Reverse Delta’s Blog and News

Job ads: put your readers first …or Google will

By Steve Riley January 25, 2022

Job ads - ensure you put your readers first with quality job descriptions! Or Google will offer them quality job ads from your competitors' websites. Google for jobs is changing and this affects your recruitment website. Google itself is getting better and better at behaving more like a person and less like a machine. Good content rises up the rankings. This article points out a few things to avoid in your job ads and gives a few best practice tips. Putting your readers first is more important than trying to 'game the search engines' for better ranking. But these days the two things aren’t actually that far apart. Google for jobs is making the rules Google is a behemoth and when they introduced Google for jobs, we all scrambled to support the schema and feature our jobs on another free platform. Win-win. But as we predicted back in 2018, they're not doing this from the goodness of their hearts. This was an early move in a bid to start owning the turf. The schema rules have slowly tightened up and become more prescriptive. If you want a listing, you follow the rules. No real downside yet. In the second half of 2021, Google added some more editorial rules, as well as the data field rules (so the data was correctly labelled and presented). Now they're starting to tell us how to write. Fortunately, their guidance follows solid common sense and supports plain English. Anyone paying attention to Google Search Console updates may have seen these extra requirements creeping in. If you value your readers you have nothing to worry about. Quick summary: don't spam the page with obstructive text and images avoid excessive and distracting ads avoid content that doesn't add any value to the job posting don’t send the reader off to a different website to make them apply. Use plain English! All well and good. Now they've also got your old English teacher on the case with new rules around grammar, punctuation and capitalisation. Extra requirements: follow basic grammar rules use proper capitalisation (business writing often trips up with excessive capitalisation of Words That Aren't Really Proper Nouns) avoid writing text in ALL CAPS only use acronyms or abbreviations that are widely understood (another common pitfall of business writing). The implication is that badly presented job ads will not feature as well as those better written and presented. Being direct, Google will promote well-written job ads in its suggested results to users. While dropping badly written job ads down towards the bottom of its results. No arguments from us. Write well, use plain English, pay attention to grammar and punctuation. If not for your reader's sake, because Google tells you to! Our bespoke recruitment website platform FXRecruiter has excellent content management capabilities and is purpose-built to manage recruitment websites and jobs boards. Get in touch with one of our experts to discuss how FXRecruiter and Reverse Delta can help you. Contact Reverse Delta or give us a call on 08000 199737.

Be distinctive with your content

By Peter Morrow December 8, 2021

Making your recruitment website content truly distinctive Distinctive design and unique content should be a core aim for every recruitment website. One of the questions we ask our clients is, ‘what makes your agency genuinely unique?’ Ask yourself this question, too – why should your clients and candidates choose you and not one of your competitors? It’s all about standing out from the crowd and making your business personality shine through. The first impression you make is crucial – users decide in seconds whether to stay on your website. You should grab their attention with exciting content. Quality content will make them want to stay for longer. Aim to be Distinctive! How to be distinctive? The answer is in developing your brand identity. You should aim to make it distinct and unforgettable. Focus on your brand’s tone of voice, values and visuals. Firstly, your brand’s tone of voice is the primary influence on how your brand is perceived by your clients and other prospective businesses in the industry. We recommend that you aim to define a distinct and clear tone of voice across your recruitment website. However, take into consideration both your audience as well as your overall goal. Make sure that you remain consistent across all the pages on your website. Consistency will make your business appear credible and authoritative while building a stronger connection with your audience. Secondly, your brand’s core values are also the key to differentiating your business. Values represent what your company stands for. Explaining your business values will connect with your audience. They should be a part of everything that your business does. Portray them in visuals such as your logo and colour scheme. Make it yours. Lastly, Influencing SEO is another reason why your recruitment agency website should be distinct. Content directly impacts SEO. Moreover, search engines, such as Google, prefer unique content which identifies you from your competitors. For example, Google considers quality, relevance and uniqueness when ranking websites in search results. Google is interested in unique quality content because it sets you apart from everyone else. Focus on who visits your website A top-notch recruitment website design should always strive to cover what we like to call the three Cs: Clients – one of your primary aims is to draw in and convert new clients. Candidates – another of your main aims is to successfully attract new candidates to the excellent jobs you are working to fill for your clients! Consultants – every agency wants to expand, and attracting the right people to work for your business is the key to expansion. Show your current team in the best light so clients and candidates can put a name to the face. In conclusion, we recommend that you think about generating a solid marketing strategy for each of the 3 Cs. At Reverse Delta, we can help you with this, utilising our superior knowledge of creating best-in-class recruitment websites. We provide creative services for recruitment agencies to translate their business vision into the online world. Let us support you in making your recruitment website truly distinct! Get in touch today with one of our experts to discuss the broad range of our creative services. Find out all about how we can help you to grow your agency online. Contact Reverse Delta, or give us a call on 08000 199737.

