Getting the Most from Your Online Job Listing

In order to take full advantage of your online recruitment efforts you’ll need to be sure you’re set up electronically for receiving resumes and giving job-seekers more information about you.

Polish Your Web: How are your employment and “About Us” sections? If your company has a Web site,

you may want to include links to the site in your ad. (A few online job services work by linking jobseekers back to your site, while with other services the choice is yours as to whether to include a link in your ad.) Considering that job seekers may research your company or be linked directly to your site, you will want to make sure your site tells them what you want them to know: the mission of the company, the benefits of working there, the talent of the current staff, and the positions that are open.

You don’t have to have a web site in order to use most of the online job services. You will, however, need to be ready to receive e-responses from your ad.

Get your e-mail ready: Your ad on just about any job board will provide an email address to which applicants can send their resumes; a couple of the job-search engines are set up to direct applicants to your company’s Web site. You may be able to provide a fax number or even a mailing address in your ad – but chances are you’ll want to at least have a ready email account if you’re going to search and/or advertise for people online.

Depending on the capacity and technical limitations of your e-mail system, you may want to specify a format for receiving resumes from candidates. Email with attached documents poses a security risk for PCs, so if you don’t want to test the strength of your virus-checking system, you can tell candidates to send plain-text resumes in the body of their email. Attached documents also choke slower Internet connections and strain the capacity of some inboxes — another reason to accept only plain-text resumes.

Don’t even have time for the posting, sorting, re-posting and general trial-and-error rigmarole involved with the big job boards? Vertical sites and industry groups can be good sources for more specialized candidate pools. The membership fee that will allow you to post jobs with these associations could be well worth it. It’s another way to get your company name out to a relevant audience, as well as to keep tabs on the industry.

Here are some other directories of industry Web sites that may provide leads or job-listing opportunities:

 

• Google — Google's List of Associations by Industry
• Yahoo! — Yahoo! Directory of Professional Organizations

 

Once you're up and running on the recruiting front, you need to make sure you're prepared for the actual process of screening applicants, interviewing, and hiring the right people for the right jobs.