Search Engine Marketing for Agencies - May 2008

Of all the things, and there are many, that drive most recruitment agency bosses absolutely nuts, online recruitment has to come at the top of many lists. It is by far the largest outgoing cost to recruiters. We all know that by definition, most recruitment advertising spend is akin to seeds cast on barren ground, and bears little or no fruit at all. It always has done - yet we work hard to identify the most reliable sources for candidates, our essential resource. Before online recruitment, it was always possible to cherry pick your advertising medium, and market your vacancies in a way that showed where the best candidates could be found. The notion of publicising your vacancies on your own publication was an alien concept, and terms like Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) were unheard of. You didn’t need to commit to advertising every week in the Telegraph, The Grocer, or indeed any other publication. Having often advertised vacancies in specialist trade magazines like “Plastics & Rubber Weekly”, I also know that the response could vary from month to month. So whilst there was a big element of risk, I wasn’t committed to that publication beyond any one advert.

The onset of online recruitment advertising however, brought a whole new model, and the founders of early job boards had no connection with the traditional publications. In seeking to provide much more cost effective volume advertising, they also sought a longer term commitment from advertisers. This commitment is the biggest bugbear for recruiters, who want the freedom to stop using a site, when it ceases to be productive, and to use different sites for the differing needs of separate assignments.

At the same time, whilst all agencies recognise the need to have their own website, they don’t always fully exploit this advertising medium that they have complete control over. External advertising sources will always be required, but when you have access to your own publication online, you can advertise all of your vacancies for little or no cost, and maintain a much closer relationship with candidates, it makes sense to find the best way to exploit it.

But how on earth do you begin the process of attracting your target candidates to your website, ahead of your competitors? It was this very question that made me establish AlljobsUK.com in 2000, after realising that there was no simple way for recruitment agency websites to be found by job seekers. This is the point where many commentators would begin waxing lyrical about the necessity of SEO, and they’re absolutely correct to do so. The vast bulk of traffic to agency websites comes from the biggest search engines, and primarily from Google. Therefore, ensuring your site is well optimised to be indexed fully, and crawled often by Google makes obvious sense. However continually optimising the ever changing pages of vacancy adverts on an agency’s site is a never ending task, which comes at a price, and you will soon find you are competing with the national job boards, with deep marketing pockets, for the very same candidates.

We then come to the topic of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), where you pay for your advert to appear alongside related job searches on Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. Typically you will need to bid for these advertising spots, and Google Adwords, for example, will take this figure and the click popularity of your advert, to rank how high your ad appears. Again this can prove unsatisfactory, and much time and effort can expended in managing Adwords campaigns, and continually adjusting your bids to optimise your ROI. Once more you will be competing with major job boards for these positions. At this point you can now see just how frustrating online recruitment can be, and how recruitment managers the length of the country are being driven to distraction by it.

If the largest search engine, Google, proves to be impossible to exploit competitively by SEO, and prohibitively expensive and difficult to advertise directly on, then what is left for the typical medium sized recruitment agency, in say Northampton? They still want to make good use of the website that they have spent so much time and money on, and that represents their company so well. Their site carries all of their vacancies, but just how are candidates going to find them? Vertical search engines are the answer. 1Job.co.uk is the longest established and largest in the UK, but there are several new contenders in this sector. A vertical search engine that is dedicated to the recruitment sector alone, and in its own right, is itself extremely well optimised on Google and the other major general search engines.

SEM with a dedicate recruitment search engine, will ensure that you instantly benefit from their ongoing SEO work, that candidates are finding your vacancies via Google, and are routed straight to the vacancy advert on your own site. At a set pay-per-click (PPC) rate, you are not caught in a bidding war with competitors, and can effectively manage your budget. With no tie-ins to ongoing long term contracts, and the ability to vary the traffic you require, you have control at all times, can maximise the return on marketing budgets, improve your own site’s rankings and the brand awareness of your firm amongst your target audience. Not only does this complement the advertising you still have with your favourite job boards, but builds a growing audience of repeat visitors to your own site, that will apply to current vacancies and pay long term dividends.

The Myth of Search Engine Opimisation (SEO) - April 2008

OK so we all know this much; 5% -15% of traffic on most recruitment websites comes from people typing in the web address directly, 10% to 20% linking from referring sites, and around 70% - 80% from search engines (mainly Google). You can slightly vary these figures by advertising like crazy, encouraging other sites to link to yours, and by “optimising” your site for the search engines. Traditional advertising costs a lot of money, for little return in traffic. Online advertising can work, but again you only get what you pay for, if that. Negotiated (i.e. not natural) link exchanges rarely work, as sites with a higher PageRank than yours will want to be paid for this service. Finally, optimising your site these days is no longer a black art. Google works very hard to ensure that your site receives the search priority it deserves; so trying to hoodwink it into believing your site has more relevant and greater content than it really does, is unlikely to work. What you certainly can do, is ensure that all of your content and pages are easily visible, well sign-posted, content rich, and regularly updated. This way, you can certainly have an advantage over the sites that do not yet do this.

