NLP Publication

Digital Marketing for Online Student Career

Development

Summary

Introduction

Search Engine Marketing

Partnerships

Online Advertising

Controlling, Maintaining, Traffic Building

Email Marketing

Offline Marketing

Survey Monkey

Social Media Marketing

Viral Marketing

Careers Presentation

The Verdict

NLP Publication 1

Contents

Introduction-Current market situation

Search Marketing-SEO-PPC

Patnerships-Affiliate Marketing-Online Sponsorship

Online Advertising

Controlling, Maintaining, Traffic Building

Email Marketing

Offline Marketing

Survey Monkey-Results

Social Media Marketing-Facebook-Twitter-What people thinkConclusions

Summary

2NLP Publication

Viral Marketing-YouTube

Careers Department Presentation-Survey & Results

The Verdict-Conclusion

Introduction

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Graduate unemployment is on the rise and more online job sites have appeared in order to make the most of this situation. However, how exactly are they trying to capture and engage with their market? What sort of tools and techniques do they use when communicating with their customers? Does their email marketing actually make an effect or does it simply get put into the ;Junk Mail’? Throughout this report we will be exploring these issues as well as ways in which Job Site brands build traffic to their website.

This report will outline the different aspects of digital marketing within the student careers market. Resources such as ‘Google Adwords’ will be looked into as well as how different job sites email market to their clients. Also, the use of online social media will be brushed on and seeing how brands try to connect to their market.

A series of primary and secondary research will be carried out in order to work out how these businesses gain success or what they need to do in order to increase traffic.

Search engine marketing is a very effective method for online traffic building.

Most online visitors will use all available search engines such as:

•Google

•Bing

•Yahoo

•AOL

•Lycos

Users are driven to search for a brand or a product that they may have come across through vision, word of mouth or other forms of campaigns that may have created their interest to search for more information, or to look for comparisons between brands, products or services.

Search engine optimisation can be affected by the keywords that the sites use on their meta tags. An example is shown below.

Search Engine Marketing

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For instance, students may visit a graduate fair and be handed out a leaflet which may include a list of jobs from a student career jobsite and they may end up typing the URL for the site on a search engine.

It is important that a website ranks at the top pages of search engines in order for visitors to prioritise the first few they see on the (SERPS) search engine results pages. Reason for this is being that they may feel more trust worthy of the brands that show up at the top and also may not be interested to scheme through the numbers of results pages.

There are many ways in which search engine results can be improved. These methods include:

•Search engine optimisation (SEO)

•Pay Per Click (PPC)

•Updating Content

•Including URL on Newsletters, Forums, Emails and other online posts and networks.

<meta name="keywords" content="Jobs for students, student jobs, part time, work, temporary work, outsourcing, Uk, freelance students" />

Keywords are a sensitive issue because they are what users are searching for on search engines.

Search Engine Marketing

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(SEO) Search Engine Optimisation.

On Google, a search for graduate careers bring results of well optimised pages as well as those using PPC methods to rank well.

1.Graduate Careers

2.Prospects

3.Milk Round.

An example of good search engine marketing practice is shown below

Search engine optimisation is all about positioning and ranking at the top of search engines. This can be done in many ways such as submitting a URL to online directories.

Search Engine Marketing

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SEO Search Engine Optimisation.

“Hi Patrick,

According to Enhance Media:

1. Search engines are used by 63% of candidates in their job seeking2. 33% of all recruitment traffic comes from search engines3. Candidates arriving via a search engine are up to 9 times more likely to apply for a role

According to Google:• 80% of online job searches start on a search engine• 90% of job searches on search engines are on Google

According to Greenlight:Totaljobs is the most visible job board on Google in paid and natural search for generic, job-specific and location specific searches

According to marketing:Since the TV & Radio campaign, there has been an 80% increase yr/yr of people searching for “totaljobs” on Google

Regards,”

James CastlesKey Account ManagerEmail james.castles@totaljobs.com

James Castles from TotalJobs was telephone interviewed and replied with an email packed with some interesting facts.

Search Engine Marketing

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(PPC) Pay Per Click.

Pay per click gives website owners the chance to target their ads through bidding on keywords. As a results it can save the site money in many ways.

