mployers and recruiters have wondered about the impact Google might have if
the company enters the job listings business. A formal entry would get the
attention of recruiters, but the tech giant actually established its presence in
the Internet recruiting segment a long time ago, with "pay-per-click."
Despite its close association with blue-chip search companies like Google,
Yahoo and MSN, the advertising technique has yet to become widely known among
recruiters. In pay-per-click, text ads appear next to results that a search
engine generates. Each time a Web user clicks on an ad, the advertiser pays the
Web site a fee.
A major reason the technique isn't known is lack of education, says Joel
Cheesman, founder of HRSEO, a consulting firm in Cleveland that advises
employers on how to use search technology. He says that few companies are
learning how to leverage pay-per-click as a recruiting tool, and that the major
job boards aren't likely to change their own pricing models. In the hands of
companies that currently use job boards, pay-per-click is another competitive
threat.
For employers, it's a low-cost way to gain visibility with job seekers.
Cheesman says the technique has the potential to help employers reach a wider
audience on the Web and could give them an advantage over a competitor who
doesn't use the technique.
Internet search works for jobs the way it works for any other "vertical"--or
category--like travel or retail. Typing the words "New York" and "jobs" into the Google search engine, for example, yields two sets of results. On the left side
of the page is a list of so-called "organic" results. These are the most popular
sites containing those words. On the right side, companies bid for the right to
have their matching results appear in the top position.
These companies, known as "sponsors" in Web parlance, bid whenever they want
superior positioning on the right side of the page. In early September, the high
bid per click for "New York jobs" was $3.27 and belonged to CareerBuilder. All
three job boards use the technique to drive traffic to their sites. But
enterprising employers also could decide that the technique is cheap enough to
learn about, and bid on combinations of words that drive traffic to their
corporate recruiting pages. That's a nightmare scenario for the job boards,
where ads cost hundreds of dollars.
Steve Pogorzelski, group president, international, for Monster, says online
keyword buying is another way for the company to drive traffic to its site. "We
use a variety of different media to get our message across," he says, including
radio, television and print ads.
A user arriving at any of the "Big Three" job sites through a sponsored link
does not see a particular job category or skill set. Rather, the link takes the
user to the job board's front page. Pogorzelski says the intention is to have
the searcher register and leave a résumé.
SimplyHired recently bid on placement for the word "jobs" and the names of 12
cities on Yahoo. Though the company didn't bid for top placement on the
right-hand side of the page, it spent enough to ensure that its listing would
appear in a shaded box above the organic search results.
Cheesman notes that the job aggregator would most likely not appear to a job
seeker on the first Yahoo results page if it hadn't paid for space on Yahoo.
"Invisible is not an option for most sites," he says.
= Member Only
