Question from Employer:

With so many people using search engines such as Google to find all types of information, how important is it for candidates to be able to find our postings by running a Google search using a job title and location but not our company name?

Answer:

Job seekers frequently use search engines such as Google to locate job openings for specific job positions. In fact, it is likely to be one of the first places a savvy job hunter will try. This best practice is to ensure candidates can easily find your job postings using search engines even if they do not enter your company name in their search string.

A major consideration for your site design team is based on typical search terms for job postings. Once the postings requested by the job candidate are displayed, your company's postings must appear on the first page or two. Why? Only the most persistent of candidates will venture past this point because, quite frankly, it's not worth the effort.

Search terms or keywords must be integrated throughout the posting and key pages on your employment site. If this is done haphazardly or not at all, your posting will not be ranked high enough to appear on the first couple of pages displayed by large search engines. Your critical posting may never be seen by the most qualified candidate!

Keyword coding for your employment web site should be performed by search engine optimization experts. They understand how search engines rank web pages and will translate this knowledge into top rankings for your site.

Take the example of a highly qualified candidate looking for an illustrator's position. This candidate knows from experience that the search term "illustrator" is much too general. So, based on his knowledge of the different types of illustrators in the current work environment, the candidate adds the adjective "multimedia." The motivation is to get specific job postings using the search term "multimedia illustrator."

Once this term is entered into Google, the site ranked first in the results for job postings is the U.S. Army's employment site. There may be hundreds of companies worldwide searching for the ideal candidate, but the Army beat them all to the top of the list.

Here's an example of a less desirable Google ranking from the company's perspective. In this case, a pharmaceutical firm is currently looking for specific expertise to ensure systems are in compliance with FDA regulations. This position, "computer validation specialist," requires specialized skills most computer specialists normally do not possess.

Unfortunately for both potential job candidates and the company, this posting can't be located on the first five pages of Google results when the logical search term "computer validation specialist" is used. Since the company's employment site's search engine rankings are not optimized, eligible job candidates may not get the opportunity to view this posting using the Google search engine. A major avenue to eligible job candidates is unavailable to the company.