For example monster which appears on a publishers adsenseor on a search engines page where PPC is displayed, can set a daily budget and would only pay when a visitor clicks on that link.

Bidding for keywords on Google adwords can affect the price of the campaign. Some keywords can cost more per click while others less. This is affected by the popularity of the keywords at the time of the campaign.

Online partnerships work by bringing a relation for site owners with top ranking, regularly visited websites. This can be done by both inbound and outbound linking. Some examples of how this works include:

•Link building

•Affiliate marketing

•Sponsorship,

•Widgets and apps

Partnerships

Link building

Link building is essentially created inbound and outbound links from a website. This helps to create confidence with search engines.

Internal links would be within the site itself to other pages for more reading or to see more resources.

Another important factor is to have a sitemap for the whole site which builds a tree linking to all the pages on that site. The site map also helps user to find pages that they cannot find easily since a well designed site map would be defined by sections, categories and pages.

A site map also helps the search robots to build a picture of the pages within the site.

Outbound links can include links to partner sites such as sponsors, affiliate links, links to other useful resources or even other websites related to the organisation.

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Affiliate marketingAffiliate marketing is generally measured by performance by affiliates also known as publishers. Brand or product owners who are known as merchants would pay the publisher for the lead or sale of products.

Affiliate marketing is tracked by companies such as •Commission Junction•Linkshare•Affiliate Window and others also include •Affiliate Future and• ClickBank.

These companies ensure that a publishers commissions are tracked and rewarded fairly by the merchants involved.

A lot of student careers sites do not tend to be involved with affiliate networks. This would be worth considering as it would target publishers in the education sectors.

Website owners within the educational resource sector would provide the affiliate advertising links to the relevant landing pages of a graduate career site.

Facts.“•83% male

•73% are spare time affiliates

•49% earned less that £500 a year from affiliate

marketing

Of day job affiliates:

•61% earned at least £20,000 a year 10%

earned more than £750,000

Promotion techniques:

•74% use Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

38% use Paid Search

•SEO is rated most effective by 43%, with Paid

search second at 22%.

Networks used:

•Affiliates are typically signed up with multiple

affiliate networks Only 15% of affiliates are

signed up with just one network

Sectors:

•Travel and Flights is the most popular sector

for affiliates, followed by Entertainment and

Music “E-consultancy Affiliate Census

Partnerships

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Online SponsorshipOnline sponsorship is very

effective with brand awareness. Having a well known brand that users are familiar with sponsoring a particular section of a website can make a difference.

For example, for a student careers website, a sponsorship by Microsoft or Apple relating to study hardware such as laptop created familiarity and trust within the site due to association with such a widely reputable brand.

Partnerships

Online sponsorship could also work by advertisers sponsoring a specific section of a webpage or a section of the entire site.

This method can have monetary value for both web owners and sponsors.

Sponsors banners can appear on any webpage as agreed by the both parties.

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Online advertising makes it easier to target and make campaigns more interactive as well as choosing which channels to focus on.

A graduate site would benefit by having regular marketing communications with Universities in order to improve the chances of cost effectiveness.

To lower CPM, Ad networks are also effective since advertisers only target specific niches or special interests.

Online advertising also not only makes the ads more interactive, but easily integrate with website designs, e.g. standard banner sizes such as 468 by 60 which are popular with online advertising. This also created the familiarity with users since they will recognise the ads and if interested most likely to click since they would be very well targeted.

This familiarity especially in the ne web age lets the most basic of internet users recognise an ad and decide whether I would be beneficial for them to click the ad or not.

As mentioned in the previous issue, usability can attract or divert traffic away from the site.

Online Advertising

Advertisers now have to be careful as to what message they are sending to online users about the benefits they offer. So far the graduate career sites have not received official negative feedback, but student opinions however show that they do not find jobs as they would expect to from the sites.

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Online Advertising

As show below, Prospects offers advertising with full control of layout and content for advertisers on their site. The same practice could be used by them and other graduate sites on other relevant sites in order to target and directly gain more traffic to their sites.