Job description tips to attract stronger candidates

By Peter Morrow November 19, 2021

A quality job description attracts more quality candidates The job description is ultimately what can decide whether a candidate applies for a job or not. Strong job descriptions will equal stronger applicants. So let’s get straight down to business and find out how to make descriptions work for you and your applicants. Post your quality job description to your recruitment website This may seem blindingly obvious, but not every recruitment agency does this (sometimes a job is only posted via LinkedIn or to job boards). Unfortunately, this could mean your job slips past people on your email alerts; sometimes called job notifications. Make sure each position you post also goes out onto your recruitment website. After all, your website is probably the only aspect of your recruitment business that is genuinely 24/7. Users can still browse and use your website, whether you are on another call, asleep or on holiday. Not only will it provide an excellent one-stop shop for any prospective job seekers in your sector, but it will also provide Google with better, richer content to index. This brings us to the next point… Don’t forget SEO in your job description Search engine optimised job descriptions are essential to your job description being found by the right candidate. Much of modern-day SEO relies on how the website itself is built and structured (we can help you with structuring sitemaps). It is also about how each element of your site interacts with the rest. Google’s indexing algorithms will pick up on topic trends within the keywords used by your site to further understand what kind of queries might find your site valuable. Make certain that you include the correct keywords in job descriptions. Job seekers are searching for jobs that fall within the job title they want or the skills that they possess. Include those 'searching' words in your job description. Ensure you include the location of the job. Google wants to present content that is local to the job-seeker. Candidates want to avoid applying for roles that aren't local to where they live. It wastes their precious time. Top tip - avoid thin content! Google trusts Quality content and wants to recommend in its results. Everyone is searching for quality content and job descriptions are just one example. Candidates are not searching for poorly written job descriptions that fail to sell the role. Google marks down poorly written articles and this is the same for poor quality job descriptions. Ensure you put the right effort into writing a quality job description. Good quality job descriptions will attract strong candidates. Why should a candidate want to apply? Most job descriptions talk about what the business wants for the role but not the candidate’s desire. Make it about them. If your agency model allows it (and your client is happy), name the company they’re applying to. What is the workplace culture like? With much stress over the candidate shortage, it is now very much a jobseeker’s market. So talk to your client and ask them why they think somebody should apply to work with them. Job descriptions should include the salary and relevant benefits Simple things like salary expectations should be included and will get more clicks. The FXRecruiter recruitment platform is feature-rich. Advertise salary bands and provide relevant text for benefits. There is the option to display salaries in different currencies. You could provide job-seekers with a finger mobile-friendly salary slider scale when searching for roles. Our bespoke recruitment website platform FXRecruiter has excellent content management capabilities and is purpose-built to manage recruitment websites and jobs boards. Get in touch with one of our experts to discuss how FXRecruiter and Reverse Delta can help you. Contact Reverse Delta or give us a call on 08000 199737.

Measure, measure, measure!