Of course what we all want is for our websites to be naturally high in search results, with an excellent PageRank. The best path to this, is to genuinely have a website packed with regularly updating content that is relevant to your target audience. Actively encouraging online-talk about, and links to, your site from other well trafficked sites will help your PageRank too (Off-site SEO). We know that Google’s algorithm is working with more than 100 different variables, so whilst trying to outfox them is futile, welcoming them in is essential.

Imagine this though. What if all sites were well optimised within their own pages, and had as many external links to them as their sites merited? In that case, wouldn’t all websites then get the search ranking that they deserve? This is very true, and you can bet that the biggest and busiest job-boards are just as well optimised as each other. Given the amount of continually changing content, in the form of job adverts, they should also rank more highly (for general terms) than the sites of recruitment firms competing to attract the same candidates. By gifting content to job boards in the form of vacancy adverts, advertisers are also making those sites more attractive to search engines and by extension to candidates. This is seen most clearly in the success of Reed.co.uk. Whilst still benefiting greatly from the deal, Reed has shown a unique route to finding candidates.

Recent research conducted by Google discovered that 50% of internet users start their pursuit for a job at a search engine before they go to a job board, recruitment agency website, or online trade publication with vacancy adverts. This of course negates the individual brand awareness efforts of many sites, as candidates follow the links to the most relevant vacancy, regardless of where it is hosted. Brand loyalty can be scarce amongst job boards, but is more common with agencies, where the candidate can identify with a recruiter, or the firm’s reputation.

You could of course buy traffic to your site. Long established for getting a leg up on Google, paying for a campaign with Adwords means that you only pay for the traffic that you receive, on a pay per click basis. This can however be expensive, as you’ll be competing with large job boards with very deep marketing pockets, and teams of professionals to ensure their own volume of candidate traffic. Bidding for individual words, and the many combinations of phrases that candidates may search for, can be like playing cards with only a small number of chips – you are quickly priced out of the game.

However, there now is now an array of Vertical Search Engines, specialising in the recruitment sector, who are able to generate vast amounts of traffic in their own right, and route it directly to your vacancies on your site. This traffic is the result of continual aggressive SEO work, a high Page Rank, and of course an enormous database of ever changing, relevant, recruitment content. This self-targeting traffic can then be channelled directly to vacancy adverts on any site, whether it be large or small, long established or new, and most importantly, optimised or not.

Traditional SEO remains essential for every commercial website, and is certainly the most cost effective way of generating long term traffic. However, when you have vacancies that are only present on your site for a short time, and need applications today, sourcing targeted candidates via vertical search engines, is an easy decision to make. It is by far and away the simplest, quickest and most effective way of optimising your site to attract jobseekers. This is the kind of Search Engine Optimisation, or more specifically Search Engine Marketing (SEM), that brings immediate results.

How to attract more candidates to your adverts and get the best CV - March 2008

The recruitment process objective is: to place more candidates in the right jobs each month; every month. But do all job sites and job advertising media owners recognise this imperative?

Good job advertising sites want, and need, to get the highest volumes of candidates that specifically match the job adverts they show. It's essential. If the candidate response rate achieved is poor, or the quality of the candidates is low, the site is failing – both for you and the recruiter. Recruitment is about making good candidate placements month after month.

Successful job advertising is all about 'visibility' and 'reach'. The widest exposure of your adverts, to the right candidates, will produce the desired quality of CV's and Applications required.

The right candidates want to be able to find your jobs online easily. And they want to find them fast. But with over 1,000 job boards alone in the UK, how can any site achieve the 'visibility' and 'reach' you want? Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is important but not many sites can beat even 60% of the competition at this, especially without on-going and costly work.

The established answer is paid placement sponsored advertising. Often this takes the form of pay-per-click (PPC) on the main generic search engines.

Google Adwords is the best known, and is often used for this type of advertising. It can be effective at driving job seekers to job sites. But it's far less successful at driving quality candidates directly to individual specifically relevant job adverts. Also, cost per click rates become extremely high when sites compete for similar types of 'traffic'.

High quality relevant candidates that really 'fit' with each of your specific adverts is best achieved by using a true jobs dedicated vertical search engine - 1Job.co.uk - the UK’s No.1. 1Job.co.uk has been found to be the answer for many sites like yours.

If you want to get relevant candidates to your site; have the best candidate CV’s and Applications; and enable the highest level of candidate placements to be made, then 1Job.co.uk can help you - substantially help you - today.

AllJobsUK NORA's - UK Online Recruitment Awards - Finalists Announced - September 2007

The finalists of the seventh annual National Online Recruitment Awards (The NORA’s) have been announced. This year there have been over 41,000 nominations for 504 separate websites, with job hunters nominating their favourite job sites since late July. Main sponsors of the event, organised by AlljobsUK.com, are Cash Simply with further awards support provided by Voyager Software, Broadbean, Hotlizard, Chamelion-i, ExpressHR and 1Job.co.uk.