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Controlling and monitoring traffic is essential to measure how well the digital campaigns are doing and how much of an impact they have.The measures should be compared with campaign objectives in order for the results to be analysed and adjusted accordingly.

The main reasons to use digital marketing techniques are because they also make it easier to reach and analyse. For example it is stated that more than half the UK are on social networking site Facebook. To find out which campaigns are working and which are not through all channels you can use digital methods of comparison.

Examples of a method that can be used is Google Web Analytics.

Controlling and Monitoring Traffic Building

Google Web Analytics.

An example of a web analytics software is Google Analytics. Google analytics lets the site owners know •where the visitor was referred from•how many times the pages are visited•Where bounce rates occur on certain pages etc.

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Email marketing is used in many online sites as it is the easiest way to develop a contact and keep in touch with customers. It is a relatively low cost of fulfilment, this is the cheapest way to get in touch with existing customers. It offers a direct response, as the email is sent the customer can click straight through to the website and this increases the chances of an impulsive response. It also has a fast campaign deployment, easy to personalise making all customers feel like they are talking directly to them. It can also be combined with direct mail, mobile messaging or web personalisation to give the best effect. If emails are mismanaged they can destroy customer relationships.

Email marketing in the job site sector is very high. This is so that the company can keep in contact with the customer and constantly update them on different jobs and prospects, this is customer relationship management. The sites that are going to be compared are Target jobs, Total jobs, Student Gems and Monster.

Email Marketing

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This is asking the customer a

The jobseeker status, this is trying to help you make the most of your account and let you know there is more to put on your profile.

Helping you along the process of what to do with your account

This email marketing had deliverability as it wasn’t in junk and good renderability, as there is a good amount of writing as well as pictures. From this screenshot you can see there is personalisation, and is showing that they are trying to help you better yourself and find a job.

Total Jobs

Email Marketing

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Monster

Saying thank you, showing the customer that they care about them and signing up to the site.

Personalisation

This screenshot shows that there is not much renderbility from the site. They are showing a lot of text but not many pictures. This email is not as visually stimulating. However it does have personalisation with the customers name at the top and they are saying thank you to the customer for joining them, showing they care about the customer.

Enticing customers with helping them make money

Quote showing they are reliable, trying to get customers to sign up which gives monster a relationship with their customers.

Email Marketing

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StudentGems

These are two types of emails received from Student Gems. The first one has colours and pictures making it visually stimulating. They are trying to build a relationship with the customer offering them competitions to take part in. The second screenshot shows that there is not much renderbility from the site. They are showing text but not many pictures. This email is not as visually stimulating, however it does get straight to the point and has one purpose for the customer.

More incentives.

Incentive for customers to interact with the site.

Personalisation

Personalisation

This is more of an informational email, getting straight to the point with the least fuss as possible.

Email Marketing

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Target Jobs

Making sure they have the rightinformation from their customer

Welcoming the customer

Personalisation

From all these screen shots you can see that there is personalisation with a welcome email when signed up to the site. This creates a one-to-one relationship where the customer feels as though it is their home page and the marketer has put the email together just for them. Job sites do this through customisation where the customer enters their details and select specific preferences.

All of these websites send email daily if not twice a day to keep in touch with customers. Some of these are just adverts for other businesses for you to have a look at and some are directly related to what has been signed up for.

Competition for customers, get them using the site and incentives for them to do this.

Email Marketing

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These screenshots are of the prospects site, these are some of the emails they have sent three days in a row.They are promoting different universities in their emails which indicates they are leaning towards people who have been to university or who are going to university. They are also giving the chance to have a look at these online which is more convenient for the customer.

Offline Marketing

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Other sites such as Jobsite has targeted the commuters in London with their ad in the metro. Commuters are also targeted as sometimes adverts are put up on the train so people can see on their journey t work.

“Generalist job board jobsite is extending its print advertising campaign with a cover-wrap around the free Metro newspaper.”

Job sites advertise offline as well as online. This reinforces the messages created online. Sites such as Totaljobs have adverts that try and relate to the customer. Here is the link to one of their adverts on TV.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFEq1FjmqQI

This however is one of the only sites that have used TV in a way that relates to the economy and to the target customers.

