Secrets of Online Recruiters Exposed!

Workforce, Oct, 2000 by Glenn Gutmacher

* It establishes your credibility as a resource. If your content consists mostly of job openings at your company, and they're not in the market at that moment, they'll unsubscribe in a heartbeat and you've lost them forever. On the other hand, by making the majority of the content something that ANY professional can use (industry-specific news and "managing your career" information), they will want to keep receiving it. Providing this useful information over time results in a perception of credibility and expertise for your firm, and you'll be one of the first to receive their resumes when they're ready.

So where can you get e-newsletter content, and how do you send it to a large database, all for free? For the content, I recommend a mix of short blurbs:

Six to eight topical industry news headlines: For this, you can sign up with services like Individual.com to receive daily news in whatever narrow industry niche(s) you want. Also, talk to people who work in the same niche as your newsletter recipients; they usually know of new developments in their fields because they receive things by e-mail and read their trade publications. They can provide blurbs and Web links to original sources for more details.

* One to three general career tips: These could be on job interviewing or resume writing, or "managing your career topics" such as how to position yourself for a promotion, run better meetings, or manage your time. You'll find these kinds of stories on most popular career Web portals. For more eye-catching interest, spin each blurb a bit to reflect your target audience (e.g., entitle it "Resume writing tips for IT workers" or "Job interviewing tips for financial professionals," depending on which newsletter version you're compiling).

* One to two company-specific job opportunities: Just the job title, a one-sentence summary, and a link for the full job description. Also include the link to where all job descriptions for your newsletter's candidate type can be found online.

Keep the blurbs in your newsletter short: one or two summary sentences, preceded by a headline and followed by the Web address (e.g., on Individual.com) where they can view the full story. If you summarize and don't plagiarize, especially when you include the link to the original source, you won't get into copyright trouble. Given the high quantity of items and concise format, everyone in your target audience is likely to find items of interest, and recipients can quickly scan the whole newsletter and click on the links below the blurbs they find interesting.

As for newsletter distribution, you can use services like eGroups.com or ListBot.com, which let people subscribe to your newsletter online themselves, or you can import existing e-mail addresses into it. It's all via the Web--no software to install. You just copy and paste your newsletter text into a box, and click Send. Remember to promote the free newsletter in of all your recruitment marketing materials and candidate communications; you'll be surprised how many subscribers you gain!