Stephen O’Donnell of AlljobsUK.com said, “This year the awards have become considerably more competitive with some great new contenders, particularly in the Regional and Niche site categories. We have also introduced a ‘Best Innovation’ award to encourage new developments in the online recruitment sector”. Final judging will take place by a panel of judges comprised of experts in online recruitment, traditional recruitment and human resources and winners will be announced on Monday 29th October.

The headline award is for the ‘Best Generalist Jobsite’, where this year CV-Library is a new contender among the finalists against Jobsite, Monster, Fish4Jobs and Totaljobs hoping to win the prestigious award. Competition is great again in the ‘Best Specialist (Niche) Jobsite’, where the number of finalists has been increased to eight this year. Jobserve, the longest running job board in the UK, and still independently owned, have been finalists Seven times and winners twice, including last year in this category.

“The award for ‘Best Regional Jobsite’ has been won by top Scottish job site S1Jobs four times. The category has also seen some increased competition this year so it will be interesting to see if S1Jobs can win a fifth time”, said Mr O’Donnell. All 53 finalists in the 10 Class Categories, along with details of the judging panel and sponsors can be viewed at: http://www.alljobsuk.com/awards/awards2007/Norafinalists.shtml

1Job Registers with ABC Electronic - September 2007

www.1Job.co.uk has registered with ABC ELECTRONIC, committing to have its traffic figures independently verified to industry agreed standards, as set by JICWEBS (The Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards in the UK and Ireland).

ABC ELECTRONIC audited data provides the online media industry with a trusted and robust currency on which media space can be bought and sold, and delivers to the market independent assurance that a website is attracting the size of audience it claims.

Julian Felstead, Managing Director from 1Job.co.uk comments: “1Job co.uk is the UK & Ireland’s No. 1 Jobs Search Engine* and we are delighted to be registered with ABC ELECTRONIC. Our stats already show us that we are receiving about 800,000 visits per month* and we send over 1,000,000 click thru’s per month* to our customers job adverts. We’ve decided to use ABC ELECTRONIC to independently audit us to provide us with data that will help us improve our traffic figures and help 1Job.co.uk attract new clients.”

Richard Foan, Managing Director of ABC ELECTRONIC comments: “We are extremely pleased to welcome www.1Job.co.uk as a subscriber, and look forward to the announcement of its first independently audited traffic figures. As more sites commit to delivering accountability and transparency by having their traffic figures audited, the online media industry can continue to secure a justifiably larger share of marketing spend.”

* Publisher Statement

BBC's 'The Apprentice' - 1Jobs Job Hunters votes for Winner - June 2007

It’s a boy versus girl final in ‘The Apprentice’ on Wednesday night, and 1Job visitors are voting strongly in favour of Kristina to win over Simon. 1Job.co.uk are sponsors of the recruitment section of the official magazine that accompanies the BBC’s hit TV show ‘The Apprentice’ and have been running a vote-for-the-winner type competition over the past few weeks. Currently 80% of voters favour Kristina’s experience over Simon’s entrepreneurial spirit.

The big question is will they be right? Julian Felstead MD of 1Job said, “This year it’s a difficult choice as the two candidates are so very different from each other. Kristina is clearly a cool, shrewd and capable candidate with a strong sales bias, however, Sir Alan may still go for Simon – he’s clever with a really high IQ of 174, has a great positive sense of humour and is 10 years younger than Kristina”.

1Job.co.uk, the UK and Ireland’s no.1 job search engine*, have been running their vote-for-the winner - win and iPod video competition, for a few weeks now, and Kristina is the clear favourite. As part of the competition voters have to provide reasons why they are voting for a particular candidate. Comments so far range from:
“tries hard, even if the job in hand isn’t what he’s good at” for Simon, to “because it makes sense, she’s a woman init !” for Kristina.

If you fancy your chances at winning the iPod 80Gb video then visit 1Job.co.uk job search results pages, or if you just want to add your comments on the candidates, Sir Alan, or the BBC show, then go to 1Job’s ‘The Apprentice’ blog or forum at www.theapprenticeforum.co.uk

(*source Hitwise)

BBC's 'The Apprentice' - Who's your winner competition - Win an iPod - June 2007

Yes, that’s right there is yet another competition to win an iPod on the internet! You can now win an iPod (video 80 Gb) by entering your opinion on who should win the BBC’s ‘The Apprentice’. The “vote for the winner” type competition is hosted by 1Job.co.uk, the UK’s No.1 job search engine, sponsors of the recruitment section of the official “The Apprentice Magazine” that accompanies the BBC’s hit show.

Julian Felstead M.D. of 1Job said, “We all know that a competition where the prize is an iPod is not the most original idea, so why are we doing it? The answer is… well if everyone else is offering this as a prize it must be working! Knowing we have well over 800,000 visitors per month to our site, I thought their input would help me decide which Apprentice to put my money on at the bookies!”