Other sites such as prospects and target jobs use universities to reinforce their online customers. They do this by joining up with a university so when students go for help they are given a target jobs or propects brochure to look through.These are however specific more to graduates and students so this would be the best place to advertise. February 2, 2009

As you can see from the research most job sites tend to stick to online advertising instead of offline, however some such as Totaljobs has broken this mould .

Survey MonkeyResults

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For this report, primary research was carried out in order to find out what people really thought of email marketing with job sites.There were six simple questions asked in order to find out what works in the way of marketing and how they feel about this method. Here are the findings.

Question 3 asked, if yes, do you take notice of the emails they send you?Most people said no or sometimes. This is relatively bad as this is one of the main way jobsites advertise and connect with their customers.

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Question one was do you use job sites?From the results 7 said yes and 6 said no.

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Question two asked if yes, do you sign up to them.As you can see most people who do use them sign up, this is they only way to really use the sites benefits.

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Survey MonkeyResults

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Question four asked people why they did not pay attention to emails. Here is the results from the survey as we left this open for people to comment on how they really feel. Most people felt that the emails were not relevant or personal This is something that will need to be worked on.

Question 5 asked do you find the emails help you with your job search? From the graph the results indicated that 70% of people asked said no and only 30% said yes.

Yes- 70%

No - 30%

Yes- 60%

No- 40%

The final question asked was do you consider these as junk mail? The results shows us that over 50% of people do. This means that the way job sites are promoting themselves is not working and people are getting fed up with pointless emails being sent to them.

Social media has become a new phenomenon in the last decade. Not only have the general public gained a strong interest but now companies and brands have latched on to the idea in order to promote or market their product. This is whether they simply want to increase word of mouth or simply to attract more potential consumers.

As unemployment has increased significantly since the recession; it makes sense that more people are spending more time on the net. It is no wonder that online job sites have now diversed into the social networking sector. Since our main focus is on ‘Graduate Employment’; research was carried out regarding social networking in which was targeted at students and graduates.

Groups on Facebook were created in order to attract students however numbers still remain low. Currently, typing ‘Graduate Jobs’ in the Facebook Search tool gives a list of 4 ‘Join Group’ links and 6 ‘Like’ Pages. ‘Graduate-Jobs.com’ currently has the highest amount of ‘Likes’ with a total of 607 ‘Likes’.

Interestingly, when typing in ‘Student Jobs’; there are a number of options for ‘Like’ Pages and ‘Groups’ in which relate to students and jobs.

However, most of these pages are specific to certain areas of the UK. The top searched ‘Like’ Page is called ‘Newcastle Student Jobs’ in which has 117 Likes. Below, is ‘Leeds Student Promo Jobs// Freshers 2010’ with only 32 likes. Dropping even lower is the popular online job site, ‘Target Jobs’ which only have 2 Likes.

This all proves fairly unsuccessful as clearly students are not interested on their job site being featured or promoted with the use of Facebook.

Social Media Marketing

Facebook

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Unlike Facebook, Twitter tends to be slightly more popular in terms of engaging with their audience. Target Jobs had only 7 people that liked their page compared to 1,213 Followers on Twitter. Their last tweet was 22 hours ago which suggest that they regularly update their profile and are actively using it. Where as on Facebook the last update was on November the 15th.

Social Media Marketing

Twitter

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Graduate-Jobs on Twitter too is doing verywell with 1,534 followers.Their last update was 51 minutes ago about a junior IT consultant vacancy in London.

On Facebook however, their page has 609 and their most recent update was 51 minutes ago as well but that is due to the fact that they have an automatic Twitter feed on their Facebook Wall.

This again backs up the theory that jobs sites are better engaged with their audience on Twitter.

Graduate Jobs Uk seems to be very popular with 1,164 followers and 77,983 Tweets. Their most recent tweet was 3 minutes ago suggesting that they are highly active. Their tweets usually list quick and simple to read job vacancies in specific areas of the country. They also provide links where people are able to view the job description in detail.When searching ‘Graduate Jobs Uk’ on Facebook, they came up as the second group. Not surprisingly, they only had 17 members which is a great difference to the amount of followers they have on Twitter. This reinforces the fact that Job sites should stick to Twitter and forget about Facebook.

