches and other time sensitive communications like movie openings and conferences.

Are Job Boards ruining what could have been a beatiful thing?

Jamie Leonard recently wrote a great post on "Recruitment Relationships: It's not me, it's you" where he took a tongue in cheek look at the various advertising / engagement channels open to recruiters.

The bit that really jumped out at me was the piece on Job Boards:

"Job Boards

Now 5 or so years into their married , the job board and recruiters are still very much going strong.  Their relationship is one based on trust, equality and understanding, but how long will this marriage last?  Well that really depends on both parties. Relationships relying on honesty and with the market now picking up, the job board market are certainly the one “trying to make it work”. The market is over crowded, to say the least, and recruiters have a lot of other options available.

New and appealing alternatives are appearing on the horizon and things could get rocky for this young married if both parties don’t understanding each others needs, quickly."

Now there's nothing I like more than kicking the bejesus out of an analogy , so I added my following thoughts / observations and thought I'd bring them across here too:

The way I see it is that the Job Boards are perhaps about to get caught out playing away from home – cheapening the beautiful thing that they and Direct Recruiters had been working at (a route to engage and promote themselves to potential applicants) through some ill-conceived extra marital fling: namely the pants down volume deals.

Yeh – sure it felt good for the job boards for a while – like visiting a lady from that oldest of industries for some “on tap gratification” (in this instance numbers of jobs advertised), followed by perhaps a swing in traffic and SEO-sexiness. Win-win surely?

Not really.

Why? Because the job board becomes dependent on this part of their world. But like all too many failed marriages have proven – you can’t keep the two apart (not even if you’re an overpaid footballer or a member of Take That!). It used to be offered to those REALLY big buying Rec Cons, then in a slow month it was offered to tempt some of the smaller Rec Cons, then businesses started springing up (largely from the cash rich Rec Cons) buying up these cheap postings and flogging them to the Direct Clients directly. And so (to complete the analogy) the dark side of the errant Job Boards life suddenly encroaches on the “respectable” part, obliterating any perceptions of value in their relationship.

I think it could also be argued that it’s potentially self defeating in terms of the candidate experience too – because using these broad brush aggregators puts the emphasis on spreading the message wide as opposed to getting the message right. And in a market where there’s so many “non ads” (in terms of content and/or actually existing) from Rec Cons, surely a job board should be showcasing their “real” jobs to candidates. That’s what keeps engaged, builds the brand connection and gets them to come back? No?

Reckon it’s time Job Boards took a good long look at themselves and worked out who they are, where they’re going and what they want out of life – because your partner always finds out sooner or later (doesn’t she Ashley Cole?), and when that happens then you really only do have yourself to blame, whether they walk away because of the superficialness of your relationship (high volume, low quality response because you just went after the easy option every time) or perhaps they decide to have a play away from home themselves (the massive cost disparity sending them to low cost Job Board aggregators) rendering your relationship obsolete as they decide they like the other side of the fence better too. Are Job Boards truly aware of the implications of a double lifestyle?

(Oh – and BTW – this is all COMPLETELY from my imagination and in NO WAY a reflection of my real life! )

Buntika Social Media Policy

So, you've realised that your employees are among the best resources to manage your online reputation but also potentially can damage your brand reputation if not guided correctly.

What to do?

Worry not, by answering twelve simple questions in sequence here at Policy Tool,

http://socialmedia.policytool.net/

you will have a full and legally sound, company social media policy to circulate to employees in a matter of moments. Yay!

Whats more, I got to make up a name for my make-believe company - Buntika - sounds like a fun place to work.

Nice article at mashable on why your company should have a social media policy.

Three years later is this still the worst recruitment video ever?

It's now three years since I posted  what I considered at the time to be the worst recruitment video I'd ever seen to Digital Recruiting. As it is also a year since I last reposted it, I thought it was high time we all took another look.

