Human Resources Search Engine Optimization

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Human Resources Search Engine Optimization

Jason Gorham

CEO, SharkStrike

Leading Companies Still Struggling with this Emerging Best Practice.

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In the first of a four-part series, SharkStrike discusses the emergence of

HR SEO, as well as findings from its research into current HR SEO practices

at leading companies.

Search engine optimization (SEO) has been a standard practice used by corporate Marketing departments to attract qualified buyers to websites for years. And while many Human Resources leaders might know little or nothing about SEO, leading-edge companies seeking to win the talent acquisition wars are increasingly turning to methodologies that optimize the likelihood of attracting high-quality – and only high-quality – candidates. When it comes to attracting the talent required to drive success in a rapidly evolving business environment, HR is looking to marketing for cues. How-ever, many companies – including some of the largest companies in the world – are not yet capitalizing on the potential of SEO to improve their candidate pool. As a result, they likely are missing some important opportunities to maximize their talent acquisition spends and returns.

This SharkStrike White Paper examines the application of SEO methodologies within corporate HR departments as part of their talent acquisition strategies. The paper defines SEO, discusses its use in product and service marketing, and outlines the rationale for its potential to create efficient and cost-effective avenues for attracting key talent. The paper also looks at current practices with SEO by analyzing the effectiveness of SEO strategies at the top five Fortune 100 companies.

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in the listings produced from a given search. So, for example, typing the words “women’s shoes” in the search bar of, for example, Google, produces the following.

What is SEO?

The listings on the right-hand side and the upper most portions (the portion in the Yellow shading) of the page are paid listings. While companies want their paid listings to appear as high as possible on that list, the most highly optimized (most cost effective) way of attracting buyers to the site is to design the web site so that it appears high on the list on the left-hand side of the page. This is considered the natural, or organic, listing and represents the search engine algorithm’s “best guess” at what the searcher is looking for. These are called natural listings, and their order is determined by how well the company has optimized their site for search engines. So, based on this search, Nine West, Naturalizer and Cabela’s have sites most optimized to attract those searching on the term “women’s shoes.”

To illustrate how finely tuned a search engine strategy must be in order to attract the “right” buyer, notice in the below how the search results have changed when the search term is altered to “women’s shoes sales.” In this case, Nike, Kenneth Cole and DC Era sites appear at the top of the listings.

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And an even more specific search term, “women’s running shoes,” yields New Balance, addidas and K-Swiss site listing at the top.

All of which is to suggest that using the right keywords is essential in creating listings (this is called Keyword Research) that rank high in the search results, and SEO is the process for using those keywords.

SEO and Human Resources

The wisdom of employing sound SEO strategies has become readily apparent as consumers have trended toward internet shopping. The application of those strategies for Human Resources has been less appreciated by most companies until recently.

However, as companies continue to compete for the key talent required to drive business success, they have increasingly turned to traditional marketing strategies and techniques to differentiate their companies ad career development opportunities from their talent competitors. SEO is one component of that shift.

There are several drivers of this trend. For starters, traditional methods of advertising job openings are undergoing significant change. Nowhere is this more evident than in the newspaper business, where these outlets are either severely curtailing their production schedules or shuttering operations altogether. This shift has been owed largely to the prolif-eration of media content and a shift on the part of consumers away from newspapers and on to the net. The loss of news-papers has meant a loss of the channel company’s once used to advertise their job postings.

Job boards, like Monster and CareerBuilder.com took their place and promised to deliver quality results in terms of job candidates. But as soon as these boards supplanted the dwindling newspaper industry, their shortcomings have become apparent and companies are rethinking their reliance on these large boards. The primary downside to this kind of internet strategy is that it tends to drive a response that is large and undifferentiated. While it might seem like a great thing to receive a large response to a job posting, it often is not the case.

