As a person who focuses on employer branding and recruitment marketing everyday – I get excited when I see companies doing really smart things online to build their employer brand and attract talented people.
Tonight – I came across one of the SMARTEST tactics to date, and it was by Yahoo!. Here is how it happened: I am giving a talk on Thursday called ‘Creating Great Employment Brands Online’…so I sat down and did a Google search on ‘Employer Branding’ on my new Google Custom Search Engine – popula8ion - to see what my peeps are saying about this topic. Then I did a technorati search to see if the ‘blogosphere according to technorati’ had anything else to offer me.
Here is a screen shot of the Technorati SERP and look what I found in their Sponsored Links:
Do you recognize that URL from the recruitosphere? If you don’t – that is http://www.jobsearchmarketing.com – the terrific blog by Matt Martone, a Recruitment Media Sales Executive over at Yahoo!.
My first reaction was that I couldn’t believe Matt was buying text ads on search engines to promote his blog. After all, he works for Yahoo! – what could he possibly gain personally by paying for an SEM campaign to attract readers to his blog? If you have your own business – that is one thing. But if you work for a company – what would make it worthwhile to spend your personal money like this?
I am so intrigued. So I click on his ad (sorry to skew the numbers Matt 
) – and here is what I see this time:
If you aren’t connecting the dots the way I did – the text ad on Technorati links to a specific post on Matt’s blog called – “What’s it like to work at Yahoo!“. I think that this is a recruitment marketing campaign!
Yahoo! is leveraging the fact that their employees blog and using Matt’s to recruit talent. (OR Yahoo! has a KICK ASS employee referral program and Matt IS using his own money as he is betting that he will make more money from an ERP bonus than the cost of this SEM campaign). Yahoo! is leveraging their employee bloggers to recruit talent. SO smart. I love it. The post is complete with a recruitment video that you can see here if you’re interested:
Technorati Tags: Yahoo, recruiting blogs, employer brand, employment brand, employer branding, employee blogs, recruitment marketing
EXCELER8ion is where Shannon and Julian Seery Gude write on Social Media & Recruiting, Digital Marketing, Technology, Internet Business, and other Geekiness. 
10 comments ↓
has been acquired by Google. Seems to me your competitor being acquired is a good thing, validates the technology and purpose, but a bad thing in who wants to compete with Google. Recruiting Blogosphere: Your Employees ARE Blogging – How Yahoo Uses Employee Blogs to Recruit Talent After the first of the year you will see some MN Headhunter banner ads on different web sites in Minnesota. Some of which are free and some of which are paid for. This will be my own experiment on continuing to get the word out about the site.
Die nächste Fortsetzung meiner kleinen Reihe: Natürlich gibt es bereits viele Corporate Blogs, die mehr oder weniger passiv auf Besucher warten. Im Blog exceler8ion fand ich ein schönes Beispiel, wie ein Corporate Blog, der von einem Mitarbeiter aus dem Recruitingbereich von Yahoo! verantwortlich betrieben wird, sogar aktiv für das Recruiting eingesetzt wird.
Dang! This is exciting stuff! Its smart and it comes across as authentic. I’m curious to know if Yahoo is leveraging the existing employee blogs or they have an official program for this. The latter would be great strategy– but they get more brownie points if its the former.
You forgot to search RecruitingFly, we found Matt a while ago…
G’day Chris,Groan.
Well, if Shannon’s mission was to find Matt’s blog you would have an excellent point. But, we already know about Matt’s blog and have been reading him for a while. So, I would have to say that your point seems more like a shameless plug for your RecruitingFly service (BTW: nice job on RecruitingFly) or in other parlance, an ad. And I have no problems with ads, I am a marketer after all, as long as we’re clear that they’re ads, and not comments. OK, now that I’m done giving you a little blogger love for your ad disguised as an off topic comment, I’ll get back to the point here.The story here is that Matt or Yahoo! are using a smart new twist on search engine marketing for recruitment. Specifically, using search engine marketing (in this case Yahoo!’s – not Google’s) and a form of social media optimization (using SEM to connect to a blog). Now, we would have never seen these SEM links on any Google based search engine like our own Popula8ion, or your RecruitingFly SE because neither feature text link ads from Yahoo!.
Hey, quick question for you. If we index your RecruitingFly search engine with our Google based Popula8ion search engine will it short circuit the universal search engine flux capacitor and lead to a tear in the fabric of the recruitosphere and ultimate breakdown of the recruitosphere society as we know it?
Just having a little fun, please don’t be perturbed.
– Julian
Hey Chris,
Thanks for stopping by! I think you missed the point of the post. I did already know who Matt was – that was why the text ad on Technorati jumped out at me when I saw it – I knew his blog and URL already – actually from Recruiting.com (and had added him to my blogroll soon after as he has a great blog.)
