If your association has a LinkedIn Group, your group members are likely to get a daily email digest of the day’s discussions. Not a bad thing… but what if every one of those emails was promoting a competitor to your online career center? If you have the “Jobs” tab enabled for your Group, that’s exactly what is happening. When you create a Group, it defaults to enabling the “Jobs” tab which is a way to keep job ads from cluttering up the discussion area. However, if the tab is enabled then every digest email your Group members receive includes an ad for LinkedIn’s own job posting service. Click the “Get Started” link at the bottom of that email and this is where it takes your Group members: http://www.linkedin.com/jobs/post.
Chances are, you’re not marketing your own career center via daily email messages, and chances are companies that want to advertise to your audience pay you for that access. You’ve got to hand it to LinkedIn – it’s a very clever way to leverage the activities and value of professional associations that are engaging in social media – at absolutely no cost to LinkedIn. They don’t even have to share any of their job board revenue with anyone. Now, it’s not that people won’t use LinkedIn to post jobs, just like they use other types of job boards along with yours, but giving them free access to your audience to market their competing service simply makes no sense.
So, what to do? First, have your Group administrator disable the “Jobs” tab under the Group settings. What about people who want to post jobs to your Group? There are several options and we’ll be talking about that at the ASAE Annual Meeting in a Learning Lab called, “Make Social Media Work for Your Online Career Center.” It’s a panel discussion on Monday, August 23 at 8:30 am with Dianne Vance, CAE, ASCE; Peter Inchauteguiz, CAE, AAPS, Regina Gibson-Burtnick, ASHA, and Chip Deale, CAE, CFA Institute. If you can’t make it there, follow the session tweets with hashtag #asae10 ls3. We’ll also be posting future blog articles that take a closer look at your options. If you just can’t wait that long, email me at cmcintyre@boxwoodtech.com.
Hope to see you in LA!
Like everyone else, recruiters are trying to understand how social media impacts the way they have traditionally conducted business. As they get started they’re trying a number of approaches when they find niche social media communities for specialized professionals: they’re posting jobs for free on LinkedIn and Facebook starting discussion threads or making other posts either related to a specific job opening or on other, sometimes frivolous, topics that aren’t really of interest to your members. They can clutter up the conversations on your site and turn off your members.
So, how can you give employers the social media exposure they want, in a way that doesn’t clog your communities with job ads, ensures those recruiters get better value, AND helps support your paid job board program?
If a paid ad on your job board is automatically sent to Facebook, LinkedIn, and even Twitter, then you’ve just given the employers the exposure to your social media communities that they wanted – and they get their job in four places (possibly more, if you’re part of a job board network) and they only had to enter it once. You’re also going to keep the employer from being viewed as annoying by your members. Your social media outlets can remain focused on discussion. Any jobs visible from your social media outlets will also be found on your job board.
Plus, in addition to getting their job on those social media outlets there are still all the other reasons why a job on your career center is a better way for them to recruit:
- Associations market their career center regularly to ensure a steady stream of candidates
- Unlike your social media outlets, the career center is visible to a larger audience including those not yet engaging much with social media.
- On many association job boards, job seekers have set-up alerts to be notified via email when new jobs match their criteria
- Typically, while a job posting is active on the career center, employers can search the association’s resume database
By ensuring all jobs go through your job board, your members and prospective members can always go to your job board if they want to see all the relevant job listings available. Otherwise, they’d have to make sure they check your Facebook page, your LinkedIn Group, your Twitter stream, AND your job board if they don’t want to miss something.
When you establish your career center as the starting point for getting open positions visible to as wide an audience as possible, employers and recruiters will have better results in finding the best candidates. Plus, if they are interested in doing more with your social media outlets, then engage them as content providers and coordinate with them to create discussion topics that are more meaningful to your members, such as interviewing tips, work-life balance issues, etc. Those discussions will position the recruiters to be viewed as helpful resources, which will further improve the benefits they receive from engaging with your community.
