There are some very obscure websites out there on the net, where you would probably never think of venturing. Yet niche sites could prove a good hunting ground for recruits, especially for technology jobs. Sue Weekes reports

Web Analytics Demystified is not an online hang-out where most of us would linger. But if you’re a search engine optimisation (SEO) geek, the website for the online audience-measurement community, maintained by author, blogger and consultant Eric T. Peterson, is the place to be. And if you’re a US recruiter looking for a SEO whizz-kid, it’s where you want to be seen.

Web Analytics is just one of more than 1,500 niche websites that, via the Simply Hired Job-a-matic application, is able to feature targeted vacancies from the US-based search engine, which currently features more than 500,000 vacancies.

“Web Analytics is an outstandingly targeted site and blog for this sector,” says Dion Lim, Simply Hired president and chief operating officer. “These people aren’t visiting job boards because they are probably happy with the job they’ve got. They are great passive candidates.”

Others US niche sites and blogs that make use of Simply Hired’s application include Casino Jobs, Film Oracle, entrepreneur blogger Guy Kawasaki, and NickSenger.com, a site dedicated to teen literacy. “Schools looking for top-notch literature teachers can post jobs at my site knowing that my readers are intelligent, conscientious educators, always seeking to improve themselves,” says Nick Senger, who adds that it took only 30 minutes to get the Job-a-matic page up and running.

Targeting passive and active candidates in niche communities is not new — after all, it’s what recruitment advertising in the trade press is all about. New media channels and distribution methods, however, make it possible on a far larger scale than ever before — and if you add the power of online word-of-mouth into the mix, it gives recruitment advertisers an unprecedented targeted reach, and one that leaves the generalist job boards in the shade.

The use of blogs and community sites may be seen as just a little something on the side at the moment for both the owner and advertiser — a few quid based on a pay-per-click model for the website owners and perhaps a few extra candidates for the advertiser, but multiply this a few times across the recruiting landscape and it all starts to add up.

Simply Hired says it will continue to make the targeting of niche communities part of its strategy and it is not alone. Reward and referral job site Zubka.com recently announced that it is extending the reach of its service and is currently building relationships with bloggers, online associations and industry networks. While last year the UK jobs search engine WorkCircle developed a widget that gives web publishers and bloggers the facility to post relevant jobs for their communities.

Simon Appleton, chief executive of WorkCircle, says take-up hasn’t been huge but it’s still worth doing. “It’s slow burn. We have around 150 affiliates now and it’s growing.”

From little acorns

The phrase ‘from little acorns…’ is already one that could apply in the niche or community recruitment sector. Chinwag Jobs is a sister site to Chinwag.com, the community site for digital media practitioners.

It grew out of an email discussion list, a community of which recruiters had always formed a part, and they began posting jobs on the list. Successful hires were made from it (no commission was ever charged) and it took on a life of its own as a separate list.

Chinwag founder Sam Michel remembers that at one stage it was taking up three-quarters of a person’s time. In 2006, Chinwag Jobs was launched as a jobs site in its own right.

“The jobs in our sector are knowledge led,” says Michel. “Generalist job boards deliver volume but not quality. We like to think we provide employers with better quality CVs.”

But it isn’t just the fact that Chinwag Jobs serves a highly-targeted audience that marks it out. Michel believes it is the company’s “holistic” approach which makes it so effective for recruiters.

As well as the 24/7 community site, offering blogs, news and comment on the sector, Chinwag stages a programme of live events that will run throughout the year and offer networking opportunities for community members. “All of our three strands — Chinwag.com, Chinwag Live and Chinwag Jobs — knit together,” he says.

Although Chinwag Jobs has developed into a full-blown job site, it still represents a community-driven approach to recruitment, which means it is tuned in to what both employers and candidates want and need.

Job sites linked to a live community also mean that employers can’t hide behind corporate speak — if they don’t live up to claims of being a good employer, for instance, it will be exposed by the community, which is unlikely to hold back in its comments.

Recruiters will do well to remember that the reason such communities flourish is because people opt into them rather than join because they have to, which means they have a buy-in that goes far beyond what they would have with any job site, or indeed agency.

“Special interest groups of professionals can develop from the bottom-up very quickly,” says Justin Kirby, managing director of connected marketing consultancy Digital Media Communications, who also launched the Viral & Buzz Marketing Network last year, aimed at business, marketing and social policy academics and professionals.

Kirby believes they offer an alternative to the traditional, fee-paying trade associations which, he says, inevitably become self-serving. “They add value to participants without having to charge membership fees and people get out what they put in.”

Kirby knows from communication with members that job vacancies and leads are widely circulated via word-of-mouth on the network. “My take is that these technologies disrupt the traditional recruitment model,” he says.

While keen not to devalue the use of highly-targeted communities, the established job sites are wary on their clients’ behalf of getting too carried way about the idea of small-scale, niche sites and blogs.

Felix Wetzel, group marketing director of Jobsite, says it would be foolhardy not to monitor and test all opportunities to find the right candidates, but recruiters should be aware of the potential lack of control that niche environments may introduce.

“You would need to be confident that the blog wouldn’t do anything which would damage brand,” he says. “The nature of blogs is that they can include controversial posts and unedited comments, which may either directly criticise your company or industry, or could question the quality of the vacancy that you’re posting.”

Micro sites planned

It isn’t just community sites and blogs where the trend for niche advertising is evident. IT recruiter Highams has become one of the first recruitment companies to launch its own social network, bluefuse, dedicated to its target market of insurance technologists.

It aims to feature a wealth of content, from podcasts to sector-related news, and will also feature job ads within the network. But it plans to go one step further and create smaller specialist areas within bluefuse, explains chief executive Dave Pye.

“We want to go micro-niche as well,” he says. “So we’ll offer dedicated communities for those working in claims management, general insurance and other specialist areas, within the bigger network.”

One of the early criticisms of job boards, and online recruitment in general, was that it offered quantity rather than quality when it came to response. Advances in filtering and similar technology has meant that this image has been eroded over the years.

However, the use of niche communities that can deliver well-targeted CVs, albeit in smaller numbers, shouldn’t be underestimated, and may start to highlight once again the shortcomings of generalist job boards to deliver genuine talent for particular sectors.

Links

Chinwag Jobs http://jobs.chinwag.com

DMC www.dmc.co.uk

Highams www.highamsrecruitment.com

Jobsite www.jobsite.com

Simply Hired www.simplyhired.com

vbmaNetwork http://vbmanet.ning.com

WorkCircle www.workcircle.com

Zubka www.zubka.com