Sendouts will be in Phoenix for TechServe a week from today.  Stop by and see us at Booth #110!

Prizes

Take a spin on the prize wheel for a chance to win some awesome prizes like cash, gift certificates, an iPad, or Sendouts swag.

Sendouts Mobile

Demo the new Sendouts Mobile, and find out first hand why Sendouts users are loving our new mobile app.

Tweets

Follow all of the buzz and conversation surrounding THE official TechServe twitter hashtag, #2011TSConf at www.sendouts.com/techserve

Hope to see you there!

Time.  The Currency of the Future.  The Currency of Now.

I just saw the trailer for the new Justin Timberlake movie, “In Time.”

The premise of In Time is that time is money.  It’s a common phrase, but in the movie, time is literally money.  Want a cup of coffee?  That will be four minutes, please.  The amount of time you have is somehow embedded on your wrist, so you just swipe and go.

The trailer for “In Time” also immediately brought to mind “Mockingjay,” the final book of the Hunger Games series, which I am currently entrenched in.  In Mockingjay, the residents of District 13 have their schedule printed on their wrist everyday, using it as a type of currency – scanning their “wrist schedule” to gain access and to receive meals.

Time, Money, Schedules, Wrists

It’s all resonating with current conditions.  When you have to work a lot harder with less resources to get ahead, time is everything.

And, as we learned earlier this month with the passing of Steve Jobs, even when you have all the money, your time will still run out.

So with all of this time = money stuff weighing on my mind, an email in my inbox gets my attention.

The subject? “Get an iPod Shuffle for 30 Minutes of Your Time.”

My initial thought is to DELETE.  30 minutes is a long time.  And at first glance, I assume it’s an “enter to win” deal.  Give 30 minutes of my time to possibly get an iPod Shuffle?  Too costly.

But because I am writing this post, I take a closer look.

Okay, so it’s “take a 30 minute demo, and then get the Shuffle, guaranteed.”  It’s a better proposition than I originally thought.  An even exchange, no strings attached.

Except, as a member of a marketing team, I know that there are always strings attached.

So, I could spend 30 minutes demoing this thing I have no interest in.  And then spend who knows how many more minutes dodging phone calls and emails trying to get me to sign up.

Thanks, but I’ll use my 30 minutes somewhere else.

Is it Time to Forget Your Schpeel?

What message are you sending?  Are you stressing to candidates and clients that you value their time?

What will make spending time with you – whether it’s 5 minutes on the phone or 30 minutes + travel for an interview – enticing to a candidate?

What will make that HR manager, owner, or hiring manager take your call and listen to your 10 minute sales pitch,  or carve out 5 minutes to read and reply to your email?

Whatever it is, it better be good.

I liked the advice Amy Ala gave in her “Recruiting Animal” interview.  Be upfront, be honest, be direct.  Forget your sales jargon, and optimize your time with candidates and clients.

Time is Mobile.

If a candidate or client is taking time out of their day to spend with you, you better be prepared.  You better have access to your database, and you better be ready to spring to action.

Mobile recruiting apps keep your recruiting desk by your side everywhere you go.  Text messaging candidates becomes so valuable because it’s quick.  It’s in their face because they’re attached at the hip to their mobile device.

There’s a reason why time and schedules are adhered to wrists in movies, in books, and in real life.  What better way to optimize productivity than with accessible tools that are part of you anywhere you go?

SEO:  Monitored by Robots, Made for Humans

 

Search engine optimization is all about providing worthwhile content for human readers, and structuring that content in such a way that search engines efficiently detect and accurately index it. If the job of a search engine is to connect human readers with content relevant to their query, the task of SEO is to help them perform that job better.

-Dr. Greg Mulhauser

The Dark Ages of SEO

In the dark ages of SEO, Black Hat SEO practitioners tried to “trick” the algorithm search engines used to index websites.

Black Hats would stuff pages with keywords and phrases that were searched for often.  But their content would not necessarily match the search terms.

Black Hats also improved search rank by generating keyword stuffed articles (spammy nonsense) and linking them back to their site.

It was scary out there on the web.

But not all hope was gone…

While Black Hat SEO tricksters were manipulating search engines, the White Hat SEO experts – the Gandalf to their Saruman – tried to keep their SEO practices above board and legit.

White Hats concentrated on building links and content organically.

They organized their content and pages.  They used titles, links, and meta tags as a way to accurately classify their content.

They generated relevant and interesting content.

Some of their most interesting content would catch fire and go viral amongst various social networks.

It was a good thing.