By Steve Riley November 17, 2021

Google Analytics, Google for Jobs, FXRecruiter Dashboard, Search Console Our parent organization Recruitics is big on measurement. Very big – the company name actually comes from RECRUITment AnalytICS. We’re a mix of seasoned recruitment marketing experts, employer brand masters, numbers nerds, search pros, and social media mavens ready to deliver against your goals. Here at Reverse Delta, we've always kept a close eye on the numbers tracking our recruitment website activity - clicks, jobs, applications, etc. Behind the scenes of your website there are a number of recording and diagnostic activities recording data. They do subtly different things, so we'll try to explain the difference in very broad terms below. FXRecruiter dashboard We display summary statistics on our CMS dashboard when you log in to the admin system. These statistics capture site 'transactions' rather than raw site visits - jobs, candidates, applications, job alert subscribers, etc. Here you can quickly see the number of jobs posted and applications received that day, week or month, together with other summary snapshot data. Even if you process all your job postings and applications through an integrated third-party ATS or CRM, it's worth logging into your CMS dashboard to get a snapshot of site activity. Google analytics We will generally add analytics code to your site at the time of going live. For site rebuilds, where our site replaces an existing site we normally copy the existing code across from the previous site. This gives you continuity and shows the history between the two sites. The Google Analytics data give you an indication of raw site visits. The stats are not infallible, eg they also record 'bot' traffic like visits from Google itself to list the site. But the general trends recorded are always very useful. You may not need to closely monitor analytics as a fledgling business but they can be used in the future as you grow. For example to measure the success of a particular marketing campaign, so it's always useful to have. If you employ the services of a specialist SEO agency (we have the bases covered and have written about this a lot, but some clients like a deeper dive) they will need analytics to demonstrate their effectiveness. We generally ask you to 'own' the analytics account and add us as administrators. This avoids any issues down the line with future control of the account. Google for jobs This one is not about measurement per se but another from the 'Google-sphere', so worth a mention. All of our Version 6 (SaaS) and above sites are coded for the 'Google for Jobs' data schema - a way of structuring the jobs data that makes it easy for Google to work out and display the job details - job title, location, salary, etc. This helps with listing and also means that people can come directly to your site to apply for the job. All part of the service. Google search console We add the site to Google Search Console as part of our Go Live checklist. This is a prompt to Google to say 'list me please'. It's not a guarantee of immediate listing but basically announces 'there's something new here, come and crawl the site again'. Google generally wants to provide the most up to date information, so the submission of the new XML sitemap should start the process. The search console process also gives us an insight into many of the minor issues improvements suggested to enhance an effective listing, so we can often fine tune things before you're even aware. Each of these types of data can become a niche area of expertise in itself but you should be confident we have the basics covered for you and you have access to summary performance data. Summary: Understanding your data is the first step to empowerment. Get to know your site’s performance and only then will you truly be able to understand how to take it to the next level. Our recruitment marketing and job site knowledge is always available. Get in touch with us today to get your recruitment technology up to date and let it make the most of your work to recruit. Call 08000 199 737 or contact us here.

Attract more high-quality candidates with job notifications

By Peter Morrow November 15, 2021

Making sure that high-quality candidates are constantly browsing and searching your website is a significant challenge for recruiters in 2021 and beyond. Job notifications are an often overlooked way to attract more high-quality candidates. Job notifications are sometimes called email alerts. Anybody who has been on a job search in the last few years is likely already familiar with this. The major jobs boards such as LinkedIn, Indeed have job notification systems. Jobs are notified via email mailouts and when you log in. Individual recruitment businesses with their own jobs board, working in specific niches, are also frequent users of job notifications. The job-seeker only has to search a few keywords or job titles, hit subscribe and wait. Highest quality traffic coming from email alerts. It is certainly easier than doing the same repetitive searches every day. Waiting for the right opportunity to turn up! And that’s why job notifications are so helpful for recruiters looking to attract more high-quality candidates. Recent surveys bear that out – Job Board Doctor, 2021 report found 55% of those running jobs boards and recruitment websites see their highest quality traffic coming from email alerts. It’s a great way of tapping into the behavioural psychology of your likely candidates. The ease of steady notifications helps those seeking a better opportunity. While maintaining the demands of a full-time position. Automation avoids the daily grind of looking for the right opportunity. It will enable them to keep their eye on the ground rather than constantly be tracking down those excellent opportunities. Clients love them, too, as it ensures as many candidates will see their open position as possible. Additionally, notifications can serve different purposes for candidates. Set up multiple alerts; one example could be looking at temporary or lower-paid work near home. Or higher-paid permanent roles in a wider geographical area. Multiple ‘saved searches’ would normally then be bundled up into one ‘digest’ of any matching jobs added. Wondering how to set up those job notifications? Our FXRecruiter software is here to help draw in the highest-quality candidates. Email alerts are just one of the many tools available to recruiters. With FXRecruiter, you can give your talent pools easy access to your best upcoming opportunities. Alongside one-click sign-up forms and more personalisation over their job search. Email alerts are also a great way to activate passive or inactive candidates, giving them a purpose in interacting with your business again. Of course, email alerts and job notifications work best when used with a larger talent attraction strategy. Sending signals to the best prospective employees out there that your recruitment business is the one to go to for your industry. A bespoke jobs board on your site, featuring job options for, particularly unique postings. Even including SMS or text alerts. Don’t forget this oft-overlooked feature! Get in touch today with one of our experts to discuss how we can help. We have packages to suit all budgets and drive your competitive advantages. Contact Reverse Deta or give us a call on 08000 199737.