1Job.co.uk’s job search engine site provides a range of services for candidates and links to nearly all the jobs advertised on the internet in the UK and Ireland. It provides an easy and effective way to start any search for a new career. For recruiters 1Job.co.uk sends over one million candidates to their job adverts each month.

1Job decided to take a lead sponsorship position in the magazine as they saw “The Apprentice”, as highly relevant to the recruitment industry and a way of increasing their candidate traffic levels even further to provide the best possible results for their clients. Julian Felstead said “All of our employees have been watching the show avidly every single week and now there has been a definite cold atmosphere in the office recently between the Katie fans and the Kristina fans”.

For your chance to pick a winning candidate for Sir Alan, and to win an iPod (video 80 Gb) then visit the job search results pages on 1Job.co.uk. Vote for your choice of “The Apprentice” winner and let 1Job know your thoughts about them. Whilst there you can also visit a forum and blog with comment on the series, or of course, look for a new position in your own personal career path journey.

UK Top 10 Web site - Hitwise - Q1 2007 - May 2007

1JOB.co.uk's website has ranked number 10 in the Business and Finance, Employment and Training online industry based on the market share of UK visits it has received between the January and March 2007.

The Hitwise UK Top 10 Awards Programme celebrates the most successful UK websites in 160+ online industries. As Hitwise reports on the anonymous online usage and search behaviour of more than 8.43 million UK Internet users - the largest online sample of its kind - this unique awards programme recognises excellence in online performance through public popularity.

1JOB.co.uk is the UK and Ireland’s no.1 job search engine and sends over 1.2 million job seeking candidate click thrus each month, from its job summary listings, to the detailed vacancy descriptions on its customers own websites. 1JOB.co.uk’s customers include major Job Boards and Recruitment Agency websites in the UK.

Ivan Callanan, Sales Manager said, “The success of our website’s popularity is a result of meeting and exceeding job seeking candidate requirements. We are able to direct them to the job vacancies they are trying to locate on the web fast and efficiently. The UK has over 20,000 places where job opportunities exist, and the 1Job search engine solution provides a great place for anyone to start their job search from”.

“One of our most successful strategies has been to identify really interesting online and offline marketing opportunities that closely match our target audience. For instance, we are currently sponsoring the recruitment section of the official magazine to go with the BBC’s hit series ‘The Apprentice’. This will help us further build brand* awareness and reach a new segment of talented candidates that we can direct to our customers job adverts” Julian Felstead CEO said.

Hitwise UK said, “The online success of 1JOB.co.uk is a fantastic achievement. As Hitwise measures over 900,000 websites, being one of the most popular websites visited by UK Internet users demonstrates the strength of this company’s online marketing success.”

(* The 1Job.co.uk brand has already been officially recognised and awarded eSuperbrand status by the Brand Council in 2006.)

BBC's 'The Apprentice' - 1Job launches 'The Apprentice' 1Job Forum - April 2007

1Job.co.uk, sponsor of the recruitment section of the official magazine to accompany the BBC’s hit series show “The Apprentice” has launched a forum on their website to run alongside the show. The new series of this great show has just started again last week. The show runs on BBC1 at peak viewing times every Wednesday at 9.00 pm along with a follow on programme on BBC2 at 10.00 pm in which they interview and comment on the unsuccessful “hopeful” who has just got the “bullet” from Sir Alan that evening.

Ivan Callanan, Sales Manager at 1Job said, “We love the association that we have made with this great television show and we expect it to greatly enhance the 1Job.co.uk site visitor numbers and our brand** name. We are confident that it will have great appeal to both our candidates and our advertising clients”. 1Job.co.uk is the UK and Ireland’s no.1 job search engine* and sends over 1.2 million job seeking candidate click thrus each month, from its job summary listings, to the detailed vacancy descriptions on its customers own websites.

To visit the 1Job “The Apprentice” blog and forum go to: www.theapprenticeforum.co.uk

For more information on getting vacancy adverts automatically listed on the 1Job job search engine contact: mark@1Job.co.uk or ring 0870 3500 230.

* Source: Hitwise 2007 – 1Job.co.uk is the only jobs search engine regularly featuring in the UK top 10 recruitment sector.

** The 1Job.co.uk brand has already been awarded eSuperbrand status by the Brand Council in 2006.

BBC's 'The Apprentice' - 1Job sponsors official magazine to accompany BBC Show - March 2007

1Job.co.uk is to sponsor the recruitment section of the official magazine to accompany the BBC’s hit series show “The Apprentice” which is due to be shown on BBC 1 from next Wednesday. The UK and Ireland’s no.1 job search engine*, 1Job.co.uk, sends over 1.2 million job seeking candidate click thrus each month, from its job summary listings, to the detailed vacancy descriptions on its customers own websites.

