by Toby Dayton

Marty Brack, in a recent ERE post, provides an excellent case study in rethinking traditional methods of recruitment advertising. In the test, he analyzed the cost per quality resume using both Careerbuilder and LinkedIn. Not surprisingly, given how horrendously Careerbuilder and Monster (the 2 most bloated, polluted, antiquated, pay-to-post behemoths) typically perform for employers, LinkedIn delivered far superior results. LinkedIn provided almost as many applicants as Careerbuilder, but a higher percentage of their candidates were qualified for the positions advertised. This resulted in a much lower cost per quality candidate and therefore a much higher ROI. In addition to just providing solid information, the article delivers 3 important lessons for recruiters, employers, and even job seekers.

1) While the hype can seem excessive, and in some cases it probably is, social media has become an essential, mandatory component of recruiting efforts and companies must be thinking both strategically and tactically about how they can best leverage it. (One simple example would include automatically publishing jobs from a company’s career portal on their corporate website onto their company’s Facebook Fan Page using the Facebook application Current Jobs At Our Company).

2) Just because someone has used Careerbuilder and Monster forever (and maybe, circa 1997, they even worked), it doesn’t automatically mean that the decision to continue using pay-to-post job boards is a good one or makes any sense in today’s environment. As people used to say about the daily newspaper, no one ever got fired for placing an employment classified in the daily newspaper. That is, until someone else eventually looked at the recruitment advertising budget, questioned why the company was spending $750 or more per week for a black and white liner ad that no one saw, and decided that it was time to bring in some fresh thinking regarding talent acquisition strategies. The same thing is happening now with the job boards.

Only 3% of jobs are filled by ‘mega’ job boards such as Monster, Careerbuilder, and HotJobs. They are not only expensive and bloated, but they simply do not deliver quality candidates. Equally as detrimental for employers, the pay-to-post job boards are filled with old, outdated job listings, work-at-home scams, phishing jobs, scam jobs, identity theft postings, and other garbage listings which seriously erode the user experience and potentially a company’s employment branding. This means, as well, that aggregators such as Indeed and Simplyhired that do nothing more than mash all of those bloated, polluted databases into a giant pile of garbage are equally as counter-productive.

There are better, cheaper, more efficient, more effective, and more transparent ways to advertise for jobs. And job search engines such as LinkUp, which only indexes jobs from company websites, offer a performance-based, per-click model so employers only pay for those job seekers that are delivered straight to the company’s career portal on their company website.

3) In the same way that Google and search engine marketing have driven greater transparency and data into the world of advertising, the same is happening in recruitment advertising. Employers must not only critically analyze where quality candidates are coming from and determine which strategies and advertising channels are delivering those quality candidates, but then also allocate resources accordingly. Companies that neglect to do so will simply not be as competitive as those that are.

If you haven’t checked out FastCompany.com lately it is worth the visit.  Every few minutes they update their site with all kinds of interesting stories INCLUDING, every once in while (like weekly), one of my Gruzzles.

I will try to remember to send you over there to see the latest.  But if you are really smart, and all viral aware, you will register so you can leave a comment on the FC Gruzzle because millions…Millions, I say, MILLIONS of people…will read your comment and click to your blog or company.

Here is the Gruzzle of the Day over at FastCompany:

Ed Note:  I may have exaggerated their traffic counts.

Months back I wrote a post about Alex Bogusky, the hotshot ad guru who had been featured in Fast Company. He was readying a new advertising campaign for Microsoft. In good fun, I offered up Five Things Alex Bogusky Should Do For Microsoft. The VERY FIRST TIP was to feature Bill Gates in the ads. See here:

1. Feature Bill Gates on the ads. I know he is semi-retired, building birdhouses and out saving the world. He can do so much more by staying home and fixing his company. The world does not need another rich do-gooder meandering around the world expounding on fixing poverty, however laudable that might be. What we need are real life examples of smart, creative problem solvers who can solve really huge problems. And Microsoft has a huge one. Bring Gates back and put him in the ads. I will believe they are fixing the problems when I see him commit to me, in person.

No doubt due to my suggestion, Alex paired Bill Gates with Jerry Seinfeld for a series of ads for Microsoft.  But am I getting credit for this suggestion? Nooooooooooo.

I cannot be too mad. Because when you use The Google and type in Alex Bogusky, my original post lands at number FOUR (4).