Marketing

Job aggregators 2015

I published an original article back in 2010 about the Job Aggregators that were available online, explaining what they were and including links to the main players at the time. You can read that article here, if you want… but time has moved on and many/some of those aggregators have now closed their doors, shut down for business or merged with other operators, so the job aggregating landscape has changed somewhat. So it’s time for me to revisit the topic and lay out the best aggregators as I see them now in 2015. (Please note that these links will be UK oriented)

I was going to write that these are in no particular order, although over the previous years I’ve had more experience with Indeed, SimplyHired, Trovit and Adzuna and although there’s a huge amount of cross-over between all of these, I would argue that these are probably the major players in this field. In all likelihood they’re probably looking at mostly the same sources. The key difference comes from any working partnerships with direct employers and recruitment agencies, as they’ll typically be providing a feed of their jobs directly to one or more of the aggregators below.

Indeed

One of the main job aggregators in the UK, they also have an international arm too. They have a simple interface that’s easy to use, uncluttered and pulls in jobs from across a wide variety of online media – including not just regular job boards, but publishing houses and newspapers too. Indeed also offer helpful mobile and tablet apps, so you can save vacancies while you’re on the move to review at a later time and date.

The others…

How to match and find a font

fontsHaving had to recently undertake a project to redesign some corporate literature and align new marketing materials with concept designs, I found that I’d inherited some design work from a predecessor but only had the flat image files, so had no way of knowing what fonts were used in the designs. I was sure I’d know if it was a standard font, but as these weren’t… I didn’t know quite how to start. Obviously, this led to a trip to Google and the result was me finding a handful of very helpful web sites that I want to note down here so that a) I don’t forget them, and b) other people can perhaps benefit from them too. All these services I used are completely free online.

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Email Marketing Bounces

emailBeing a marketer today almost certainly means you must have more than a passing familiarity with the digital world; and one of the cornerstones of digital marketing, is the trusty email marketing mailshot. I’ll leave the process of managing your database, segmentation and targeting to other blogs and posts, because this post is going to focus on those things that every marketer hates – email marketing bounces. Effectively, a bounced marketing email is an unsuccessful email that is being returned to the send because it was undeliverable for one reason or another.

However, the story doesn’t stop there, because there are different types of bounced email and understanding what each one is will help future campaigns, as well as providing a more thorough understanding of the customer database and enabling a degree of data cleansing to take place – which will ultimately lead to more effective email marketing in the future.

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Social media tracking tools

It’s often useful to find out what’s being said about particular topics or news stories – and fortunately, there are a range of tools to help take some of the grunt work out of this labour intensive task. So, rather than having to visit each individual site, forum or blog that might contain information that you want to read, use some of these tools instead.

I’ve put together a selection of some of the tools I’ve come across and used previously, as well as a quick summary of some alternative options – including some paid-for applications. If you have others that aren’t mentioned here, please leave a comment and share your experiences. Thanks!

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Can the Free Web Site model work?

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now… and I’m wondering whether the Free Web Site model can really work. It was an advert in today’s Crain’s Manchester that got me thinking. It was an all-inclusive single price package for web site design, logo design and SEO work – all for the bargain price of £999. In my opinion, that seems a little steep…

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What’s the difference between slander and libel?

It’s one of those terms that are often used interchangeably, but really, they mean different things.

It’s therefore important to understand the difference between the two.

The key difference relates to the form in which the defamatory matter is published.

Libel relates to a written or otherwise published, public defamation of someone or something.

Slander, on the other hand, relates to the spoken false defamation of a person or entity, and can also include gestures or sign language.

The main difference is that the publication of the offending material is fleeting in nature.

The UK Recruitment Industry – info sources & magazines

Working within the UK Recruitment Industry it’s important to stay abreast of developments that are going to affect you. It goes without saying that recruiters need to remain informed of the news that affects them within the sectors that they trade in, so there will be countless sector-specific news sources that will provide information such as this. However, it is also important to remain informed of developments that specifically affect the UK recruitment industry – whether it is government legislation, recruitment trends, market sentiment, new HMRC guidelines, or even just monitoring the competition. The following set of links are all useful sources of information for the UK recruitment industry; there are more, but these are the primary ones that I use.

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Online surveys and online questionnaires

Online surveys and online questionnaires are an increasingly popular way of surveying customers, potential customers, web site visitors, clients, employees, etc. – pretty much anyone in fact. However, knowing the best way to go about conducting these isn’t always straightforward.

Besides the problems that any researcher needs to consider – such as sample size, sampling methodology (probability, non-probability, random, simple sampling, etc.), quantitative vs qualitative – there are lots of approaches that need to be considered. I may yet write an article or two about this, but the purpose of this post is to consider the online survey tools that are available.

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LinkedIn Super Guide

I’ve been researching LinkedIn as part of another project and came across this great resource billed as a LinkedIn Super Guide that includes Tutorials, Tips & Advice, and Tools links to different web sites and blogs. It’s definitely worth checking out:  HERE (published 12th May 2009).

Social media statistics

There are all sorts of facts and figures flying around concerning social media and, on the surface of it, the numbers are quite significant:

Facebook

  • Over 18m active Facebook users in the UK
  • 50% of users return to the site on a daily basis 
  • The average user visits twice a day 
  • The average visit length is 25 minutes

YouTube 

  • It is now the UK’s 2nd biggest search engine 
  • An outstanding 15m unique visits clocked up every month
  • Every minute, 15 hours of YouTube video is uploaded

Twitter 

  • Estimated 6 million users 
  • Subscriber base is 63% male
  • Largest age demographic is 35-44 year olds 
  • 14% are considered as ‘stable career’ types
  • A quarter of users are high earners

LinkedIn 

  • Over 2.5 million users in the UK 
  • This is growing at an estimated 80,000 per month 
  • 60 million users worldwide
  • Spans 200 countries 
  • Average user age 41

It has also been reported that spend on social media marketing will reach $3.1 billion by 2014.

Clearly it’s an important (new) media channel, but developing a suitable strategy to engage with these users requires a different mindset altogether from the traditional marketing approaches that have been used over the years.

The question is, how should a strategy be developed that integrates with current activities, aligns with business objectives and delivers tangible or quantifiable returns on investment? That’s the key – and that’s what I plan on addressing in subsequent posts.