Social Media Marketing

Twitter

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Graduate Jobs was one of the first options when searching the words ‘Graduate Jobs’. The sad thing however, is the fact that they do not have as many followers as the other three Job pages reviewed. Their last tweet was also on the 11th of October 2009. It is now nearly 2 years down the line and there have not been any updates. This could suggest that the page is no longer in use by the user in which could have suggested failure to attract people.

Viral MarketingPass on Emails

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Having pass on emails are essentially like having ‘word of mouth’ in the email world. If an email is highly attractive to a specific group of people, it will then encourage them to share it.

A good idea of a pass on email would be a good job vacancy in which would attract a wide range of people such as holiday summer jobs in Ibiza. An email of such a job with a description and pictures included will possibly spread rapidly as a lot of people would be interested in that job.

Another example of a good pass on email would be one with a contest of prizes involved. This would encourage a ‘chain mail’ effect as more people would like to win.

Currently no job sites really are involved in the pass on emails section. Their emails tend to be specific to each signed up customer. If they had sent general emails in which would attract a wider range of people from time to time this could not only build traffic to their website but also gain more customers.

Viral MarketingWord Of Mouth

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Word of Mouth is possibly the most successful form of marketing but also the hardest to control. The amazing thing about it is, if someone close to you suggests a service or product, you are more likely to consider it.

In order to attract ‘word of mouth’ a job site must try hard to gain customer satisfaction and loyalty. This way those customers are more likely to suggest their website and service to people they know. It is understandable that people trust those who are close to them over an advert specifically used to attract them.

Currently from previous research carried out in Coursework 1 on ‘Online Opportunities for Student Career Development’ it was discovered that so far; the ‘Word of Mouth’ for job sites are not doing too well. Most students found them unreliable and inconsistent. This can be found in:

http://issuu.com/studentcareerdevelopment/docs/student_career_development_slideshowfinal

Viral MarketingMedia Coverage

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A great way to entice an audience is visually. Having a YouTube channel with regular video updates on job vacancies and graduate tips and tricks would be highly popular with the market. Currently on YouTube ‘Career Player’ has a channel with interviews on job vacancies in which include the description of the job and more useful information. A lot of people are more visual so having such a form of marketing would cater to that large group of people too. They currently have 53 subscriptions and 10 Channel Comments which is fairly good. Their last video upload was 2 months ago suggesting recent activity but perhaps not recent enough.

As clearly shown on their Profile, they have a high number of Channel Views and Total Upload Views. This enforces the fact that YouTube is a great way of increasing an audience range and the potential customer base. The company is also based in the UK which suggests people here are a lot more digitally engaged.

After viewing their website (out of curiosity and interest), I found that they were very digital savvy and up to date. The website was laid out in a manner that was simple and easy to read with a regular theme throughout.

TheGraduateJobs was another YouTube channel in which had only 2 video uploads and no Subscriptions. Looking at the Join date, they have only been an official channel for about a month which could suggest why channel views are still low. Their last video upload was 1 week ago, where they had uploaded 2 videos at once with a total of 13 views together. This channel however, is based in the US which could suggest that perhaps they are slower when it comes to digital job innovation.

Careers Department Presentation

Presentation & Surveys

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On Wednesday March 23rd a Career Department Seminar was held on ‘Online Student Opportunities’. This is about how students can use the web to increase their value and attract more potential employers.

As part of the seminar, Team NLP held a 10 minute presentation on our research in Coursework 1. We had informed the students on the benefits and opportunities with online student career development. We had also introduced them to our Twitter page and link to our presentation .

A survey was also handed out about job sites to see their views on how they currently run and what they would like to see from them. On the right is a screen shot of the questionnaire.

At the end of the presentation each member of NLP was asked what we personally would do when looking for a job. All of us said a bit /a lot of everything. This meant having an online portfolio for potential employers to see, signing up to some jobs sites (not too many as a lot of irrelevant email will be sent to your inbox), as well as manually going into job centres and contacting companies on our own.

Careers Department Presentation

Survey Results

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Results were fairly similar however that may have been due to the fact that the majority of students that had attended the seminar were doing a ‘Graphics Design’ course.