The point of the post was not about finding a cool new blog. The point was that Yahoo! (Matt’s employer) is using Matt’s blog and his post about working at Yahoo! as a recruitment marketing tactic. They have bought Sponsored Links on Yahoo! and linked it to Matt’s blog to try and attract talent (at least from what I could see). I think it is a terrific way to support and leverage an employee that is blogging.
Make sense?
Shannon
Awesome post and very interesting reading. Love your stuff Shannon. -Carl
Matt Martone…what more do you have to say about this guy? Matt is my hotjobs.com rep, and really gave me a swift kick in the @$$ on the blogging front, when he told me about his site. I’d been having a place holder going with blogspot for a long time, but after reading Matt’s blog, i came to realize just how important having a company blog is.
Since this time, I’ve personally developed the blog, and really ramped up our myspace (www.myspace.com/dialoguedirect) and youtube (http://youtube.com/profile?user=DialogueDirect) accounts to put our message out in front of my target recruit: the 18-24 year old market.
Through reading Matt’s blog, I’ve picked up on a few tips that I was unaware of, and have utilized them to push my “Creative” recruiting even further. Thanks for all the help and collaboration Matt…keep it up bro!
Being a former Yahoo!, I can certify that this is not a coordinated effort within Yahoo! – just a good use of the medium by an individual. Which brings up a good point…
Recent press surrounding the company is dead on (see NY Times 10/11/2006). There is a huge bureaucracy, internal squabbling, and little progress forward. The environment/culture is not good and at the moment a lot of talent is leaving, frustrated. At this point – I wouldn’t recommend it to a friend (that I wanted to keep).
So the question becomes, as more employees blog and try to promote their companies, who will hold them responsible for what they say? Will employee blogs quickly go the way of employee testimonials? Looked at as something nice to see, but seen as “spin” and nothing else. Should bloggers be careful about endorsing their workplaces if there are issues (and let’s face it most companies have issues) that they don’t disclose. Does that reduce their credibility? Will it end up hurting the blogger’s reputation?
I think these employee blogs will end up being exposed if they do not accurately depict the workplace. Look at what happened to Wal-Mart when they paid a couple RVing across America to blog about them (http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=49505&Nid=24192&p=82937) – they got exposed and got a lot of negative comments.
One of the points that I’d like to make is that blogging needs to be distinguished from advertising. It’s a communication tool. Most people aren’t moved by small talk. Conversations that are deep and honest are engaging and ultimately, are more fulfilling and will have a greater impact.
Hi Shannon,
Thanks for the attention. BTW, RecruitingFly, thanks. It just so happens that RecruitingFly was my very first referrer. (non-Google or Yahoo!)
Ok so…to answer your questions…
This is not a covert plan to build employer brand awareness for Yahoo! as very few job seekers would search for, ‘Employer brand’ and click on an ad with copy reading, ‘Learn how to use job blogs, job boards, video…to build employer brand awareness.’
I pay for this. It just so happens to provide some good ole’ fashion down home organic employer branding. Yahoo! really is a great company to work for. Still, that’s not enough cause for me to purchase keywords with my own money.
So I will explain why I do this….
I blog to educate my clients and prospects, provoke thoughtful conversation, highlight leaders in our industry, share best practices and build awareness of the services that I sell. In return, I am asked to consult my clients and am awarded more of their business.
I sell keywords and my blog’s keyword campaign helps me demonstrate how Yahoo! keywords can be used for employer brand building and recruitment. By demonstrating this to someone searching, ‘Employer brand’ I am educating the market on the process and value.
The branding value here for Yahoo! is really just the byproduct; as it is for all of the companies which get highlighted on my blog.
I list these companies on the right hand side of my blog under a title, ‘Employers of Choice.’ To date, included are, Google, DialugeDirect, DigitalGrit, Cadbury-Schweppes and more.
Here are some more examples of how I use keywords help demonstrate and educate…
Seeking sales professionals in New York?
I suggest that you buy Sales Jobs New York. You should lead this job seeker traffic to a landing page and provide an opportunity to apply.
This is what I have done here with the purchase of, Sales Jobs New York. I demonstrate the process and value of keywords and landing pages. In the meantime, I help HotJobs attract less-active qualifed sales professionals.
Searching for info on Employer brands?
I provide an example of how a leading company builds employer brand awareness via a job blog and recruitment video.
You Shannon, are an influential person I our industry. You searched and clicked. You read and you shared. Maybe you will share again in your speech. If so, many more people in our marketplace will be educated on the use of keywords for recruitment and employer branding.
In the end, this benefits all of us as a more informed marketplace purchases more aggressive and successful recruitment advertising products such as keywords and behavioral targeted network advertisements.
This success provides us with the opportunity to pitch for a greater portion of our marketplace’s recruitment budget.
I’ll bet that you’ll agree. This give and take is good business and good blogging.
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