The new series of this great show returns on BBC1 on Wednesday 28 March. Previous series have been run on BBC 2, but because of its popularity it's going to be shown on BBC 1 at the peak viewing time of 9.00 pm for the first time. Big, big, audience figures expected. Julian Felstead, MD of 1Job said, “like millions of other viewers we loved the previous two series, so when the opportunity to take a lead sponsor position in the shows official magazine we knew we wanted to secure it.

We believe that the show has great appeal to almost anyone interested in the world of work and business. It’s really great for the 1Job.co.uk brand** to be associated with this prestigious show. In particular we like the thought that whilst Sir Alan shouts “you’re fired!” the 1Job.co.uk website will be continuing to help thousands of job hunters hear “you’re hired” from employers each month … that certainly sounds a lot nicer to us!”

For more information on the contestants (8 women and 8 men) that will be battling it out together in the show visit the 1Job “The Apprentice Blog” at: www.theapprenticeblog.typepad.com. For more information on getting vacancy adverts automatically listed on the 1Job job search engine contact: mark@1Job.co.uk or ring 0870 3500 230.

* Source: Hitwise 2007 – 1Job.co.uk is the only jobs search engine regularly featuring in the UK top 10 recruitment sector.

** The 1Job.co.uk brand has already been awarded eSuperbrand status by the Brand Council in 2006.

New Mobile Technology - 1Job Goes Mobile - www.1job.mobi - March 2007

1Job.co.uk, one of the country’s leading job search engines, is the first to adopt the new mobile technology that allows people to search for jobs while on the move.

Working with Zappy Mobile in Milton Keynes, 1Job.co.uk has created a mobile version of the already easy to use search engine, which can be accessed from mobile phones. www.1job.mobi has been created to allow job hunters to make more use of their time while commuting to work, waiting for the train, or if they do not want to use the Internet to look for a new job while at work.

1Job.co.uk contains hundreds of thousands of jobs in the UK and Ireland that can be searched by job title, description or location. Over 100,000 new jobs are added to the site every day. The mobile version allows visitors access to exactly the same free service while they are away from a computer. The site has been specially designed to be viewed on a mobile phone screen, rather than a computer screen, with the information being easy to see without endless scrolling. When a job hunter finds a position they are interested in, they can click to see a short description of that job. If they are still interested and want to know more about that particular position, they can request further information to be emailed to them.

Julian Felstead, Sales Director of 1Job says: “The 1Job search engine is already established as one of the most popular resource sites with serious job hunters in the UK and Ireland. Providing our visitors with this mobile resource was a natural development for the business, allowing us to keep up with the requirements of our job hunters, as they embrace mobile technology.”

1Job.co.uk is a job search engine that candidates use when looking for their perfect jobs. The search engine sends job seeker candidates directly to the vacancy advert on its customers’ websites enabling them to easily view the full job details and apply. 1Job sends over 1,000,000 candidate click thrus to its customer’s sites each month and is ranked in the top 10 most used sites by job hunters in the UK (source Hitwise).

Westley Gillard, Sales Director of Zappy Mobile says “working together in partnership with 1Job we can also offer customers a low cost dedicated mobile site of their own enabling job boards and agencies the opportunity of putting their jobs in millions of mobile phone users pockets”

For more information on the mobile version of the 1Job.co.uk job search engine visit www.1Job.mobi on your phone or contact Julian Felstead of 1Job.co.uk 0870 3500 230 or Westley Gillard of Zappy Mobile on 01908 440022.

Job Seekers Caught in Rudolph Virus Epidemic - January 2007

Three weeks before Christmas 1Job.co.uk thought they would have a little fun and send out a URL for a seasonal game called “1Job’s Rooftop Challenge” (http://www.happy-christmas.co.uk/1job) to a number of friends and contacts as a greeting. “We felt it to be a little more ‘green’ than sending cards. What we didn’t expect was to virtually double our jobseeker traffic following Christmas and can only assume that we inadvertently created a successful platform for ‘viral marketing’.” said Managing Director Julian Felstead.

Hitwise also registered the affect of Rudolph’s effect on the innocent job seekers. “So many caught the bug, that 1Job.co.uk reached 7th in the Hitwise recruitment chart of 7th January” added Julian.

“The UK has been concerned for some time about the spread of Bird Flu from migrating birds, when the real danger was from Rudolph and his mutinous reindeers. Apparently the only cure available for MDD (Mad Deer Disease) is a new job prescription from 1Job.co.uk” quipped Marketing Manager Ivan Callanan from a psychiatrist’s couch.

1Job.co.uk Sends Over One Million Clicks To Job Boards - December 2006

1Job.co.uk has confirmed that its UK and Ireland dedicated jobs search engine sent over 1,000,000 click thrus to sites listed on the 1Job site in 30 days, in the months of October and November. Julian Felstead, Sales Director of 1Job said “We hit the half million target about a year ago, so doubling this up now to the million mark is really great news both for us, and for all our job board customers”.

“The 1Job search engine is firmly established as one of the most popular resource sites with serious job hunters in the UK and Ireland and it is a great asset to all job boards to build up their visitor numbers and CV registrations, and of course those wishing to provide top quality candidates for their clients jobs”.

