I always thought it would be fun to be a personal advice columnist, like ‘Dear Abby’. The only problem was, I knew my answers would never get published in a general audience paper. ‘Dear Jeff, my significant other is having an affair but I still love them’. ‘Dear person, dump this fool, get a dog, and move to Tahiti.’ Nope, that was never going to work.

But I do like to give advice to those in the recruitment marketing industry, sometimes because I’m asked, and sometimes because, well…I’m opinionated. Or, as others might put it, I am ‘a grizzled industry veteran who is old and crotchety and won’t shut up’. Ok.

There are a few things everyone should be aware of/conversant in/learning about – in other words, ignore these at your peril. Why? Because they’re part of the industry conversation, for good or bad, and you’re in the industry, trying to make a buck like the rest of us. So here goes:

• Google: Google has given recruiting a 1-2-3 punch: 1) Google jobs schema, which is bringing loads of traffic to niche sites – traffic that used to go to Indeed; 2) Google Hire, their ATS for SMB (and soon more); and 3) Google Cloud Talent Solution (formerly Cloud Job Discovery), their AI-driven search tool. If you’re a job board or recruiting site and you haven’t switched your job postings over to the Google schema, just do it. Don’t question me, don’t hesitate, just make the switch. When the new traffic rolls in, you can thank me. If you’re already offering a lightweight ATS to your clients, be aware that Hire is coming for you, and will be a formidable competitor. And take a look at the Google search solution (you may already have it and not know it – some job board software vendors have integrated it into their platforms); early tests by some job boards have show some impressive results, and the pricing is now more reasonable for the average site. It might give you better results for your candidates.
• Text: Are you offering text communications between your employers and candidates? How about texted job alerts or job updates? Apply by text? No? Depending on your audience, maybe you should. If your audience is primarily mobile, or millennial, or…well, you get the drift. It’s probably safe to assume that many candidate audiences rely on text. So make it easy for them (and employers) – integrate text into your communications strategy…and you’ll see higher engagement. Really.
• Depth: What’s the best defense against Indeed, Facebook, or ? Depth. Where they go shallow, you go deep. Where they go wide, you go deep. Where they try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to a specific audience. You go deep because you are the authority with this audience. You go deep because you know more than the big guys about this audience. Ultimately, you go deep because depth – more than anything else – is your competitive advantage. (And if you really, really want to go wide and compete with these behemoths? Make sure you have millions of dollars to invest – because you need it!).

There you have it – one Doctor’s opinion. What’s yours? Let me know.