Search engine marketing for recruitment gets results

Most marketers know search engine marketing is a cost effective way of reaching your audience but few have effectively harnessed the power of search -- not least for talent recruitment.

For 13 positions, India-based child rights advocate Child Rights and You (CRY) received nearly 5,000 applications from 150 cities in 25 states worldwide, with over 4,000,000 ad impressions served. The NGO hired all 13 positions through this method, and only paid per-resume-received and a per-candidate-hired bonus.

"It works for a recruitment location anywhere in the world, looking to hire people from any specified geography, for any given profile," Geeta Sethi, country manager,

Pinstorm Technologies, which worked with CRY, said. "Through search engine marketing (SEM), we have the ability to reach professionals who are not actively seeking a change -- they would not have registered with job sites nor would respond to job postings -- therefore, the quality of candidates is significantly superior as compared to traditional CV generation methods used."

According to Sethi, search engines receive millions of queries every day, and only a portion are for career-related search terms -- which will obviously be expensive to buy. However, companies can serve up ads for cheaper search terms for less-obviously related queries to reach potential candidates who might not even be looking for a new job. For example, someone querying ‘linear programming' or ‘regression analysis' may the kind a media agency is looking for; or someone searching ‘personal grooming' may be right for the hospitality industry.  

SEM as a process works best when campaigns are optimised -- for a given objective, use the best possible combination of search terms, creative and landing pages which trigger the best quality and highest rate of response. Therefore, it is most suited to large organisations with recurring staffing needs, such as insurance companies looking for motivated agents, telecom companies looking for networking specialists, hotels looking for presentable front office staff and so on.

"We reach out to the best talent, whose consumption of internet and search is far higher than that of traditional media. We provide a securitised web based console for convenient access, sharing and managing of a database for a large volume of jobs across industries and countries," Sethi said. "This process is more cost-effective as compared to traditional media, because clients pay only for results."