The problems inherent in a large influx of resumes are nearly self-evident. For starters, most companies have been subtracting from their recruiter ranks in the past year or so, the result of which is fewer people to sort through those resumes, and less time for each recruiter to spend sifting through for the quality applicants. Ironically, the net result is often enough that companies are able to locate fewer qualified candidates out of the pool of applicants. Anything that inhibits a company’s ability to locate the highest quality candidates is a negative force against business results at most anytime. It is particularly detrimental at a time like now, when companies have the ability to hire fewer people, and they need the best possible people they can get to help them grow out of a deep economic downturn.

Consequently, companies are abandoning or seriously curtailing their use of job boards. CareerXRoads, which conducts an annual survey of the sources of hire reported in its January 2009 survey that Job Boards represented 12.3% of all

There is another issue with the job boards: the cost. “The most visible trend in 2008 is the pressure to reduce hires (and associated costs) attributed to third-party recruiters, newspapers and job boards. A steady growth of sourcing tactics, especially social networks and search engine marketing is also evident.” In other words, social media like Facebook and other online networking avenues like LinkedIn, are taking the middle man out of the equation; the barrier to one-to-one contact between candidate or potential candidate and insiders of companies has been eliminated.

And, as the report points out, search engine marketing is taking ground away from the job boards. The CareerXRoads survey found that about 20% of all external hires come from the company website, and some of that is attributable to companies’ abilities to attract candidates based on the strength of their SEO strategy.

Current Practices

While the case for setting a strong SEO strategy is a compelling – perhaps even obvious – one, many companies are failing to fully realize the value of this approach. SharkStrike conducted an analysis in May of 2009, of SEO practices, as measured by the effectiveness of relevant keywords, at the top five companies in the Fortune 100. Our findings suggest that there is significant opportunity to realize the cost and quality improvement gains that SEO represents.

The chart below shows the search results for several search terms associated with roles available at Chevron. The results show how many times the search term yielded a page with Chevron in one of the top 10 natural listings. Of the six terms searched, only two resulted with Chevron in the top 10. Both produced one listing each. Of the 41 terms searched on for Chevron (including the term “Chevron”), none appeared as the top natural listing.

Chevron is not alone. The search terms used in the analysis of ConocoPhillips were explicitly about job search and about the company. None of the seven terms produced a result with ConocoPhillips in the top 10, as shown in the graph below.

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Number in Top 10

Oil Careers Oil Jobs Upstream

Careers UpstreamJobs ScienceEarth Jobs Earth Science Careers 5 4 3 2 1 0

Chevron

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The results were similar for Exxon, General Electric and Walmart.

The lost opportunity for the oil companies is evident in the graphic below, which shows the number of time search terms are used over a recent 12-month period. For example, the terms “oil jobs,” “oil gas jobs,” and “oil and Gas jobs” showed up 301,000, 110,000 and 74,000 times , respectively. This volume of search demonstrates significant interest in these jobs and the use of search engines like Google to help locate them. Stacked against the search term results for the oil companies discussed above, the numbers indicate that with more sophisticated SEO strategies, companies can capitalize on the active interest of candidates searching to find out about their open positions.

Number in Top 10 4 2 0 Number in Top 10 4 2 0

ConocoPhilips

Jobs with ConocoPhilips conocophilips.com ConocoPhilips r ecruiting ConocoPhilips jobs ConocoPhilips hir e ConocoPhilips Car eers Number in Top 10 4 2 0 Keywords oil jobs oil gas jobs oil and gas jobs jobs in oil oil job oil rig jobs oil field jobs oil & gas jobs oil rigs jobs offshore oil jobs oil company jobs oil industry jobs oil rig job

246,000 90,500 49,500 49,500 33,100 27,100 27,100 18,100 5,400 8,100 8,100 6,600 4,400 301,000 110,000 74,000 49,500 49,500 40,500 27,100 18,100 12,100 9,900 8,100 8,100 6,600 Advertiser

Competition Local SearchVolume: April Global Monthly SearchVolume

Keywords related to term(s) entered - sort by relevance

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Cost Implications

The obvious implication of the analyses is that these companies – and perhaps thousands

like them – are employing either ineffective HR SEO strategies, or no strategies at all. Consequently, the y are missing the opportunity to draw candidates to one of the most important

components of t heir candidate acquisition toolbox: their websites.