Now interestingly as I re-watched this, it didn't seem quite as bad as I remembered! With sites like Animoto offering easy to use software which anyone can use to replicate the photo montage style, this kind of rough and ready promo has actually become quite common. It wasn't long though before I realised that I was viewing it with the sound turned off......it only took a few seconds of reacquainting myself with the song to be sure that it is still the worst recruitment video ever!

Matt

LinkedIn discussion - "Measuring Job Boards traffic - which one do you believe?"

Tony Harding started a discission on the Recruitment Futurology group on LinkedIn

He asked "Having worked as a media professional for 20 years it amazes me that their are so many different ways in which recruitment job boards measure their own traffic and as such it means that the only way you can really judge is by actual applications. NORAS, ABC, Comscore , Google - in other words pick the one which works best for your stats - you cant buy media on the back of different scales of traffic as you will never know the correct figure. I would say that applications are the only worthwhile judge, and in short what then happens to them wastage/interview/offer - as clients we really need to savvy up on knowing what these stats are - what do you think?"

Quite a few comments ensued (go have a look if you have access to the group or want to get it) - but I thought I'd bring his question and my response over here and see if any readers of this blog had any thoughts. Well do you? ;)

My thoughts:

Job Board Traffic metrics are so open to varying degrees of interpretation and manipulation (both pre & post reporting) it's a close run thing to being no more, or even less, use than gut feel TBH.

The real reason metrics are needed? To cover the arse of the person who's consulting on or buying the media. People are desperate for certainty in an uncertain world, a fast moving world where so many factors influence response - so it's most often about making sure you've got a few figures to back up your thinking and you're safe from too much criticism if it doesn't pan out.

I've asked many media in the past why they subscribe to NORAS, which IMHO added little more of real value beyond the ABCe certification which they could have got anyway (although top level user activity behaviors are interesting). Whilst they always seemed to agree with my perspective, the reason they paid the extra for inclusion was simply that many clients they sold too took a disproportionate degree of comfort from having a logo to back up their advice / decisions - irrespective of what it stood for and/or the integrity of conclusions.

To twist a well known saying - "there are lies, damned lies and web traffic statistics", which means there will never be a harmonious agreement on which metric is the most valuable or which methodology / traffic monitoring organisation has the most true reflection of reality. It's only natural that every commercial entity when promoting themselves will only want to use that metric which is flattering to them when compared against who they view as their competition.


So the onus lies with the person collating and processing that response - and rightly so. Location, salary, perception of employer brand, time of the year, how you've written your ad, general state of the market, application process - all these things (and many more) affect response (both quality and quantity of), so unless you have in place a facility to report with maximum integrity where your traffic and, most importantly, interviews and hires came from in previous activity, then gut feel is pretty much as good as anything you've got.

And what should you look for in a gut feel assessment of a job board?
- Are any of your colleagues in that function / role aware of it?
- What's it's online (and potentially offline) profile like - where does it generate it's RELEVANT traffic from?
- How easy is it to use - putting yourself in the shoes of the candidate?
- Are there similar roles to yours advertised already? (great if they can provide info on these or similar too)
- And then ask how many relevant people they have subscribed to alerts and / or in their CV database.


The future has to be for recruiters to pick their ATS' with integrity of metrics and MI reporting as a fundamental underpinning requirement, taking responsibility for better knowing themselves what works and what doesn't - and I'm sorry, but reliance on "what media did you come from" drop down options is simply not good enough. (Note - am consciously staying away from pitching our solution here)


And I don't think this is really clients keeping this info close to their chest Wendy - the truth is that it's because they don't actually know themselves because of rubbish ATS. However you also need to be aware that, even where an ATS would allow seamless tracking, the JobServe application set up actually creates such a negative application and (from my personal & previous often discussed) direct client recruiter experience, that your metrics of ROI are going to be as flawed as anyone's (my reasons/experience set out here: http://www.3dmarcomms.com/blog/2010/01/new-year-new-recruit-some-clear-mi/ - which also includes why I found the PPA experience pretty rubbish too I'm sorry to say Nicole).


But, for what it's worth - ABCe was always my preferred "go to" for verified stats when I was advising / buying on behalf of clients.