Recruit global talent with multi-region functionality

By Peter Morrow October 28, 2021

Recruiting international talent comes with many benefits – diversity, market insight, multiple languages, just to name a few. However, recruiters who want to recruit global talent often run into a problem. If recruiters based in one country decide to open an office in another, they can’t gain a local Google ranking, making them unable to get good traction among local candidates. It doesn’t have to be this way! We’ll share with you our solution that allows you to widen your talent pool internationally. The solution Our FXRecruiter software is a digital recruitment marketing system that shares jobs and content across channels. The recruitment platform has an extended feature for multi-region with geo-location, which helps you recruit global talent. What does it do? With FXRecruiter’s multi-region feature, you can create a different site in different parts of the world, all on the same website! You can tailor your website to present the following differently: Content pages (even the homepage) Sectors and specialisms Jobs Teams Imagery and videos Blogs News ...wherever you are in the world! FXRecruiter displays it all automatically based on where you are. However, users can always switch between regions as they please. What is a multi-regional website? A multi-regional website is one that explicitly targets users in different countries around the world. For example, if a product manufacturer ships to both Canada and the United States, Google Search would try to find the right local page for the searcher. How do they do this? By using generic country codes for top-level domains, also known as ccTLDs, for specific countries. Examples of ccTLDs include: Australia = .as Netherlands = .nl Singapore = .sg Or generic regional top-level domains, which can cover many countries. Europe = .eu Asia = .asia What are the benefits of a multi-regional website with FXRecruiter? Have you ever tried to Google “restaurants near me”? The results you would get in London will be very different from those in Tokyo. Even at a local level, such as for those searching for restaurants in W1 (Soho) and WC2 (Covent Garden), the results would be very different, even though they are less than half a mile apart. And a website based in Tokyo with information on restaurants in London simply won’t figure at all in results. This ‘local’ philosophy is vital for just about everything, from finding public transport near your location to shops in your vicinity ... and jobs too. The search engines, including Google, apply the same ‘local’ philosophy when searching for jobs. When they search, Google will show jobs near the user location, for example, “IT Project Manager jobs near me”. The results vary depending on the searcher location: Example 1 - User based in Warrington searching for the terms “IT Project Manager jobs” - unsurprisingly the search results are for jobs in or near Warrington. Example 2 - User based in West London searching for the terms “IT Project Manager jobs” - the search results are for jobs in or near West London. As you would expect, the search in Warrington brings up job ads in the local area. The same is true for the investigation based in West London. An agency based in Manchester needs the right SEO solution to help it advertise jobs abroad to attract local candidates. Local is what the user expects! This is the key benefit of a multi-regional website with our FXRecruiter software; it helps your agency website become local in the targeted location. Other benefits? Ensure job-seekers find your international jobs in the correct local environment You can target content more specifically at local audiences and convert prospective clients Present only the right content in the right places Convey more credible affinity with local markets Interested in learning more about FXRecruiter and how we can help grow your recruitment business? Get in touch with one of our experts to discuss how we can help. We have packages to suit all budgets and drive your competitive advantages. Contact us here or give us a call 08000 199737. Key takeaways Google likes to present locally in its search results for users FXRecruiter has an extended feature for multi-region with geo-location. A multi-regional website is one that explicitly targets users in different countries around the world. Job search results will vary depending on the user’s location Recruiting global talent and attracting candidates local to clients jobs locations needs strategic SEO