Perhaps less obvious is the missed cost optimization opportunity. On average, each Monster customer spends an estimated $10,000 on Monster.com each year. Spread across hundreds of postings, this cost can be minimized, but even still, it is an unnecessary recurring cost and one that produces, as discussed, less-than-ideal quality. SEO is a one-time cost, the benefits of which accrue only to the company (not, for example, a job board), and so is an investment in building the best talent acquisitions possible to attract the best candidates possible.

Conclusion: Adapting an HR SEO Strategy

Human Resources departments are increasingly looking to traditional marketing methodologies to attract the high quality talent companies require to succeed in today’s dynamic, and challenging, business climate. At companies like Microsoft, Fluor and P&G, increasing attention is being paid to how candidates get on a company’s career site and what happens when they get there. Marketing principles are being applied in these cases. In fact, at Microsoft, teams from both HR and marketing are working cross-functionally to apply the principals of attracting revenue to the task of acquiring campus talent via targeted branding, messaging and so forth.

HR SEO is the logical next step. The arguments for HR SEO are compelling: higher quality candidates, fewer non-qualified candidates and lower cost. Still, many of the world’s largest companies are struggling to fully utilize the potential of SEO. As these companies quickly come up the learning curve, we believe HR SEO will rapidly become new standard for talent acquisition.

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Coming Up:

About

Jason Gorham

Founder & CEO SharkStrike

As a motivational speaker, advisor, author and entertainer, Jason Gorham, CEO of SharkStrike, helps talent organizations to learn how to transition from effectively attracting the right candidates, to understanding and developing the skills it takes to be exceptional.  Being regarded as the pioneer in the new era of “Smart Recruiting”, the emergence of using online media tools to identify passive candidates, Gorham has been educating the industry on the recruiting/sourcing business since 2004.

Gorham has worked with the world’s most effective corporate leaders, human resource personnel and recruiters from multibillion-dollar manufacturers to top international recruiting agencies. With over a decade of experience in recruiting, he has launched several organizations and industry resources such as J2EEJob.com, SemiConductorJobsBlog.com, Shark-Strike LLC and CareerMetaSearch.com.  Currently Gorham serves as: CEO and Managing Director for SharkShark-Strike, CEO of CareerMetaSearch.com and the author of a patent pending process called “Push Posting 2.0”.

Gorham is an internationally recognized speaker on targeted hiring and “Smart Recruiting”. Some of his recent speaking engagements include Kennedy Information Recruiting Conference, London Enhance Media Online Recruitment Confer-ence, ERE ConferConfer-ence, Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs and MIT South Florida Group.  He has developed a strong interactive audience by leveraging multiple communication channels such as blogging, micro-blogging, social networking and email marketing.

Considered as a highly regarded expert source among both the media and the staffing community, Gorham was a Dual Category Finalist for the Citrix Technology Awards.  He has been interviewed by the following publications: Business-Week, Wall Street Journal - Career Journal, About.com, Newsday, Hunt Scanlon, The Angel Journal, JimStroud.com, Recruiter UK, Miami Herald, Palm Beach Post and Sun Sentinel.  He holds a Bachelors Degree from Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island.

About SharkStrike and S^4

SharkStrike LLC, the world’s leading passive candidate strategy company, and its patent-pending Push Posting human resources search engine marketing product, helps companies strengthen their passive candidate capture strategy. SharkStrike’s S^4™ passive candidate offering encompasses recruitment search engine marketing (SEM), recruitment search engine optimization (HR-SEO) social media/social networking recruiting and open web candidate sourcing. By