Over the last ten years, the Internet transformed recruiting and recruitment

advertising. Besides networking and personal connections, the Internet is now

the leading source of job search and employment placement. However, we are

currently undergoing a shift no less radical: the democratization of the

Internet through ubiquitous search capability. Because of this shift,

recruiting and recruitment advertising will undergo a severe upheaval and

transformation within the next few years.

We might think of the first major period of the Information Age as being the

generation of information: moving personal and business processes onto the

web and producing massive amounts of data. We are now in the second period,

which can be understood as the transformation of information extraction and

production processes. It is commonly called "Web 2.0" emphasizing user

communication and application-like interfaces. It is more simply just the

movement toward information accessibility for both input and output of data.

The popularity of Google and other search engines is also rapidly

transforming the availability of information. In short, we are just now

dipping our toes in the great pool of information that we have been filling

for so many years.

As long as the methods for accessing and extracting data and information on

the Internet is imperfect, data that is related to other data must reside in

the same location in order to be found. Because of this trend, data related

to job postings (and data in general) quickly became clustered around a few

central sites. For example, people go to Monster.com to find jobs, Amazon.com

to find books, eHarmony.com to find a life partner, etc With the very

imperfect data accessing processes available in the last decade and even now,

these types of sites are an absolute necessity. However, this is about to

change.

When content is more universally and quickly accessible, information does not

have to be clustered. For instance, jobs will no longer have to reside in the

"same place" in order to be found. With the prevalence of search engines, job

search will become increasingly decentralized - because it finally can be

decentralized. Information (i.e. job descriptions) can be found on an

individual company's website just as easily as through a congested pile of

job descriptions in a commercial website. Internet users no longer must

travel pathways to find information. For instance to find this article,

people no longer go to TalentBar - they just type in Internet Job Postings in

Google and look for relevant topics. Therefore for the first time, companies

have a tremendous opportunity to finally centralize and host their own job

descriptions while still obtaining visibility.

Therefore, the time has come for your company to use your website as a

recruiting engine. Every company should be asking how they can migrate their

job postings to their own site. There are tremendous advantages to hosting

your own jobs, including greater prospective candidate knowledge, interest,

understanding, and application rate. You may also enjoy greater market

awareness, partnership opportunities, etc... as people learn more about your

company and understand your employment branding strategy.

Once your organization has decided to take advantage of this new accessibility

and transformation of the Internet, there are many considerations to maximum

visibility and conversions for your job postings. These include:

Driving traffic to your site: There are many search engines for jobs that can

drive prospective candidates directly to your site. You may also consider

standard Google, MSN, or Yahoo advertising to drive traffic to your jobs.

Verbiage: Job descriptions should strive for descriptive simplicity - meaning

that they should be fleshed out and descriptive, with lots of keyword-rich

phrases, but still clear and focused. For instance, if you are writing a

description for a Java Developer, your job should contain the word Java many

times, all other associated technologies, and associated verbs: program,

develop, code, etc... Strive not to get a "job description," but more of a

daily action description. It will lead to dynamic, keyword rich text.

Sell your Company: Once you get a candidate to your site, the real work begins

. All throughout your site and through your job descriptions, you should

develop and propagate your employment branding strategy. Do your strive for

excellence, do you want to foster creativity, or perhaps put family first?

Drive this message home throughout your website. Offer realistic assessments

of your work environment - they will be appreciated, and you will receive

more targeted applications.

Keep it simple: You should make it just about as dumb and easy as possible to

apply to your organization. How about a big red button in the middle of the

page? Companies often offer the candidate a bewildering pathway to

application, and then make it difficult to send in their resume. Do not make

the mistake of thinking that your most intelligent candidates will "figure it

out." The brightest minds in the market are often impetuous multi-taskers who

will cruise in and out of your site within one minute.

The Internet has changed dramatically, but Job Posting and online recruitment

is still mired in its own initial transformation away from newspapers. The

time has come for your company to get ahead of the curve and take advantage

of this new accessibility and universality of information on the Internet.

TalentBar is a premier network for HR and Recruiting professionals

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