One of the key things ACE shows us is that search engines are now playing a vital part in people’s job search. There is no rocket science here, search plays a massive part in most people’s lives these days, but what are the implications for recruitment?
An interesting issue that we touched on during the panel debate is whether it is important to have brand recognition strong enough that potential candidates perform searches directly on your company name. The short answer is, unsurprisingly enough, “yes it is important” however this doesn’t really tell the whole story.
The key to all of this isn’t that people are using search engines as part of their job search its how they are using them. Most people will start their search with broader terms and then narrow to be more specific. This means that it is therefore equally important to have a visible presence round the keywords that your audience might use before they get to the point of searching on the name of any specific organisation.
To illustrate just how important a part search is of your integrated strategy and to caution against not having an effective search plan in place let me finish with an example. We recently worked with an employer and one of the ways we tracked the effectiveness of their advertising campaign was look for uplift in relevant Google searches. Interestingly there was 60% uplift in such searches once the campaign had launched. Unfortunately for them they had decided not to run a search campaign and thus let their competitors, who did have a search presence, benefit from exposure to a whole new set of potential candidates!
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