IndustryRecruiting SEM Employees: Job Boards, Headhunters & Account Planning Boot Camp

Recruiting SEM Employees: Job Boards, Headhunters & Account Planning Boot Camp

One inescapable reality of the SEM industry is that finding great employees is a challenge, even if one knows precisely where to look. Mainstream and niche job sites, specialized SEM job boards, trade organizations and word of mouth are common channels for recruiting. However with demand growing sometimes it’s necessary to get creative in recruitment efforts.

Whether seeking employees in-house or for an agency, as offline channels continue to fold into the ‘net at a dizzying pace, finding incredibly smart staffers to service growing task lists can be a problem in this competitive environment.

Here’s a 24 point list of of SEM/SEO recruitment channels and ideas, including classics and a few off-the-beaten-path sources with which aimClear and our partner agencies have had some luck. They’re not listed in any particular order of importance:

SEW Job Board
Free for SEM job seekers, employers pay between $375.00 and $4750.00 (multi-post packages). SearchEngineWatch is an important SEM industry player and parent of the ubiquitous SearchEngineStrategies conference series. There are many cross-over users who come from more traditional marketing industries and mainstream businesses.

Marketing Pilgrim Job Board
Free for SEM job Seekers, posting costs employers $57.00 for 30 days. Andy Beal’s audience is all about reputation management, natural search and his audience is comprised of well respected industry players and up-and-comers.

StuntDubl Job Board
Free for SEM Job Seekers, posting costs employers $30.00 for 30 days. Todd Malicoat is well known on the SES, SMX and major trade publication circuit. His blog is frequented by industry insiders and newbies alike.

SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professionals) Job Board
Free for SEM job seekers, posting reserved form members @ the $1000.00 annual level and above. SEMPO is as close as the SEM community gets to a consensus trade organization. They also offer training programs for SEM types.

Marketing Sherpa Job Board
Free for SEM job seekers, free for employers to post. MarketingSherpa is a case study research team surrounded by some of the industries brightest minds. Advertising to this community may serve your needs.

SEOMoz Job & Contract Position Listings
Free for SEM Job seekers, Join SEOmoz to build your company profile and post jobs. Rand Fishkin’s venerable SEOmoz is the gold standard for "street cred" and his recommendations mean a lot. Marketplace, an SEO services directory, is a very sweet resource.

Miami Ad School
This ad, design & and account planning school turns out cool copywriter-specialists focused on branding across multiple channels including interactive. Miami Ad School trains promising graduates of other design/marketing colleges, professionals in other fields (like lawyers and accountants) and helps designers build "books" (portfolios). With locations Miami, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Hamburg, Madrid and Sao Paulo the placement department emails job listings to all current and previous graduates around the world-at no charge to the employer.

OASEO
An "SEO Job Community," OASEO is free for SEM Job seekers, posting costs employers $99.00 for 30 days.

ProBlogger Job Board
Free for SEM Job seekers, posting costs employers $50.00 for 30 days. This site is especially strong for recruiting writers who are blog savvy and understand the game.

SEOBook Job Board
Free for job seekers, free for employers. Aaron Wall is one of SEOs pioneers and the blog remains tremendously popular. SEOBook attracts a large audience of SEM insiders and other potential employees crossing over from other industries.

SEM Jobs @ Monster.com
Interestingly enough, Google allows this hardwired search result to index. Everyone in the HR world knows about Monster. See site for pricing details.

Jobster hardwired SEO jobs search result. See site for pricing details

Harry Joiner – Marketing Headhunter
A dominant recruiter in multi-channel client side e-commerce space and a player in the SEM recruiting trades.

Cii Associates – SEO recruiter in Raleigh-Durham
A regionally focused SEM recruiting firm. The Raleigh-Durham IT market is hot and these folks are local.

Onward Search
Recruiting, staffing and temporary contract, temp-to-hire and direct-hire placements at search marketing agencies, & advertising firms. Check out VP Josh Gampel’s LinkedIn profile and meet a power player in the SEM recruitment field.

Most college graduates these days are plugged into the social Internet and can use basic office tools. Journalism majors seem to excel @ SEO and social media, accountant school grad’s are natural PPC wizards and don’t forget to check out he marketing club of your local university’s Facebook group.

English teachers are wired for keyword research and traditional media buyers (like the ones getting laid off from local network affiliates) can be terrific at account planning and media seller.

Find an Associate degree IT grad‘ who’s freakish about blogging and APIs and keep in mind that Paralegals make awesome SEOs. Here’s the best tip of all: Musicians make fabulous SEOs and link builders.

There’s tons of demand out there for SEM and SEO employees from office helper to executive. Hopefully these resources provide a good starting place for your company in growing your department or agency. Please feel free to join in and suggest any additional recruitment channels by commenting.

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