Recruiting for your own recruitment agency

By Peter Morrow October 28, 2021

When recruiting staff for other companies, make sure you don't forget yourselves! To grow your recruitment or staffing agency, you will need to recruit the right team members to fill vacancies. Getting your employer branding right is key. This article aims to provide you with actionable tips on recruiting staff for your agency. Tip #1: Strengthen your employer branding A company’s reputation matters more than ever. Job seekers want to know about an organisation’s company culture before they even apply for a position. 86% of employees would not apply to or continue to work for a company with a poor reputation among former employees or the general public. Your employer brand is your reputation and your employees’ perception of you as an employer. To retract and retain top talent, you must have a positive reputation. How can you strengthen your employer brand? Conduct an employer brand audit Create a robust onboarding process Tell your company story through content Tip #2: Use your website to attract staff Your website is essentially your online business card. It provides information to your clients about what you do, who you serve, and how you can help them. But it can also be a place to recruit new talent to your agency. By having a web page dedicated to promoting roles at your agency for those interested in recruitment, you can transform your clients browsing your site into your new employees! Take a look at the pros and cons of possible solutions that Reverse Delta can provide for you: Pro: Having a recruitment webpage is inexpensive, and you can do it yourself using the FXRecruiter CMS. Con: A ‘home cooked’ page may look functional. Check out an example of one of our client’s recruitment web pages here. Pro: Our creative services team will design a great looking page to promote your employer branding to potential employees. Con: Cost involved. Pro: A separate recruitment website is a strategic solution for medium to large businesses with growth needs to fill. It also makes an objective statement about your brand. Con: Cost and time commitment involved. Tip #3: Use your social media connections With the number of people using social media platforms daily, you could well find your next talent is recruited on social media. You can use your agency social media pages to promote your employer branding and the benefits of being a recruiter at your agency. And of course, this is low cost, just requiring an investment of time and a little flair. Here are a few content ideas you can use to recruit talent through social media: Post employee testimonials Glassdoor, Comparably or similar reviews from current and former staff Share your company story Showcase what your company culture is like Interested in learning more about how our creative services can help you develop your employer branding to recruit those interested in working in recruitment? Get in touch today with one of our experts to discuss how we can help. Contact our team here or give us a call at 08000199737. Key takeaways Ensure your employer branding represents your business accurately Job seekers want to know about an organisation’s company culture before they even apply for a position. Your website can be a place to recruit new talent to your agency. You could very well find your next talent recruit on social media.

Importance of recruitment marketing platform

By Peter Morrow September 27, 2021

Having a digital presence in the form of a recruitment website built on a recruitment marketing platform is important to your recruitment agency success. In fact, it is not only an integral part of your marketing strategy and your business; It is the most important tool in your marketing tool kit! We know this as we have been designing websites for recruitment agencies on our recruitment marketing platform FXRecruiter for nearly 20 years.

You can expect your website to work 24/7 - it’s your hardest working employee. It is also your lowest-cost advertising for your business to attract potential clients + post job adverts to attract and convert job-seekers.

Here is a reminder of just 10 great reasons why our FXRecruiter recruitment marketing platform provides a strong return on your investment:

1) Mobile experience

designed and built for speed on mobile to load quickly (reducing bounce rate) and rank highly with Google’s recent mobile-first approach.
responsive and adaptive design to ensure the best usability across devices while maintaining the same content no matter what (important!).

2) Applying experience

a recruitment website should aim to improve and simplify your end to end job application process.
FXRecruiter provides as standard simple application functionality such as Quick-Apply, Apply with LinkedIn or Indeed Apply.
enhance the user experience with request a call-back or quick cv drop

3) Candidate portal

a candidate portal provides more meaningful interaction with your job-seekers.
give them the ability to apply and register their details at the same time.
able to upload CVs and as many documents as required.
easily track the status of their application and see recommended jobs.

4) Capitalise on automation efficiency

integrate with CRM, ATS, Multi-posters
and other technology providers such as email marketing or chatbots
move data easily from one system to another
build processes that reduce manual input and improve up your speed to hire

5) Quality candidates

create your database of quality candidates for future roles by sending their data to your CRM or ATS

6) SEO optimised

being SEO optimised can have a positive impact on the performance of your website, job ads and blogs.
our FXRecruiter recruitment marketing platform has SEO capabilities built in to ensure everything you do is optimised.
SEO Optimised Job Board come as standard & work with Google for Jobs Schema and its new directApply policy.
Google and the other search engines update their search algorithms often, which can be turbulent for SEO, and is why we constantly update FXRecruiter to adapt to these changes.

7) Job postings

promote your sectors and make it easy for candidates to search and find jobs quickly.
Create your own campaign landing pages to prompt your client’s jobs.

