August 2004 Newsletter
August 2004 newsletter
Welcome to the Olympic edition of the PageUp Newsletter! It was with the SOCOG outplacement following the Sydney 2000 Olympics that PageUp's success started to snowball. Just like the athletes from around the world who are converging in Athens, PageUp has put in 4 years of hard work and effort to achieve its dreams.
In this issue....
- Winner - Telstra & Victorian Government Small Business Awards!Managing the change to online recruitment
- Optimising your Site for Search Engines
- 2004 Telstra & Australian Government Small Business Awards
PageUp wins the Panasonic Australia Business Award at the Telstra & Victorian Government Small Business Awards
Winning this prestigious award is a significant achievement for PageUp and a validation of the vision and determination of its directors, Karen and Simon Cariss. PageUp has users throughout the world in UK, USA, Canada, South Africa, Chile, Australia and New Zealand and is continuing to expand. As one judge said ? he was looking for a company that he could proudly show to foreigners as a great example of an Australian business.
Karen Cariss, Managing Director, said she was delighted with the award. 'We are passionate about our business and being recognised for our vision and our effort makes it all worthwhile. Integral to this is our dedicated team and our clients who have supported us through our recent rapid growth phase. We will continue to innovate to produce the best products on the market.'
PageUp first achieved major success with the SOCOG outplacement after the Sydney Olympics. The company, which now has 24 staff, turns over $2 million per annum and services large clients such as BHP Billiton, Macquarie Bank, Flight Centre and Mayne Group. At the awards ceremony Simon said 'When I first started the business my Nana used to pray for our success. I think she has over prayed!'
Other finalists in the Panasonic Australia Business Award category include Marque Motor Body Repairs, Mother Art Productions Pty Ltd, NLC Pty Ltd, Pro Corp Marketing and Production Parts. As a Victorian award winner PageUp now goes into the national finals being held in Adelaide on August 14.
Managing the change to online recruitment
Over the last 3 years an increasing number of Australian corporations are moving from heavily administrative and labour intensive recruitment processes to e-recruitment technology. Uptake of online systems are becoming integral to any recruitment strategy with 30% of the BRW Top 500 (AU) (TalentZone) purchasing recruitment tools and over 94% of Global 500 Companies with online careers sites (iLogos). Many of these organisations have gone through the process of trying to identify the right partner for their recruitment business. A number of these organisations have faced challenges and road blocks for a number of reasons, but one of the key reasons is due to the initial upfront planning process as it is often difficult to find the time to gain a deep level of understanding with your current workload pressing down on you.
PageUp has put together some guidelines to assist organisations choose the right online recruitment partner for their needs.
Analysis of recruitment requirements
- Create recruitment objectives for using a system (linked to business goals)
- Gather and analyse your current recruitment spend:
- Advertising Spend
- Cost per hire
- Recruitment head cost
- Agency spend
- Other supplier costs
- Map out current recruitment process and identify gaps
- Identify key stakeholders requirements
- Understand reporting requirements to measure success
- Create a vision for your recruitment strategy (plugging those gaps)
- Develop a functional requirements specification based on your recruitment strategy.
- Define immediate priorities but be aware of the future requirements.
- Identify the savings that can be achieved by implementing an e-recruitment.
A number of organisations like HCMS, Talent Zone, Watson Wyatt and Alexander Mann provide consulting services to assist companies in this pre-selection stage.
Vender selection
Examine the providers' capabilities around a number of areas including:
- Ability to meet your technology/functional requirements
- Quality of the support and service provided on an ongoing basis
- Their focus on product development and how advanced they are (note you are selecting a provider on both today and tomorrow)
- Professionalism and consistency of the organisation
- Their abilities to provide you with ongoing expertise
- Review client references
- Ensure they can meet the ROI you wish to achieve
By looking at your requirements and carefully selecting a provider that meets your needs you will be able to smoothly make the transition to online recruitment.
Optimising your Site for Search Engines
Site optimisation is making sure a link to your site appears when someone is using a search engine to look for your particular company or for a product or service you sell. As part of your marketing, your corporate site should be easy to find when a search is performed. The most popular search engines in Australia are Google, Yahoo and Ninemsn but there are many others, such as AltaVista, Excite and Lycos. Some search engines will let you pay to have your site ranked high for searches on certain keywords.
There are also companies that specialise in site optimisation and website marketing. They have insight into the latest technological changes made to search engine capabilities and can optimise the code and content of your site so that it appears amongst the top ranked sites however this can cost you between $3000 and $100,000. It takes a bit of planning to make your site rank high, but before you spend lots of money, here are a few tips as starters?.
Think about what words you would use if you were searching for your company, or products and services. Do some searches using these words and see where your site ranks. It is best that your site is listed within the first 3 pages of a search but preferably on the first page. Compare your ranking to your competitor?s rankings. Do they rank higher or lower? If your competitors rank higher then it is essential to look at how to improve this.
Metatags (words in the HTML code that describe the website) used to be the main way that search engines found sites but as search engine technology has improved this is no longer so. Regardless, it still pays to look at what your competitors use and ensure that you are using these words too. You can easily look at the metatags in the HTML source of their site. In your internet browser click on View Source and near the top of the code you will find the metatags and keywords. Use the best of these in your own site.
Page titles (ie what appears at the top of your browser window in white text where it often says Microsoft Internet Explorer) are now commonly used by search engines. Try to use titles that are fairly long with descriptive words that people would use in searches. This seems to work particularly well with Google.
In the content of your site, use words and phrases that people are likely to search on.
Try to get links to your site from partners sites with more links to them are ranked higher
Periodically review how your site is ranking. After you have made changes, depending on the search engine, it may take a few days to notice the effects.
Whilst it is a combination of factors that will get your site picked up, making these minor changes should help your site to rank higher. If you require further assistance with optimising your site for search engines, please call Nicola Billens at PageUp.