Furniture Conservation

Graphic Arts

Music Management

Business IT

Corporate Events and Conference Management

Sports Management and Football

Digital Animation and Iteractive Design

The First Question was to find out what course they were currently doing. The majority were taking Graphic Arts with one person taking each of the other courses.

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When asked whether or not they use online job sites, Yeswas the predominate answer with a equal to 4 people each not using them and sometimes using them. This suggests that job sites need to increase reliability, trust and awareness in order to gain more customers.

Careers Department Presentation

Survey Results

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They were then asked ‘What sites do you use and Why? Results were:

-Can’t Remember-Mandy-Bucks Vacancies, Gumtree, Simply Hired-Icon-Bucks Vacancies, Indeed, Monster and Craiglist-Total Jobs, Charity Jobs, Reed-Event Jobs-Direct Gov, Prospects.

A lot of the above were job sites that we had researched and reviewed ourselves. Some were less well known such as ‘Indeed’ and ‘Simply Hired’.

Do You Receive regular communications from the site/sites?

Results shown that 7 people did receive regular communication whilst 4 of them did not. With 2 people not answering the question.

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What Do you receive?All of them received only Email from Job Sites. Some of them did not answer as they do not use Job Sites. This suggests that perhaps these sites should start sending direct mail or increase awareness of their profiles on social networking sites.

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Following, they were asked if they attend career fairs. 6 people claimed to attend sometimes and 2 people did not answer. This suggests that people don’t mind going out of their way to attend an event if it means having the possibility to show their faces to their potential employers and seeing what the company is like before applying.

Careers Department Presentation

Survey Results

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For their preferred method of receiving notifications on job vacancies was ‘Email’. Following this, was SMS and then Twitter. Some people did not answer the question and the majority had circled more than one answer.

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Other methods in which they use to find jobs include ‘Word of Mouth’ which is the most popular, along with the ‘Job Vacancies’ section in newspapers.

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The most commonly known job site was Prospects, followed by Target Jobs. This could be due to the fact that Target Jobs has a TV advertisement out at the moment and both commonly advertise in university establishments. 2 People had not answered the question.

Careers Department Presentation

Survey Results

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These were the features they would like to see in their ideal job site. The most was information about ‘Salary’.

The majority would be highly interested in subscribing to a daily updated YouTube Channel about Job Vacancies. This shows that people are more in sync with progressing technology and also a YouTube channel may be more informative, graphic and fun when looking for a job.

When asked if they would join a Graduate Jobs Twitter page. Feelings were mixed with exactly half saying yes and half saying no. This could possibly be due to the fact that not everyone has and/or likes Twitter.

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The Verdict

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In order to gain greater success, Job Sites need to understand what people currently think of them and what they would like from their service. Through this research we have discovered better ways in which Job sites can increase their customer base and especially with the graduate population.

One important factor in terms of their emails is to give out more relevant and personalised emails in which their customers will pay attention to and not consider it ‘Junk Mail’.

In terms of social networking, we feel this is a must and that Job Sites should created a profile on Twitter in order to engage their customers. Having regular updates and quick, simple and easy job vacancies listed regularly is a great way to not online increase awareness but also reliability and trust.

When carrying out the survey during the Careers Presentation, it was found that most people would subscribe to a YouTube channel listing job vacancies. This proves that people are progressing with technology and that Job Sites should do too.

Currently, with ‘Word of Mouth’ which is the most effective form of marketing, Job Sites are not doing well. Finding a way to improve what people think of them will be hard work. Having better reviews would increase their customer base and gain loyalty.

Job sites need to improve on their ‘Key Words’ when it comes to search engines. They need to make it more relevant to their business sector. They also need to make sure that their advertising design has a clean interactive layout. They need to make sure that their chosen sponsors are a benefit to their business.

They need to focus on using Web Analytics to control and monitor their campaign objectives so that they are able to maximise their Return on Investment.

We would like to suggest that all or a mixture of these factors will benefit Job Site when it comes to building traffic to their site. This will not only improve their customer loyalty and base but also their image over all as currently they are considered unreliable and irrelevant.

NLP Publication

NLP Publication 2011