From the well-written landing pages to the entertaining video clips to the refreshingly simple use of searchable database feeds, it all generates the warm and fuzzies for the prospective candidate to subscribe. Good stuff.

Here’s my challenge to “patent pending”. All of the technology you describe has been freely available in open-source platforms for years, and a crackerjack web coder could implement it on any given Sunday. Recipe:

1. Download and install free, open-source content management system. I recommend Umbraco available at http://www.umbraco.org (disclosure: I have no commercial interest in Umbraco but believe it to be the best CMS out there)

2. Create a template for hiring managers to write up their career/job descriptions. Add in video clips and other goodies.

3. Add a control that queries the ATS and formats matching jobs. Add another control to grab the candidate’s email for further lead-nurturing actities.

4. Auto-generate a set of keywords and corresponding pages for adwords and other indexing/SEO/SEM activities.

In the end its not patents or any technology that can sustain differentiation. Instead it’s the hard work of building teams that understand markets and constantly evolve processes – things no doubt you do well based on the Microsoft work shown here.

Jason is correct that a “job optimization strategy” alone won’t work – which unfortunately is what most of the other “job seo” companies and services provide, and his reasons are spot-on accurate. This is why Jobs2Web developed our patent pending keyword targeted landing page strategy that works dynamically with any ATS to automatically launch networks of pages that get (and stay) ranked, along with cycling the active jobs within these pages, or capturing candidates who enter their email to hear about future jobs if there aren’t any active for that keyword.

Also, Microsoft has over 100 “Seattle” keywords that target searches – and while it’s unfortunate that the exact term Marvin shared has zero (n/a) as the Google keyword tool, there are other keywords like “Developer jobs in Seattle” or “Development jobs in Seattle” that get hundreds of searches monthly – and they are 1st page ranked, and are getting thousands of visitors to their site monthly from.

Also, to correct Eric’s statement about how all the landing pages are the same, not true. Here’s some quick links on their site which show some great work that they’ve done, and deserve credit for tailoring to their different business units.

http://www.microsoft-entertainment-jobs.com/go/microsoft-xbox-360-jobs/44385/
http://www.microsoft-entertainment-jobs.com/go/microsoft-surface-jobs/44386/
http://www.microsoft-entertainment-jobs.com/go/Project-Natal-Jobs/150565/
http://www.microsoft-entertainment-jobs.com/go/Recruiter-Marvin-Smith/44325/

We also provide a comprehensive free white paper that anyone can download that will help anyone to get up to speed on this area of their recruiting strategy.
http://www.jobs2web.com/resources/seo-white-paper/

“I convinced him to try me out and try the email/cold-calling. We started with customers, then branched out to new businesses. This week we closed 3 deals for the new service and had 3 more deals generated in a different area.”

Headhunters direct source every day – they pick up the phone. The creme de la creme Internal Recruiters direct source (aka ‘headhunt’) as well, meaning they also actually pick up the phone instead of assuming someone will apply to a job or drop their resume off at the general careers site.

Marketing can build awareness, generate interest, etc. . . . however in the words of IBM’s founder, Tom Watson: “Nothing happens until a sale is made.” It would appear your mentioned Client was relying on marketing with little to no sales reinforcement.

It’s interesting that actual phone contact, the bread and butter of what makes a Good Recruiter a Great Recruiter, is now mentioned as “prehistoric”.

I guess I’ll go get my club and hop on the back of my pet Brontosaurus :) I heard Trog (our resident cave techie) was giving a webinar tonight on how to make fire :)

1. Jobs have a short life span 30-60 days
2. Jobs have no meta tags
3. Jobs have no linking strategy
4. Jobs content aren’t relative enough for search engines

You can also download our HR-SEO white paper here. http://www.sharkstrike.com/hr-seo-white-paper

The piece that your talking about with passive candidates is more strategy than it is tools. Companies seem to want to be just focused on tools to get the job done when it’s strategy first and tools second that will help them solve their problems. Companies that are now using SEM/PPC are doing so with active keywords, jobs, job, career, careers etc, however this is never going to reach a passive candidate. The strategy should be to use general keywords like if your looking for a java developer use struts, java beans, j2ee and so on. This is only one part of the strategy as if you do get a passive candidate to click on the ad and send them to an ATS they will never give you their information. You also mentioned a big piece of the story which is communication. The passive person will take more communication, and time to close than someone looking for a job so it’s an on-going relationship that requires multiple factors. Our industry wants quick fixes to big problems and I’m sorry to say that’s not the case, it’s the companies like Microsoft and the clients I work with that will invest the time and energy into strategies that will win in the end.

Rachel: Thanks for your insight. I also am a big believer in old school. I have found that some prehistoric tactics integrate well in Web 2.0

Another “great article” comment here! Too many firms pushing the magic bullets – this is why in marketing, we talk about “integrated” marketing as an entire tactical basket dedicated to attracting and moving the sale along. Not much difference in recruiting – many different tactics are needed in a personalized fashion to attract the right candidates for jobs.

I will add a story here that drives the points mentioned home. Recently, I started working with a small company doing electronics recycling, very commodity business, lots of competition. The owner was skeptical of sales, it failed many times before. He was relying on SEO, invested in building multiple websites, optimizing search results, and he got leads and business, but needed more. I convinced him to try me out and try the email/cold-calling. We started with customers, then branched out to new businesses. This week we closed 3 deals for the new service and had 3 more deals generated in a different area.

Those folks weren’t looking, they accumulated stuff or “were waiting” til the right time. With the human touch, we got there first.

Also, consider that if your job is posted for all to see, all will see it – maybe those who you don’t want have reviewing.

I have talked to staffing agencies that did very well with no website and no public effort, they did the “old school” networking and phone calls and made out just fine. Sometimes flying under the radar can yield more fruit than letting it all hang out…it is about quality, not quantity after all.

Thanks for a very illustrative article!

Gregg: that for catching the error. No tanks or new dialects

JP: Great to hear from you. You are absolutely correct—it is going to be interesting to see if recruiters move away from transactions. If sourcing is marketing, then the experience of social media experts suggest that it is not a matter of if, but when.

Funny that your screen shot of Google shows your company in organic search results but Google themselves is using PPC on the right hand side for the same position. It seems that Google disagrees with your SEO strategy. So which one will the developer click on? I typed in your keyword and went to both. I can tell you I had a better experience on Google’s career site because it was their authentic site; a better landing page. The Jobs2Web landing pages bug me – and they all look the same except for the logo at the top. SEO should be optimized within your own site in my opinion (if you have the resources of course).

Mandarin for “relationship connection” is “guan xi” or “guanxi”.

2) Engage them. I love the human touch vs. technology touch paradigm, and we need to be much nicer to people… these are HUMANS, and we’re asking them to trade their LIFE to come work for us… we should be more welcoming and more human… that’s why I got into recruiting in the first place, and I bet most HR people would say the same thing.

You’re right that too many places are “apply or goodbye”… and the truth is that (we all know) top talent don’t even get THAT far into the process to be offended when we slap their hands for wanting to be Curious about our company but not Serious about us.

Good luck.