How to Make a Kick-Butt Recruiting Blog Portal

Zoe’s post on JobSyntax about whether job postings on blogs distract jobseekers, especially given that most of these postings are generic feeds (at best filtered by "category," whatever that means). It inspired my following take on the issue of what a recruiting blog should be.

If you want to stand out from the crowd and develop a loyal following, I think you have to go as close as possible to one or the other of the following extremes:

1) Pure, clean blog: Just your postings, and ideally, just your own original thoughts, not repostings/links which is what Shally accurately described as the noise that turns most thinking people off to the blogosphere. Stick with it, and people who matter will come to find and appreciate you.

Conversely, bloggers who add any content other than their own probably secretly wish to have a portal, not just a blog. That would potentially attract more visitors (jobseekers and otherwise), so I understand the motivation. But if you’re leaning that way, then do it right as a…

2) Blog-portal: If you’re an employer, you’re already investing in a career website. If you’re independent, I understand you may want to make money (or even a living!) from blogging. It’s possible, but I couldn’t sleep at night if I were doing it the way some are (i.e., backroom entrepreneurs who hire SEO gurus to create hundreds of vanity sites with autogenerated, repurposed content into some semblance of a targeted category and everything links to contextual ads and products sold with affiliate codes). I think the recruiting blog-portal (I didn’t make up this term) is a term not properly used – currently refers to any amalgamation of blogs related to employment – and needs to go much deeper than what I’ve seen.

How it can be done well is to craft a truly useful portal that contains:

• Super-targeted job posting feeds: with really tight search criteria against SimplyHired or another job aggregator allowing advanced targeting, and turning that URL into a feed on your own site. For example, Keith Halperin posts his recruiting researcher ("sourcer") job search strings using this very method to various recruiter mailing lists. (I wish he didn't repeat the same ones every month, but still a nice gesture on his part.) This can be useful content. I know this seems like heresy because those feeds will inevitably include job postings from your competitors, but I’m telling you, your credibility, traffic, good PR and other gains (quality applicants!) will more than make up for it.
• Semi-automated news headline feeds: Again, it has to be really targeted (the pre-built Moreover categories don’t cut it). Even then, some garbage will creep in, so it’d be better if it were someone passionate about the subject matter who reviews feeds and then filters what gets posted.
• Group blogs: What we’re really talking about are article-quality contributions. (Joel Cheesman has the right idea.) You need rotating contributors who all do quality posts so that every day there’s something new that’s really worthwhile (i.e., minimum of 7 so each author’s burden is only weekly). Anyone whose quality slips (up to you how to measure) is booted after one warning.
• Promotional content: Anyone tempted to write a promotional post (we realize good bloggers are also invited to appear at conferences, etc.) puts it in a separate section for that purpose, but some of it can be reused as follows…
• Industry calendar: Have a targeted events listing where each item is annotated so the reader knows why it’s important to them. It’s ok to mix in the event listings from the previous bullet.
• Employer info: We realize you’re ultimately trying to get people to apply for jobs with you, or at least have enough goodwill/awareness about you that they’ll proactively share your info with others who may be looking for a job change in your space. Do what employers do, but make sure it’s got buzzworthy content, too, that people will want to read and share (e.g., true, insightful day-in-the-life profiles of workers like what I created for Getronics way back when).
• Anything else that’s relevant: If your target audience is technical, then give them technical content to help them earn the certifications they need, or to learn about the latest tools (ok to include links to other sites in these cases, but have your own employees – ideally experts in the space / people in the hiring group who know this stuff first-hand, provide annotated links – it’s unique and compelling because it’s more personal and authoritative). You get the idea.

When you provide a greater range of content of interest, you increase the chance you can touch someone, then you have the potential to draw them in further to other parts of your blog-portal, and ultimately apply to and/or refer opportunities.

Ultimately, blogs, jobs and anything else that supports the desired employer brand will become integrated with corporate websites. Third party sites trying to get a share of the job market will do the same.

Do you know any companies doing portals this way? Did I miss anything? Am open to your suggestions.

--Glenn Gutmacher

P.S. On the last bullet about your own employees in the target group providing content, you can use pseudonyms to discourage poaching (e.g., anyone asking for columnist "Clyde Jones" immediately gets transferred to HR/Legal) but this does go a bit against the genuine feel you should be striving for. I’m ambivalent on this one.

Recruiting.com, Talkdigger, Slashdot, Digg, Delicious

Read Glenn's other posts on RecruitingBloggers.com.

Comments

[Barry Hurd]

In an almost ironic way I wandered across a question regarding my company.

I am actually amazed the blogging community concept isn't more common in the recruiting sphere of influence. At my company we are always focusing on the community impact blogs can make, and it is finally filtering down into some of the recruiters who are contacting us on this type of project.

You hit on some of the important ideas of building a multi-user blog portal, and there are probably a few dozen more that can be identified for recruiting purposes. A lot of the mis-application of blogging for recruiting is failing to look at what is being written and whether or not the content attracts the proper audience from both an organic SEO viewpoint and a word of mouth vantage.