“The type of traffic that we send to our customers websites is highly qualified and targeted. This is because job hunters click thru to the full advert on the job boards site, only when they have seen a job title and summary description that precisely matches the type of vacancy they are looking for, and in the location that they wish to work.”

* Site traffic source: xiti

Trial Demand Forces Rethink Strategy - 3 for 2 Offer - November 2006

1Job.co.uk, the UK and Ireland jobs search engine that sends job seekers to job adverts on job boards say that there has been a huge increase in demand for job seeker traffic trial requests. 1Job, say they are working flat out to meet the pre Christmas rush and that the ‘word-on-the-street’ is that many job boards are getting themselves set-up now for a bumper New Year, and that they are keen to get all their candidate attraction strategies finalised in good time.

1Job Sales and Marketing Manager, Ivan Callanan said “We have to get new job board trials running by early December so that we can provide meaningful traffic forecasts for them for the New Year. To encourage this we have launched our ‘Buy 3 for 2 Offer’. This simply means that any job board with over 1000 jobs can participate in a free trial during December. We will continue to drive traffic to their job adverts throughout the remainder of the month of December free of charge in return for a commitment to stay with 1Job in January and February. This clearly presents a major advantage to job boards as the usual pre Christmas and New Year first quarter, somewhat frantic, quest for traffic can be avoided”.

“Jobs adverts at job boards are read, indexed and updated automatically by the 1Job search engine, so there is normally no set-up work at all required by job board technical staff”, Julian Felstead 1Job’s MD said “We still have work to do at our end in order to get things organised properly for each trial, but getting this sorted early in December does mean I don’t have to pay my staff double time to work over Christmas” [There was no comment from 1Job’s staff on this point!] Julian went on to say “A key benefit to our customers is that this will give us more time in which to optimise customers listings to meet any special traffic requirements that they may have ready for the big New Year push”.

Previously this month, 1Job.co.uk announced they sent over 1,000,000 job advert click thrus to job boards in 30 days during October and November.

1Job - Design, Optimisation, Page Rank and Brand - November 2006

How do you re-design a site that has great search engine rankings, is hugely popular and is already an award winning brand and site. The answer has to be… very carefully. 1Job.co.uk – The UK and Ireland’s job search engine has been working on this problem for six months and plans to re-launch its sites ‘look and feel’ by the end of November.

The site is built around its candidate attraction purpose and provides direct links to online job adverts throughout the UK and Ireland. Job boards, recruiters and employers utilising 1Job.co.uk’s service receive well over half a million candidate referrals direct to their job adverts each month. For major job advertisers charges are based on a low cost per click (cpc) pay per click (ppc) model.

Julian Felstead MD of 1Job.co.uk says, “The site is firmly established as the leading job search engine in the UK & Ireland. It was voted an internet Superbrand winning site in March of this year, one of only a handful of online recruitment sites. The problem we have is the site is already highly search engine optimised and has literally thousands of top twenty pages on the main search engines.

When your site has this number of top positions then making even a single, apparently simple change to improve the design, can mean your natural search engine rankings or page rank can be negatively affected. The site is already hugely popular with job hunting candidates and is designed to be fast and efficient in taking relevant high quality candidate traffic directly to our customers' job adverts and CV registration pages. We have to go very carefully with any site changes we wish to make.”

1Job.co.uk wanted to make certain functional improvements and changes to the sites look, whilst maintaining its brand identity, its optimisation and page rank. Their approach has been made based around three key decisions: firstly, to keep the highest level of control over any re-design; secondly, not to make any major changes to an already successful functional design; thirdly, to retain and carry out all the software coding in-house and avoid the use of external software engineers who may not have appreciated some aspects of the sites existing code and operation.

A number of individual design consultants in the UK and Europe were employed including some outside optimisation experts. A process of testing a number of small, but important, changes to the site over a number of months has already been undertaken to identify the right solutions for the site and its users. A major design upload to the search engine pages is to be made by the end of November with various other changes to the site being made soon.

1Job.co.uk are open to share their experiences with others, and will possibly produce a newsletter or white paper on the subject if there is sufficient interest. If you wish to hear more about their experience then please email them at: designchange@1job.co.uk.

1Job Search Engine in Top 10 - August 2006

1Job.co.uk, the award-winning eSuperbrand job search engine that drives job hunters directly to online job adverts was ranked by Hitwise as one of the top 10 most visited UK recruitment websites for the first week of August.

The other sites in the top 10 were, in order: www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk, www.totaljobs.com, www.reed.co.uk, www.monster.co.uk, www.jobsite.co.uk, www.jobs.nhs.uk, www.jobs.ac.uk, jobs.guardian.co.uk, www.jobsgopublic.com.

Julian Felstead, Managing Director of 1Job.co.uk said, “We are very pleased to reach this position. 1Job enables job searchers to find relevant jobs from hundreds of job websites on the internet very quickly and easily. Vast relevant content and our fast search are clearly what makes us highly popular with all types of job hunters and career movers”.