As I’ve been thinking about how to respond to some recent competitive noise in the marketplace I’ve had some interesting internal discussions that I thought might be worth sharing. I’ll take you through our thinking and let you know where we netted out. In our situation some of the claims about our business were flat out untrue, others were stretching the truth.
My first reaction was to take the high road – stick to our guns and maintain our value positioning. Play to our strength as an industry leader. Then when I reviewed our competitive response I started to have second thoughts. Quite frankly, it seemed a little weak. My personal competitive streak was perking up. Could I really just sit by and let these “untruths” sit in the market while we continued focusing on our core value proposition.
I had the team take a second pass at the positioning, dialing it up a bit. At about the same time we received a call from a client who was considering leaving us. We quickly set up a meeting to save the account. During the meeting we found ourselves defending our company against the competitive claims that started this discussion. After taking our client through a point-by-point response (and saving the account) I decided to direct the team to dial up the competitive response even further. I couldn’t sit back any longer.
Reading the third pass at our competitive response I felt like we aggressively (and fairly) refuted all ill-founded claims. Then I slept on it. Before updating our communications vehicles with the new messaging I pulled the team together. I just couldn’t bring myself to proceed in a tit-for-tat response with the competition. It was playing down to them. Successful companies race forward, they don’t glance back in the rear view mirror – that’s when they can lose a step. Who knows how it will play out in the market. In the meantime I think it was healthy for the team to go through the gyrations that we did. We’re now all internally aligned and sprinting forward. For me, staying out of the mud and sticking to our core value proposition is the path that feels right.
At ASAE’s Annual Meeting, I’ll be moderating a panel discussion titled, “Make Social Media Work for Your Online Career Center.” As part of that session, the panelists will share the specific tactics they’ve employed to drive awareness of their job boards, along with the results. I know many of you are interested in this topic, so I thought I’d give you a sneak peek at one of the tactics the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) has employed, along with the results.
ASHA’s Facebook page has over 20,000 fans and is a very active discussion forum. They’ve been posting career-related discussion topics on Facebook lately and with each of those posts, there has been a corresponding jump in their career center traffic. So far, the post that has generated the most discussion, as well as the highest amount of referred traffic to their career center was this one:
“Do you think it’s right or wrong for employers to research you through Google, LinkedIn, etc.?”
That question generated 43 comments over a three day period on their Facebook page. Even more exciting:
- On the day the discussion started, the number of career center visits was 942 (60% higher than the 548 average weekday visits for the three weeks prior to this posting)
- The next day as the discussion continued, there were 1,820 visits to the career center (over 200% higher than normal weekday visits!)
- The total number of visits to their career center that week ended up 83% higher than the total number of visits the previous week.
What’s particularly interesting is that this discussion topic wasn’t a sales pitch for the career center. It didn’t even specifically mention ASHA’s career center… but there’s no doubt that the career center benefited from the discussion.
What’s also interesting is that in comparing ASHA’s career-related discussion posts on Facebook to their other posts over the last 30 days, the career-related topics generated an average of three times the number of comments than other types of posts. So, the career-related discussion not only is good for the career center, but it’s also good for the Facebook community’s level of engagement. Pretty exciting stuff!!
If you want to see if tactics like this can boost your career center traffic – I encourage you to give it a try. Be sure you can track analytics on your career center before you start (if you’re a Boxwood client, we can help with that). We’d love to include your results in the panel discussion at ASAE, if you’d like to share. Just send your results by Wednesday, August 18th to Carrie McIntyre at cmcintyre@boxwoodtech.com and let her know if you’ll be attending the annual meeting… and whether you still a need ticket for our reception at the Conga Room!
I look forward to seeing what results you get!
Posted in Events and Webinars, Job Boards, Social Media
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Tagged "ASAE Annual Meeting", "ASHA", "career center", "Job Boards", "Promoting Your Job Board", "Social Media Marketing", "social media", Events, job boards
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The saying goes, “content is king” and that certainly applies to your career center splash page. We believe it is a “best practice” to keep your content current and up-to-date. This practice will improve your search engine rankings and will help to generate repeat traffic to your career center.