8) Advanced Content Management System (CMS)

FXRecruiter puts you in control of all aspects of your website using the advanced CMS, designed specifically for recruitment industry
it’s quick and easy to create and control all elements of you website content
keep your website fresh and up to date + save money on an expensive replacement

9) Blogging & content marketing functionality

strengthen your reputation and build authority and recognition in your market
add blogs, insight articles and news posts
upload images and video
post out to social media to promote your expertise

10) Security

compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
we provide an SSL certificate (important to show your site is safe and trustworthy) as standard, so you don’t have to worry about the technical side
we provide best-practice data security and encryption
build trust with candidates and clients

Interested in learning more about FXRecruiter and how we can help grow your recruitment business? Get in touch today with one of our experts to discuss how we can help. We have packages to suit all budgets and drive your competitive advantages. reversedelta/contact or call 08000 199737.

Google for Jobs October update favours candidate experience

By Peter Morrow September 22, 2021

Google for Jobs is calling out all recruitment agencies and job boards to improve their candidate experience or risk losing being found. These updates go into effect on 1 October 2021, leaving little time for most recruiters or job boards to adjust their technologies, processes and strategies in order to be in compliance with Google’s update. A new addition is a schema property called “directApply” which will require the application process to be straightforward.

In July, Google announced that they would update during October their job schema and job content editorial guidelines that will ultimately affect job post rankings on Google for Jobs. The timing of this is significant for recruiters – everyone who has jobs advertised will be affected by this update. Changes to Google’s algorithm will affect search rankings. That risk could potentially be huge as approximately 75% of job seekers start their job search on Google. Some recruitment websites will gain visibility, and some will lose it as a result. The success of your job postings will depend on the candidate experience of your website.

We have put this article together to help explain some of the key terminology and changes. Ensure you get ahead of the competition by checking your website process.

What’s happening with Google for Jobs?
Recruiters are struggling to attract candidates in the current market as demand surges and competition grows fierce for the limited supply of job seekers. As we leave summer behind and progress towards the festive season, recruiters are facing into a growing challenge to fill their client’s roles. Now more than ever, agencies need the traffic to their jobs so they can find the quality candidates to fill their client’s vacancies.

Few recruiters know that Google is about to make an update in October that is expected to significantly affect the traffic to jobs. Google is going to make a change to Google for Jobs (G4J) by updating their job posting guidelines to improve the quality and trust of results for job seekers. Google is making these changes based on direct candidate feedback on these interactions with job search listings during both job search and the associated application experiences.

Why is the update needed?
The user experience wasn't the best when Google first launched G4J in July 2018. The candidate experience was poor with many job boards and recruitment websites that didn’t help the process by jumping genuine applicants from one URL to another. The candidates were often the ones caught in the crossfire. What should have been an improvement to their job search and candidate experience often actually was not what they were expecting. There were instances where recruiters would bait a job seeker with a different company’s job to capture the job seeker’s information and never forward the candidate to the actual companies application process.

What is exciting about this G4J update is that it will eliminate a lot of that bad behaviour. This update creates a more fair playing field for both recruiters advertising their jobs and candidates to trust they are applying to an actual position. The results of these changes will also likely penalize job adverts where the candidate experience is lengthy, confusing, or otherwise sub-optimal.

What is directApply?
According to Google, a “directApply” experience is defined in terms of the user actions required to apply for a job. Google is looking for a simple and straightforward application process for job seekers.

Google goes on to give examples of a “directApply” experience in which they indicate that you LIKELY provide a direct apply experience if your site provides one of the following experiences (a site as defined by Google usually means one single domain and not cross-domain traffic):

The user completes the application process on your site
Once arriving at your page from Google, the user doesn't have to click on apply and provide user information more than once to complete the application process

Google even provides helpful imagery to describe the optimal (and likely acceptable) experiences that will benefit from the change (i.e. experiences that will not be penalised):

In order to indicate that your job posting provides “directApply,” Google has added a structured data property to their Google job posting schema for “directApply.”

It is the opinion of many in the SEO industry that this new “directApply” property will likely be used as an indicator by Google that your site should be crawled and verified for the application experience provided as part of the ranking process. It’s further believed that this will not likely be a human verification process, but probably some sort of programmatic and algorithm-based crawler that will attempt to score the experience and ease of the overall process.

In addition, it is highly likely that Google will use its knowledge of your page structure and application process to create an algorithm for your sites conversion rate (application start to application completion). Having a poor conversion rate (or poor application/candidate experience) will likely also impact your job overall ranking score.