The 1Job.co.uk site is used by all types of job boards throughout the UK and Ireland to drive tens of thousands of job hunter traffic directly to them. Major job boards in the Hitwise top 10 use 1Job.co.uk to enhance their visitor numbers and help them stay on top of the rankings.

1Job.co.uk - PPC Traffic For Job Boards - February 2006

Major generic and niche job boards have been benefited from increased job seeker traffic being sent from the 1Job - Jobs Search Engine. In January many of the UK and Irelands major job boards were sent tens of thousand of additional visitors directly to their job adverts and CV registration pages. The jobs dedicated, vertical search engine links UK and Ireland job hunters directly to recruitment advertisers job adverts on the internet.

Julian Felstead, Sales Director of 1Job.co.uk said “We are extremely pleased with the record breaking results we have achieved in January for many of our Job Board Customers. Many have received over 50,000 job advert click thrus. One customer alone received nearly 90,000 job advert click thrus directly to their job pages and CV Registration pages. And with our unique charging system they benefit from a pay for performance traffic acquisition method.”

“It is great to see that many of the serious job boards really do look to enhance both traffic quality as well as quantity to their sites. It makes good business sense to improve the response to their customers vacancy adverts” said Julian Felstead.

Major job boards now using 1Job.co.uk’s service include:
Accountancy Age, British Jobs, Caterer, Computing Careers, Consultantsboard, CV-Library, eFinancialCareers, Insurance Jobs Board, IT Jobs Post, Jobsite, Jobstore, New9to5, Office Recruit, Pharmiweb, Sales Target, Simply Sales and Marketing, Staffnurse, Tip Top Jobs and many more.

A free 2 week trial for job boards is available in order to assess the quality and quantity of traffic prior to agreeing a budget and a capped guaranteed click thru quantity. Job Boards can sign up for a trial at 1Job’s job board sign up page at: www.bigandclever.co.uk.

1Job – Jobs Search Engine was only officially launched last May and has been named as a finalist in the UK’s prestigious Onrec Awards in the ‘Best technical innovation by a recruitment site’ category. The Onrec awards will be formally announced on the 8th March at the Café Royal London. A full list of other award finalists can be viewed at the Onrec.com site.

The Job Board sign up page is at: www.bigandclever.co.uk

1Job - Best Tech Finalist - 1Job named as Best Tech Finalist in Onrec Awards - January 2006

1Job.co.uk, which was only officially launched last May, has been named as a finalist in the Onrec Awards.

The jobs dedicated, vertical search engine that links UK and Ireland job hunters directly to recruitment advertisers job adverts on the internet, has been nominated as a finalist in both “Best technical innovation in online recruitment by a supplier” and “Best technical innovation in online recruitment as a recruitment site”.

Julian Felstead, Sales Director of 1Job.co.uk said “We are extremely pleased with the nomination and recognition by Onrec’s independent panel of judges. The notification of being named as a finalist came completely out of the blue for us and is a great start to 2006. We only hope that we can go on to win against some great competition in both categories.”

1Job.co.uk claims to provide job hunters with the ability to fast search for all types of jobs throughout the UK and Ireland, and to enable them to locate a possible vacancy in less than one minute. Job hunters view a summary description of jobs and then by clicking on any job title, they are taken directly to the full details of that job on the recruitment advertiser’s own website.

This is because their technology automatically collects advert details and then extracts, generates and indexes all the keywords from each full job advert on the advertisers own website before displaying up to date job detail summaries. With 1Job.co.uk, each job on a clients website also now becomes an advert for their site.

In October 2005 1Job sent more than 500,000 job hunters to job adverts on job boards and other recruiter’s websites.

The Onrec awards will be formally announced on the 8th March at the Café Royal London. A full list of other award finalists can be viewed at the Onrec.com site at: www.onrec.com/awards

1Job Search Engine Halfway To Million - November 2005

1Job.co.uk has confirmed that its UK and Ireland jobs dedicated vertical search engine sent over 500,000 click thrus to sites listed with it in September 2005.

Julian Felstead, Sales Director of 1Job said “The site has grown rapidly and is continuing to prove an extremely popular resource with serious job hunters in the UK and Ireland. Many major and niche job boards successfully use the 1Job search engine to build their site visitor numbers and extend the reach of their advertising. Larger vacancy advertisers are now receiving over 40,000 job hunter click thrus direct to their adverts, jobs by email and registration pages. The feedback we are getting from them is really terrific”.

1Job claims to provide job hunters with the ability to fast search for all types of jobs throughout the UK and Ireland, and to enable them to locate a possible vacancy in less than one minute. Summary job details are displayed, and when the user sees vacancies that they like the look of, clicking on the title of the job takes them directly through to the recruiters own website. Homepage links are also provided. The site has been described by some of its users as being “like Google for jobs”.