Our most successful clients use their splash page to appeal to industry job seekers and employers. This page provides your career center users with the ability to view your organization as an employment resource. Showcase the most up-to-date industry employment information by updating your splash page today.
Creating a user-friendly splash page provides the following benefits:
- Provides associations with greater flexibility and control over the primary entry point for your career center.
- Gives associations a place on their website to post other career-related resources.
- Allows associations to cross-sell other career-related products.
By incorporating Search Engine Optimization tactics on your splash page, your association can increase the visibility of your career center.
- Gives associations the ability to better track marketing campaigns.
- Provides specific links for jobs seeker and employer audiences so associations can target their marketing efforts.
Do you have questions about marketing your career center? We’ll gladly talk to you about the benefits for your members and your bottom line. Contact us today.
The Boxwood Blog is pleased to publish the following article by Peter Weddle. Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including Recognizing Richard Rabbit, a fable of self-discovery for working adults, and Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.
The secret to creating an effective resume is to throw out traditional ideas and use a new version of that document—one that’s best described as an “incomplete record.” Ironically, presenting an incomplete portrait of yourself is the only way you can look better than the rest of the crowd in today’s job market.
Despite its name, the “incomplete record” has all of the information provided by a traditional resume. It is a complete description of your work experience and accomplishments, your education and training, and your professional or occupational affiliations and activities (e.g., the associations to which you belong). This self-description must tell employers what you can do, of course, but equally as important, it must also tell them what kind of contribution you can make to their success.
The information can also be presented in any one of the traditional formats for a resume: chronological, functional or hybrid. The only difference in an “incomplete record” is at the beginning of the document. Regardless of the format you select, the resume must begin with a Qualifications Summary that appears directly beneath your name and contact information. This three-to-four line section should use keywords and phrases to highlight your strongest credentials for employment. It ensures that recruiters will see your best assets, even if they don’t read all or even most of your resume.
At a superficial level, therefore, the “incomplete record” looks just like any other resume. So, what makes it incomplete? You do.
In order for a resume to be an “incomplete record,” you must first become incomplete yourself. You see, employers face two certainties in the 21st Century workplace:
Certainty 1: The skills that are necessary to make a meaningful contribution on-the-job today will be different from those required to make such a contribution tomorrow.
and
Certainty 2: Employers no longer have the resources or the time to provide the development necessary to keep workers up-to-date with their skills.
As a result, every organization now needs workers who (1) get it and (2) get it done on their own.
Proving That You Get It & Get It Done On Your Own
An “incomplete record” is designed to prove to employers that you understand the certainties of the modern workplace. You design your resume to acknowledge—and promote the fact—that you are an incomplete professional in your field and that you take personal responsibility for fixing that situation. In other words, you don’t want the document to perform as a traditional resume and show you as a completed person, but instead, you shape it to convey exactly the opposite impression. You use it to describe yourself as proudly unfinished in your development.
How do you do that?
One way is to start upgrading your skills right now. Even if you’re already an expert in your field. And, even if you’re in an active job search. Enroll in an educational or training program that will strengthen your ability to contribute on-the-job. Everyone can get better at what they do, and pursuing that self-improvement is the only way to protect yourself from the never ending creep of obsolescence in the modern workplace.
Then, add that credential to your record. First, make yourself look incomplete by adding the following information to the Education section of your resume:
- The name of the course or program you’re taking;
- The institution or organization that’s providing it;
- The term On-Going.
- Then, add a key phrase denoting that effort to your Qualifications Summary.
Those simple entries will convey a powerful message to any prospective employer. It signals that you know you can always get smarter in your field and that you take personal responsibility for doing so. It shows you have the humility to acknowledge what you don’t know and the courage to add to what you do know. There’s no more appealing credential to an employer in today’s job market, and only the “incomplete record” enables you to claim it.
Thanks for reading,
Peter
Visit me at Weddles.com
© Copyright 2010 WEDDLE’s LLC. All Rights Reserved.
In today’s edition of the Boxwood Blog, we give you another example of how you can promote the value of your job board. Even though we are in the “dog days” of August, your customers will still respond to well-designed offer that will save them money, while increasing their opportunity for revenue.