Who will be impacted?
Anyone who advertises jobs on the web is going to be affected by this update. Google is favouring those who provide a quality experience to the user, so they’re calling out recruiters to improve their candidate experience or risk losing being found in G4J. This update can potentially negatively impact your recruitment strategy, the number of applications you receive per role, and at the end of the day, negatively impact your business if you are unable to achieve recruitment goals.

There is most certainly a ripple effect that will take place as job seeker traffic is redistributed. For example, job boards and publishers will lose traffic because they will no longer get some or all of the free traffic they have come to depend on from G4J. This means there's going to be a downstream effect, that employers are going to lose traffic from some of the publishers they rely on today. On top of that, if they're not indexed, they're already losing traffic from not being included in the index. The job traffic is going to go to the agencies that have compliant AND indexed job pages. In addition, if they prioritised the candidate experience, then their job rankings on Google for Jobs will be rewarded.

The agencies that have made commitments to quality application experiences or those that plan now to comply with Google’s new rules will have a significant advantage in this highly competitive market for talent. There is an opportunity to capture all the traffic that is most certainly going to be lost by others after the update. If you are not prepared, you’re going to lose traffic, and it’s going to go to a recruitment agency that prioritised the candidate experience.

Below we have ranked those we think will be affected by the changes:

Job boards that make candidates sign in the job board, before sending them onto either another job board or a recruitment agency website
Sites where the candidates have to sign in to one type of job tech and then sign in to a different piece of tech or a candidate software system to apply.
Recruitment agency sites that don’t have structured data to Google “Schema” standard.
Any “site” where the job seeker changes domains as part of the application experience (i.e. job view happens on abcrecruiter.co.uk but application happens on app.abcrecruiter.co.uk (a fairly common experience for Job Boards and bolt-on recruitment website job technology).
Any site requiring a second ‘log in’ or ‘sign in’ within the application experience as this has been shown to lead to an extensive drop off (+75% in some cases) and will likely negatively impact your conversion ranking score
Any site that requires users to click through an ‘apply’ button or similar action more than once after the transfer from Google for Jobs.

Improving the candidate experience
A benefit of this update is that it’s going to improve the job seekers experience by getting rid of sites in the search results that are using job post content to get unsuspecting job seekers to provide their information and will eliminate the “black hole” where candidates thought they applied to a job, but their application was never sent to a hiring manager. That's great news for everyone except those misleading job seekers, and it's hard to have any sympathy towards that loss.

From a purely selfish point of view this update favours recruiters with a fully rounded, informative website hosting their own jobs and easy apply processes (rather than relying on third party job boards). It should help foster a 'virtuous circle', sending more traffic to the recruiter's own website and help improve rankings further.

What should you do next
This update favours those with a positive candidate experience, but shouldn’t the candidate experience always matter? Many recruiters struggle to make their application process candidate-centric. It's usually a technical challenge to develop a process that puts the candidate’s needs first. It needs a strategic perspective in which most recruiters don’t have the means or the time to invest in.

With Google penalising jobs with poor candidate experiences, there is now an immediate reason to prioritise the candidate experience at your agency. Recruitment agencies that prioritise and make those changes to provide a secure, trusted and quality candidate experience on their recruitment website, will be the ones that will be favoured and benefit from additional traffic and applications.

Beyond just a grab for free traffic on Google for Jobs, a quality candidate experience is also proven to increase agencies pipelines, improve applicant conversion, improve ROI on recruitment advertising, and improve the bottom line. Time to make your candidate experience a priority, if you haven't already.

These changes that Google for Jobs are creating with their latest update were necessary for a long time and will probably become a positive change. If you would like to learn more about directApply or see how to prepare best, reach out to Reverse Delta, and we'll be happy to help you!

Are sign-on bonuses for new employees here to stay

By Peter Morrow September 6, 2021

Sign-on bonuses may be a short-term evil worth using to fill vacant positions, but they could be here well into 2022. According to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, there are over 1.5 million vacant positions in the UK. But employers are struggling to fill them, leading to staff shortages across the UK.

The reasons for this are many. Many employees are reluctant to re-enter the jobs market, especially in face-to-face industries, even as we look to a post-pandemic future. Those that have found work during the pandemic are also understandably reluctant to take a chance on a job change, mainly if their current working situation is stable and secure and they’ve found a comfortable remote working setup.
Impact of a smaller candidate pool in 2021
Brexit has also impacted available staff, with many European workers returning home to their native countries, which has, in turn, disrupted the supply chain, as customs and staff shortages combine for a perfect storm.