Julian Felstead finished by saying “Reaching the half million job advert click thrus per month is a major milestone for us and we are now looking towards the one million which we hope will happen for us in the early part of next year”.

For more information on the 1Job Search engine visit www.1Job.co.uk or contact Julian Felstead on 0870 3500 230.

Jobs Search Engine out of 'Beta' - May 2005

After fifteen months of intense testing, 1Job.co.uk has confirmed that its UK and Ireland true jobs search engine is officially out of Beta trials and is already driving hundreds of thousands of job hunters to vacancies advertised on the web.

Trials on the Internet started in December 2003 after more than two years design and build work. The job specific vertical search engine now consistently collects, indexes and displays more than 100,000 fresh job adverts from employers, recruitment agencies and job boards each day.

Free trials were provided to hundreds of recruiters in order to test, de-bug and develop the systems. Julian Felstead, Sales Director of 1Job said “During 2004 we crawled, collected, indexed and displayed nearly 30 million job adverts with over 20 million advert views per month being carried out by job hunters on the site, and the site only crashed once for a period of 12 minutes.”

1Job claims to provide job hunters with the ability to fast search for all types of jobs throughout the UK and Ireland, and to enable them to locate a possible vacancy in less than one minute. Summary job details are displayed, and when the user sees vacancies that they like the look of, clicking on the title of the job takes them directly through to the recruiters own website. Homepage links are also provided. The site has been described by some of its users as being “like Google for jobs”.

Employers, agencies and job boards use the site to extend the reach of their vacancy advertising, to 1Job’s job searching audience that is already more than 250,000 visitors per month.

Julian Felstead stated, “Our main objective is to provide the widest range of job advert listings to our growing audience of job hunters. Some advertisers are receiving over 30,000 relevant job advert click thrus to adverts on their websites per month. These larger agents and job board advertisers are being charged on a performance related pay-per-click basis, but even the smallest recruiters are catered for by charging a flat rate nominal monthly fee.”

For more information or to sign up for a free trial, visit www.1Job.co.uk or contact Julian Felstead.

New Online Recruitment Advertising System Launched - April 2004

1Job.co.uk have designed what they believe is the electronic online job-board of the future.

Robot Crawler collects adverts
“The first difference recruiters are surprised to find is that they don’t have to post job adverts any more. Instead our search engine robot crawlers come and collect the vacancies from the Recruiter” said Julian Felstead from 1Job.co.uk “After being indexed and categorised, these jobs are displayed on the 1Job.co.uk site and also local and specialist partner sites in true search engine fashion. With the tedious time consuming job vacancy posting a thing of the past, the Recruiter can spend more time on the critical search and selection aspect of their business”

Intuitive fast search system
For the job seeker, 1Job.co.uk claims that the system is highly intuitive and very fast, making it ideal for the serious and selective job hunter and those at work looking for their next career opportunity.

Job hunter taken to the recruiters site
The job hunter can view a summary of the vacancy, and with a single click they are taken directly to the job advert on the recruiters’ own website. The recruiter therefore has full control over the advert, job description, candidate profile, application method etc.

Cartoon of the day
All the usual facilities that job hunters have come to expect are provided on the 1Job.co.uk site: a full search, new jobs only, other jobs from this recruiter, job save, email job-watchdog alerts etc. There is even a cartoon of the day feature, with cartoons licensed from top American office humour cartoonist Randy Glasbergen.

Promotes recruiters own website
The recruiters’ website is also successfully promoted to the type of job hunters they wish to attract to their site. When the job hunter has discovered the recruiters’ website, many will choose to simply bookmark it and return to it directly in the future. This is something that job-boards traditionally have avoided as this may adversely affect the job-boards visitor numbers over time.

“CV deluge” eliminated
1Job.co.uk say that they have made a deliberate omission from their website. There is no CV upload or CV posting to recruiter facility. This decision has been made to avoid the “CV deluge” problem that many recruiters have complained about over the last year or so. Julian Felstead stated “If candidates are able to post their CV at the click of a button then some will, even in some cases before they have read the job advert properly, let alone considered if the job is really suitable for them. This merely creates vast amounts of unnecessary filtering of unsuitable candidates for the recruiter. These candidates should realise that they are not only wasting their own time, but they may be doing themselves long term harm, as subsequent applications to the same recruiter could be automatically or manually excluded.”

Low cost benefits
An important factor to be considered by all recruiters is the cost of vacancy advertising and website promotion. 1Job.co.uk claim that as their system is highly automated, they can collect the recruiter’s vacancies, promote the vacancy as well as the recruiters website and charge less than 10p per advert per day for the service. In addition, the recruiter also makes other savings as they have no in-house costs associated with job-posting activities with their electronic online recruitment system compared with traditional job-board advertising.

Is this the future?
Is this the future for online vacancy advertising? Now that almost all recruiters and employers have their own website displaying their own vacancy adverts, all of which may now be collected and indexed by systems of this type. 1Job.co.uk certainly think so.