Here is a sample email that you can adapt. It promotes a multiple job-posting package. Read on!
Email Subject Line: Multiply and Save
Email Text:
You don’t have to wait for a promotion to save at /YOUR CAREER CENTER NAME/. With a multiple-job posting package you earn discounts immediately and have up to 365 days to:
- Post all the jobs purchased in your package
- Browse resumes at your convenience
- Receive Resume Agent Alerts
And for a limited time only, we’ll give you a FREE Featured Job Upgrade just for putting a multiple-job posting package to work before /END DATE/. That’s a savings of /$ cost of upgrade/, plus you can take up to one year to post your jobs.
Remember, /CAREER CENTER NAME/ is your online resource for recruiting quality candidates from a target audience of /INDUSTRY/ professionals. Streamline your hiring process with:
- Focused, qualified talent pool – Find the candidates with the skills and experience you are looking for, and spend less time doing it.
- Resume searching – Gain access to our resume database with any job posting.
- Search agents – Receive automatic email notification whenever new candidates match your requirements.
Visit /CAREER CENTER/ today and use /INSERT PROMO CODE/ to find the best candidates in the business.
This is just an example email of course. Do you have questions about marketing your career center? We’ll gladly talk to you about the benefits for your members and your bottom line. Contact us today.
This is the first of a multi-part blog post on how to increase your job posting this summer.
It always pays to say “thank you.” Even at a time when people are thinking about their summer vacation, it’s still possible to promote your job board. A simple “thank you” email to your clients, along with a well-crafted offer will let your best clients know they are special.
Here’s an example of what we mean. It’s a basic “thank you” email. Feel free to modify it, adapt it for your best clients. Just remember, it pays to say “thank you!”
Sample “Thank your” best customers email.
Email Subject: Featuring the best in 2010
Email text:
/YOUR NAME/ would like to thank you for being a devoted /CAREER CENTER NAME/ client by offer you a FREE Featured Job Upgrade with any multiple job posting package purchased in 2010. That’s a savings of /$ COST OF UPGRADE/ on top of the discount automatically earned when you purchase any multiple-job posting package. In addition to enjoying 365 days of resume database access, you can take up to one year to post your jobs.
Don’t forget /CAREER CENTER NAME/ is your online resource for recruiting quality candidates from a target audience of /INDUSTRY/ professionals. Streamline your hiring process today with:
- Focused, qualified talent pool – Find the candidates with the skills and experience you’re looking for – and spend less time doing it!
- Resume searching – Gain access to our resume database with any job posting.
- Search agents – Receive automatic email notifications whenever candidates match your requirements.
Visit /YOUR CAREER CENTER URL/ today and /INSERT PROMO CODE/ to find the best candidates in the business.
It’s as easy as that!
Questions about marketing your career center? We’ll gladly talk to you about the benefits for your members and your bottom line. Contact us today.
Join us in the Learning Lab at the ASAE Annual Meeting, “Make Social Media Work for Your Online Career Center.”
Online career centers are becoming increasingly important to associations because of the non-dues revenue they generate. Many associations are turning their social media activities into revenue and increasing the overall value of their career center programs. In this session, you’ll learn how three associations used Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media outlets to boost traffic and revenue for their online career centers.
When: Monday, August 23, 2010, 8;30AM – 9:45AM
Where: Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 South Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90015
Cost: Must be registered for the ASAE Annual Meeting. Click here to register.
What you will learn:
- Practical, actionable ideas you can immediately incorporate into your social media efforts.
- Ideas for measuring the impact of time spent on social media efforts (that ellusive social media ROI).
- Identification of other industry peers with whom you can continue to share ideas.
Who should attend: Executive-level staff responsible for revenue generation (i.e. executive directors, membership vice presidents, etc.) as well as mid-level staff responsible for identifying new ideas and executing strategy (i.e. membership directors / managers, etc.)
The Boxwood Blog is pleased to publish the following article by Peter Weddle. Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including Recognizing Richard Rabbit, a fable of self-discovery for working adults, and Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.
