KCRecruiting

How Staffing Firms Can Use Blogs To Market At Trade Shows

Trade shows are hidden gold for Third Party Staffing Firms. They just don’t know it yet. Anyone who has attended a trade show knows the effort of doing so yields a cornucopia of leads in the form of other attendees. After all, who do you think goes to recruitment trade shows? (The answer is decision makers with the budget to purchase a ticket and the authority to take a few days off for a conference). Trade shows are also untouched by your competitors, as most firms think of trade shows as bad networking and don’t see the value in spending $1200 or more rubbing elbows with corporate decision makers. Networking at these events is not easy, but there’s a trick you can use to help you promote your name if you’re attending, and your trade booth if you’re a vendor. It’s called blogging, and it may just be the best way to market yourself without a big budget.

Are Branch Managers With A Quota A Good Idea

An interesting analogy for both hockey fans and fans of the selling sales manager model.  The bloggers over at the HireSense walk through the inherent conflicts of interest when sales managers are required to sell as well as manage.

This struck me as an excellent analogy for staffing firms, because many companies look for branch managers who can sell staffing to clients at the same time they run an office.

They use the description of the Minnesota Wild's coach to explain what's wrong with this model.

Now imagine if the owner of the Wild decided he was going to measure Lemaire’s performance by how many goals he scored in the games. Lemaire would have to change his whole strategy to allow himself to score as many goals as possible. Other players would be needed simply to fulfill his personal goal of scoring. There would be a benefit to Lemaire coaching them along, but his top priority would be to his own goal production.

The use of a player coach apparently was widespread in basketball in the 70's, but fell out of favor and now is considered a bit strange (we prefer player owners, like Michael Jordan and Mario Lemieux).  This wikipedia entry says the use of player-coaches was an attempt by owners to save money, and this is clearly the purpose of selling branch managers.  So what are some of the problems with branch managers with a quota?

Are You Suffering From Affluenza?

I saw a review on Yahoo! for a new book, Affluenza, purporting to chronicle the link between wealth and unhappiness.  It's a bit suspect in its conclusions, but it does raise the interesting question of about perception in relation to happiness.  Says Oliver James to promote his book.

"We are at a turning point. My argument dovetails with the ecological argument -- we cannot carry on consuming in this manner and feel confident our great grandchildren have any future. This inevitably leads us to question consumerism."

"People are sick to the back teeth of this stuff. They don't want any more selfish capitalism."

Of course, the good doctor travelled the world meeting with people, which is a sign of at least some kind of wealth to be able to pursue that dream.  And I wonder how much he is hoping to make off book sales?

There is plenty to question about consumerism, but I'd beg to differ that the problem is one of a systemic failure instead of just some mopey people who were never taught that money is not a panacea.

C.S. Lewis wrote about this years ago, with an elegant argument about expectations.

If you take two groups of people living in a regular building, and tell one group they are living in a fancy hotel, and tell the other group they in prison, chances are the group who thinks they are in a fancy hotel will be a bit disgruntled and cheated out of their due, while the group who thinks they are in prison are going to feel mighty fine about their fortune to be in such a nice prison.

When applied to wealth, there is the sense in Western societies that the rich and successful don't deserve their success.  That's a mindset that holds you back from success.  Rather than complaining about the rich, we'd be far better off emulating them to become rich ourselves.

Now I'm not saying we shoud find some rich, miserable, sexually immoral atheist in Sydney, like our dear author, but instead we should find the kind of fellow who works hard, helps others, enjoys his wealth, but considers the wealth of a man to be in their heart, their family and in their faith.

Emulate that man - find out why he is successful and happy, and you will be too.  Or you could write a book about how wealth makes everyone miserable as you go out on a book tour designed to sell more books.  It's your choice.

Searching for Kansas City Jobs

Search engine gurus know that one of the more heavily trafficked search terms is "city name" + jobs.  Thus "New York Jobs," "Atlanta Jobs," and "Seattle Jobs" are good keywords, because tens of thousands of people a year type those terms into search engines for every city.

Advertisers and internet marketing types work to get the word "city" + jobs into their PPC campaigns, hoping to attract job-seekers to the careers page.

Or you could just start a blog.