Enter Panda

In an effort to help White Hat SEO overcome Black Hat tactics once and for all, Google revised the way they ranked pages in what has become known as the “Google Panda Algorithm.”

So, if you relied on meaningless, keyword-stuffed articles generated by the content mills  & other avenues of Black Hat SEO, you took a big hit in search ranking.

Now, focusing on generating interesting content, and classifying it accurately helps to improve your ranking,  and makes website or blog SEO fairly easy.  No trickery required!

Search Engines – They’re Just Like Us!

Think of a search engine as your administrative assistant.

You give your admin the task of filing every page you create for your website.

Your website is organized – every page has a single topic, cross-references are present (aka links have unique anchor text that accurately identify what they link to), titles indicate what the page is about – and it is fast and easy for your admin to file all of your pages.

One afternoon, a candidate walks in, looking for information.  Your admin has no problem finding the relevant pages in your file.  The candidate leaves, happy because he found exactly what he was looking for.

But time goes on, and you let your website go for a while.  You stop creating or changing webpages.  Because there is nothing new, candidates and clients stop coming by your building to ask for information.

Soon, your admin has no reason to access the file box that holds your website.

It gets a little dusty, and eventually the file box gets moved to the storage closet in the basement of your building.

Every once in a while, someone will call, or come by and ask you for information.  But your admin is afraid of the basement of your building (there are spiders!), and it takes her a while to work up the courage to go down there.

Visitors move on, because they can access the information quicker and more easily somewhere else.

The Importance of Fresh, Circulating Content

In the meantime, you keep hearing rumors about this “blogging” thing.  Supposed to be good for business.  So you give it a whirl.  After all, you know A LOT about recruiting.

You start writing helpful articles about the recruiting process.  Candidates and clients are soon knocking down your door to get their hands on your useful content.

You keep sending your admin down into the basement to file your latest articles, and to retrieve them for your candidates and clients.

She finally gets tired of running the basement stairs in her heels, so she gets the website file box brought up to her office.

Soon, she just plops it down on the front desk, because it’s getting so much action.

It’s like being on page one of search engine results for “recruiting.”

With Good Content, You’re Standing on Solid Ground

You’re a recruiting firm, not SEO experts or web developers (unless maybe you are an SEO expert search firm).

SEO doesn’t have to be a nightmare.  With organized, compelling content, it’s easy to tackle the SEO details, like optimizing your recruiting website, or optimizing your recruiting blog.

Have you looked at your website in your mobile browser lately?

If it looks a little uncomfortable, all squished in that tiny screen, it might be time to contemplate redesigning your site for mobile users.

If you aren’t providing your mobile users a great experience, they’ll be bouncing off to greener pastures as soon as they hit your website on their smartphone or tablet – costing you many opportunities.

The International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts that “by 2015, more U.S. Internet users will access the Internet through mobile devices than through PCs or other wireline devices.”

Smartphones and tablets have opened the door for job seekers to be connected to their job search all hours of the day and night, whether they are at home, at work, or in transit.

Here are a few tips for enhancing your mobile website experience for candidates and clients:

1.  Keep the goal of your redesign in mind. Now may be a good time to embark upon a mobile redesign, but without a purpose, your efforts can fall off track.

Do you want to capture candidate info while they are in the process of researching new opportunities?  Do you want to make it easy for candidates or clients to contact your firm directly from their smartphone? Do you want to convert candidates to applicants while they are browsing on their tablet?

Having a specific outcome of the redesign in mind enables you to measure your ROI and tweak your design for improvement in the future.

2.  Reach your audience.  With so many different devices on the market, it is almost impossible to be compatible with them all.

Your web analytics can help you and your design team see where your traffic is coming from, and weigh your options when it comes to device/OS compatibility.  If 95% of your mobile visitors are visiting from their Blackberry, it doesn’t make sense to invest in making your mobile site compatible with Windows phone.

Your traffic source can help you determine if you want to build a native app, a web app, or make your webdesign scalable so that it will fit small mobile screens.

3.  Get out your mop and broom.  When designing for mobile, keep in mind that you have a lot less real estate to work with, so everything on the site should have a clear purpose.

Mobile design should be clean, simple, and touch-friendly.  Transform tiny links into big fat buttons for big fat fingers.

Limit choices and lessen clicks from point A to point B.  Make finding a solution (are you a candidate looking for jobs, or a client looking for services?) easy.

If you want to gather candidate information, don’t present them with a never-ending list of input fields (will name and email suffice to start the conversation?). Keep it simple.

What is the biggest barrier between you and a mobile-friendly website?