What this person is asking makes a lot of sense, especially in these days and times. They want to stand out from the crowd. There’s just one problem—they don’t stand out in your mind. You have no idea who they are. So, their request isn’t as simple as it first appears to be. They want you to take the time and assume the risk of passing along the resume of a “perfect” stranger.
Now granted, your time investment may, at least at first blush, be trivial. All you have to do is forward their message (and attached resume) on to someone in HR. But still, they’ve interrupted your train of thought, and that act has a cost that is greater than you may realize. Research now shows that it typically takes a person about 25 minutes to get back on track when they are interrupted by an outside communication. As overloaded as most of us are these days, even that modest a break in your rhythm can really set you back.
Remember What Your Mother Taught You
The greater threat, however, is the risk you assume by implicitly endorsing the person you send on to the HR Department. Even if you add a caveat in your message indicating that you don’t know this person from Adam or Eve, you have gone to the trouble of passing them along, and that effort is a real, if subtle, form of recommendation.
Of course, the devil-may-care among us will shrug and say so what. The more careful in the crowd, however, will worry about what this “perfect” stranger (implicitly) says about you. After all, the caliber of both their qualifications and the character they display are a reflection on the friends, connections and followers you keep—even if you are separated by two or even three degrees. Sure, it would be nice to help this person out. But, in today’s tenuous employment climate, anything that might detract from your perceived stature in the organization is dangerous.
Basically, you are being asked to lend your hard-earned standing in the organization to someone you don’t even know. So, think back to what your mother taught you. What was her first and most important rule? That’s right. Don’t speak to strangers. There was no caveat about it being O.K. to speak to strangers on the Web. Her rule was uncompromising and absolute. It is inappropriate if not downright risky to speak with (or on behalf of) someone you don’t know. And, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter don’t diminish the relevance of that dictum.
The Other Side of the Table
Now, put yourself on the other side of the table. If you’re in transition and sitting at your laptop all day friending up a storm, building up connections like crazy and following like a maniac, are you doing yourself any good? It’s true that you will meet lots of strangers that way, but will you interact with anyone who really cares about you? Or be willing to help you out in today’s “nobody seems safe” workplace?
You see, there’s a difference between superficial networking—making contact with others—and true networking—investing the time and effort to get to know them. If you would like someone to be helpful to you, you have to first commit yourself to building familiarity and trust with them. That doesn’t mean tweeting about the kind of pizza you had yesterday; it means creating and then sustaining a professional relationship with them through online and, if possible, off-line interactions.
Now, if you’ve ever been in a relationship before, you’ve acquired two insights about them. First, they take serious work to develop. And second, that work takes time. What does that mean for someone in transition? Here are the hard truths about networking during a job search in today’s unsettled economic environment:
Truth #1: Many of those you reach out to and ask to help you, won’t. They aren’t being mean-spirited, but are instead, simply being careful. If you’ve never met and gotten to know them, you’re a stranger and thus represent a risk many will feel they cannot take.
Truth #2: Since it takes time to build up a relationship through networking, the time to begin is before you’re in transition. Make it a priority each and every day to transform yourself from being a stranger in your field to being someone a lot of people know and respect. That’s the best form of employment security you’ll ever have.
Truth #3: If you haven’t done much if any networking in advance and find yourself in transition, look for ways to look like less of a stranger. Don’t connect with any and everyone, but concentrate instead on those with whom you share an alma mater, membership in a professional association or even a non-work affiliation (e.g., participation in a veterans group or local environmental action committee).
Collectively, these truths confirm that what you learned as a child is still relevant and helpful now that you’re an adult: the only “perfect” stranger is someone who isn’t a stranger at all.
Thanks for reading,
Peter
Visit me at Weddles.com/WorkStrong
P.S. My new book, The Career Activist Republic, is due out in June of this year. Look for it on Amazon.com, at Weddles.com or in your local bookstore.
Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including Recognizing Richard Rabbit, a fable of self-discovery for working adults, and Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.
© Copyright 2010 WEDDLE’s LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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