Feel free to come on by my blog or zip me off an e-mail if you have questions about some of our projects at Blogging Systems.

[Recruiting Animal]

Hi Buddy, Great posting as usual. And yet, I will take you to task on the topic of filter blogging and digesting what other people have said elsewhere.

A very legitimate blogging function is to scour the internet looking for great articles for your readers. You become their funnel to the net.

1. You can either point them to your find with a very brief comment or quip.

2. Or you can include some quotes from the original article.

3. Or you can present an abbreviated version with or without your views on the topic as well.

These abbreviated versions, if well done, allow the busy reader to absorb the key points quickly.

They can often highlight the key issues in a way that the original article doesn't. And this raises the general level of thinking and conversation about whatever is being discussed.

Yet, you seem to dismiss this as noise.

[Tiffany]

I agree with Animal. Point #1 is old-media, old-fogey thinking that completely misses the point of what blogs are useful for.

The appeal of blogs is that they're written by one's peers, people who are in some way like the reader, which gives them a level of trustworthiness when making recommendations about articles to read, products to use, etc.

If I find Joel Cheesman's blog interesting and useful, for example, then it follows that I will also be interested in what Joel Cheesman finds interesting and useful. That's not to say that EVERYTHING he reads will be of interest to me, but his recommendations will have a weight that other people's won't, particularly when he's making recommendations pertaining to his areas of expertise.

I think MORE blogs, not fewer, should have link feeds and pointers to content the blogger finds interesting. If I find their blog interesting enough to read regularly, it's likely I'll find some non-trivial percentage of their links interesting, too. That's why social bookmarking services like del.icio.us are so popular- they allow people who like the same things you like to make recommendations about other things you might like.

That's not noise, that's VALUE. And trying to keep everyone on MY page, reading exclusively MY thoughts shows profound disrespect for the reader, not to mention a staggering ego.

[Recruiting Animal]

All Bloggers have staggering egos.

[Glenn Gutmacher]

Thanks, RecruitingAnimal (a/k/a Canadian Headhunter and founder of RecruitingBloggers.com). RE: your first comment about the many blogs comprised primarily of posts that reference others' posts which you argue add value by adding analysis or another spin. I agree IF the differentiating spin/analysis is done consistently and well. (Joel tries hard and he's almost there-- I guess this is why Cheezhead won the Recruiting.com 2006 blog competition.)

Tiffany agrees with Animal and says it's possible to automate recommended blog post links and embellish with target tagging (http://www.magicpotofjobs.com/2006/12/27/the-mpoj-link-feed/). However, with no commentary, I see more noise than value in this. But I'm open to seeing the implementation when she's finished.

Tiffany's trying to goad me with a line like "profound disrespect for the reader, not to mention a staggering ego." I wouldn't normally stoop to respond to this kind of provocation, because people who know me know that's not me, but since it almost sounds logical in the context of her comment, let me clarify: When I recommended original posts, I was not saying that you don't build off blog posts and other things you read. Indeed, did you notice my post began with a link to Zoe's JobSyntax post? Why? Because it provided the seed for the thinking that led to my post. How you can label that "profound disrespect" I don't understand.

What category I am most concerned about is neither the type Animal nor Tiffany describes, but rather the blogs that merely repost good posts with no added value. What they offer is some extra exposure to the original blogger, but the main goal appears to be assuring more & steadier traffic to the reposter's blog because, by tapping this ready-made content, they can post more frequently. For example, after a strong start with 100% of his own original posts, El Dave is showing signs of leaning this way (careful, amigo).

If your blog has relatively low traffic, you may welcome this reposting (and I do thank Dave for proactively approaching me and asking my permission to repost), but whose blog are you supporting? Are you more concerned about turbocharging your own traffic than putting out interesting content? (Happily, I'm not; so yes, Tiffany, I have an ego, but it doesn't come close to "staggering". However, your implied goal of telling me what posts I should read sounds like your ego may be much closer to that level.)

If you're more into turbocharging than original content, I can foresee a festering feeling of watching others' blogs traffic skyrocket that ultimately causes you an ulcer. You will eventually lose interest in blogging (assuming you can't devote daily blog-writing time), join some group blogs you respect and let that help drive your awareness, or hop on the re-post bandwagon.

Finally, if people like Tiffany or Barry Hurd (thx for your comment, too -- I will check out your company!) come up with a viable (time- & money-efficient) solution that proves popular among blog readers, then I will be among the first to congratulate them. But I don't think I want to join them.

[Christopher Lozinski]

I just have my first client, a blogger who I enabled to become a recruiter. His site is
maccompanion.com

He sends traffic to the Mac OS X job market, and when jobs get posted there, he acts as the recruiter.

So by creating a specialty job board for his industry, I have enabled him to become a recruiter.

Regards
Chris