Search KC Jobs in Google.  KCRecruiting is the last result on the first page, a page where six companies have paid to put PPC ads.  I can push that result up the page with another 3 months of writing, and then I'll be in the top five organic search results for, well, as long as I keep writing.

On MSN, KCRecruiting is the first search for "KC Recruiters."  Five Advertisers liked that search.

If you were a Kansas City company trying to get exposure for your job postings, wouldn't you like to be in the first page of results?  Contact me at DurbinMedia.com, and we'll discuss either 1) advertising on this blog, or 2) Setting up your own blog to generate your own results.

KCRecruiting is part of the DurbinMedia network, a group of local recruiting blogs designed to teach recruiters how to hire more people with local blogs.  The network currently includes St. Louis, Charlotte, and SeattleRecruiting. as well as the marketing blog, Brandstorming.

Kansas City Group Started At ERE

Doug Burris has started a new group at ERE for Kansas City Recruiters.  What is ERE?  It's a meeting ground for recruiters, with articles, columns, blogs, groups, job postings and trade shows all focused on the job you perform every day.

To sign up for the group - go to ERE and register.  Click the Groups tab, and look for Kansas City Metro Recruiters

Blogger Relations Best Practice

Vertical Search Engine Indeed.com has won the award for best job search engine from Job-Hunt.org.  The press release is here,  and includes sites well known to the blogosphere including Job Central and Craiglist.

Job-Hunt has the top list of best job sites here, but little description of why each of these categories won.   That's a bit puzzling, and I'm left scratching my head as to why some sites won and others didn't, (is CollegeJournal.com better than CollegeRecruiter.com?  is Ziggs.com better than Jigsaw or ZoomInfo?)

Best of Awards are always tough because they often are more accurately described as "best of who the judges know" instead of Best of the Web, but I guess we all have to start somewhere.  I didn't know JobHunt before this, and now I see it's a useful site for links, especially their list of Fortune 500 career sites and employers by state.  (Check out Kansas Employers)

But this post is supposed to be about Indeed, and I wanted to let you know that Indeed is reengaging the blogosphere.  Personally, I do feel indeed is the best job search engine, but that's because I use it all the time for research, I pass it on for reference, and it powers the RSS feed on each of my local recruiting sites.

This is their blog post on the affair, but more important, I got a personalized and polite e-mail from their marketing manager  as an FYI on the press release.  That's a good sign - and I'm curious as to who else received an e-mail.  Think of it as a Blogger Relations Best Practice       

Top Trends in 2007 from Kennedy Info

Looking for Recruiting Trends in 2007?

CM Russell kicks it off at RecruitingFly.com (which can be used to search all the recruiting blogs).  He covers the trends as reported at a recent Kennedy Information recruiter panel.

My top two on his list?

:#3 - Smart Marketing Wins - search engines, job boards, and destination sites will continue to prove their ability to find elusive candidates through keyword buys on a targeted, per-click basis.

Recruiters, and it pains me to say this, are dreadfully behind the times when it comes to online marketing.  Employment is big business, but the old days of post and pray, as painful as they are, still bring in a lot of money for the large, middle of the road companies that know that mediocre talent can get hired in a tight economy, and a premium can still be charged for warm bodies.

Amid concerns from every executive surveyed that finding talent is a "top priority," one has to wonder at what point companies will begin investing in their own recruitment activities rather than sending money to the large job boards.

Job Postings are free in a world of blog software.  How long will it take major companies to start using that fact to their competitive advantage?  HR Executives looking to have an impact as business partners should sit up and take note (and remember to brush up on your branding and marketing skills).

#4 - Cybersonic Job Alerts - more recruiters will communicate with candidates directly from their desktops and less through resume databases.

Cell phones, text messages, news blogs, and blackberries are all the rage.  E-mail and snail mail, on the other hand, are overloaded with junk.   With most of the population under 50 owning a cell phone (or two), the smart thing to do is reach out to candidates on the one platform that they aren't disgusted with.

Smart cell phone and texting campaigns will make a difference, but I think this year will be more about stumbling in this market than overall effectiveness.  Look for the big mistakes to be showcased in 2007, followed by slower, and smarter campaigns.