By using search advertising - advertising campaigns on search engines - companies can promote their jobs and focus their attention on search engines as Google, Yahoo! and MSN. By choosing the right keywords they focus on the right target audience to attract candidates, in a very cost effective way.

How does it work?

Advertisers set up a campaign on search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN their advertising platform. Google’s advertising platform is called Google AdWords.
First of all you have to select keywords to trigger the ads. For example, in a recruitment campaign for ICT profiles these keywords could be ‘vacancies ICT, ‘jobs ICT, ‘ICT job’, etc. The next step is writing a call-to-action ad text that will appear when a query is done for one of the keywords in the campaign. You pay every time a surfer clicks on your ad and is brought to the website. You can even use deep links, which means the surfer directly comes to the page that is related to his query.
It is a pay-per-click system and you can determine the amount you want to pay for every click. The higher the bid, the higher your ad will appear in the list of sponsored results.
You can choose whether you want your ads to appear only in the search results of the search engines or on the whole network, which includes portals, blogs etc. On the content network the ads will appear on specific websites because the keywords are linked to the content of the site. Someone who visits a site about software can see a software company’ job ad, for example. This enables you to also reach the latent job hunters, who are not really looking for a new job but who will probably click the ad if it appeals to them.

What are the advantages of search marketing as compared to (traditional) recruitment channels?

• The threshold to start an advertising campaign on search engines is relatively low. Because of the low setup cost and the possibility to start with a small budget, search engine advertising is a very cost effective way to communicate with potential customers;
• You only pay when a surfer clicks your ad;
• You can reach specific target audiences by selecting the right keywords;
• You can target the campaign geographically;
• It’s possible to reach both active and latent job hunters;
• Search engine advertising helps building brand awareness and branding.

Who can use it?

Any HR department can use a search advertising campaign. Last year many companies used it to promote their vacancies, because it becomes more difficult to fill them through the traditional recruitment channels.
Companies can set up the recruitment campaigns themselves – Google AdWords and other platforms are self-service – or to outsource it to a search marketing agency. Setting up and managing a campaign requires the necessary experience, time and tools, so outsourcing is a good option.

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