Covid has also impacted the candidate pool with some reluctant to return to the workplace. Those suffering long covid are putting health before work, while a large proportion have found an improved work life balance while working from home. Lastly there are those that despite vaccinations, with underlying health conditions that were managable before 2020, cannot take the risk of being amongst others.
Sign-on bonuses
In this context, many employers are turning to lucrative offers to attract employees, particularly through the means of sign-on bonuses. Tesco offers £1000 to HGV drivers, whilst Amazon also provides the same amount for new workers. Some employers are offering as much as £10,000 for incoming employees.

As a way of attracting employees, a ‘golden hello’ is a tried-and-tested method, but of course, there are broader fears about how sustainable this is in the long term. For job seekers who are set on a remote or from-home working, in industries that don’t require face-to-face contact, sign-on bonuses won’t do much. And whilst these shortages are likely to last until 2022, they will likely subside eventually.

Sign-on bonuses might attract more candidates, but they won’t necessarily attract better candidates. Finding better candidates ultimately falls on the recruiter to dig deep into their personal skills to source the right talent. Accurate job descriptions, using appropriate keywords that are both SEO-ready and industry-focused, are a vital driver. So is clarity and transparency around salary, benefits and those very same sign-on bonuses (promising a sign-on reward only to reveal later it’s riddled with conditionals and exceptions is a surefire route to early disappointment). The phrase ‘competitive salary’ is also a turn-off for candidates — because competitive for you might not be competitive for them!

Improving your swiftness of hire is also a great way of proving to clients that they can rely on you in a pinch, but so is utilising your pool of ‘passive’ candidates. You may have a collection of CVs and candidates who aren’t currently active within your database — but would certainly be interested in hearing about the right offer.

Skills gaps and large-scale vacancies may be a headache for businesses and recruiters — but for those willing to take a chance, they’re also a great opportunity. Reverse Delta and our bespoke recruitment website platform FXRecruiter are on hand to help you grow. Call us on 08000 199737 or click here.

Online security SSL certificate

By Andy Ralph September 6, 2021

The primary way most websites do this is through their SSL Certificates. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) allows you to authenticate a website’s identity and create an encrypted connection between the site and the user. The certificate signifies the fact that the website is safe and trustworthy. Secure use of SSL on the website is shown by the familiar padlock icon in the browser bar and the domain name starting with https://. Something your users will have come to expect.

A great recruitment website isn’t just about the things your users can see: the amazing content, the brilliant user experience or the ease of applying to jobs. It’s also about the things that your users don’t see. The SEO algorithms that help you land exactly where you want on the site. The speed of page loading. And the security processes that make sure your visitors are safe from cyberattacks and data breaches.

In effect, this encryption prevents hackers from attempting to read the data transmitted as it’s being sent between two connections (usually the domain host — you — and the user). This data must be kept secure for a recruitment website, where you might expect to deal with such sensitive information as a candidate’s personal details — or sometimes — a client’s. An SSL certificate is essential for any website that requires login details and personal information.

SSL certificates then are a way of ensuring that your user data remains secure — it goes without saying that if users don’t feel they can trust a recruiter with their personal data, then that recruiter will struggle to grow their standing. After all, so much of recruitment is about the personal touch and conveying information effectively and securely.
The risks of not having an SSL certificate:

You are more open to a data breach — and with it, a loss of trust from your customer base, hefty fines, or a site outage
sites without SSL certificates also rank lower when it comes to SEO
search engines rightly see such safety as an important measure.

There are, however, many different types of certificates, providing different protections, with various requirements for each, whether that’s a domain-validated SSL or an Extended Validated SSL. Who knows, maybe a Wildcard SSL certificate is what you need?
Is your head spinning from all this tech jargon?
Well, that’s where FXRecruiter comes in. We include SSL Certificates as part of our packages. Meaning you won’t have to worry about it. Our brilliant developers will simply handle that for you. You can rest easy knowing that your client and candidate data is secure.

FXRecruiter can help grow your recruitment business in many ways, but wherever you take your business, excellent security infrastructure is always going to be vital. We have packages to suit all budgets and drive your competitive advantage forward. Simply call us on 08000 199737 or click here.
More:
We’ve talked about this for a few years now. These days SSL has moved from ‘nice to have, to ‘pretty much essential’ https://reversedelta.com/2017/01/16/site-use-https/