Glossary of Online Recruiting Terminology

Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
also called a candidate management system is a software application developed to facilitate an enterprise to recruit employees more efficiently. An ATS can be used to post job openings on a corporate Web site or job board, screen resumes, and generate interview requests to potential candidates by e-mail. Other features may include individual applicant tracking, requisition tracking, automated resume ranking, customized input forms, pre-screening questions and response tracking, and multilingual capabilities.
Backlinks
Better known as inbound linking, refers to links that direct a user to a destination or point on a particular webpage, site, or database.
Banned
Refers to the penalty given when a search engine or webmaster deems a website or page in violation of term of service, spamming or phishing. Banning is the removal of the site or page from the search engine index or website.
Blog
Short of weblog, a blog is an editorial style resource much like a newsletter or journal that provides it’s readers with information and commentary on a wide range of topics. Blogs are generally text based, but now with users becoming more savvy have been implementing the use of poll, audio, video, and pictorial entries.
Candidate Matching System
Career Center
A stand-alone website dedicated to recruitment. With all of the functionality of a normal website, but is for the human resource department to recruit employees. When a candidate clicks on the “Available Positions” button, the positions are pulled from a database for that employer only and can also be specific to a professional association or industry organization.
Category Specific
Ads specific to a discipline or field within and industry. For Example: an ad for Nursing would be a category specific field to the healthcare industry.
Click-through Rate
is a way of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign. A CTR is obtained by dividing the number of users who clicked on an ad on a web page by the number of times the ad was delivered (impressions). For example, if your banner ad was delivered 100 times (impressions delivered) and 1 person clicked on it (clicks recorded), then the resulting CTR would be 1%.
Conversion Rate
Generally measured in percentages, conversion rate refers to the measurement of a user visiting a website and how many of those users take a desired action. The action that determines conversion is determined by the advertiser and may be a sale on the advertiser's Web site, a completed lead form, or another action. The most common conversion measurement is applicant to hire.
Contingency Recruiter
A recruiter who works for a set search fee. Typically a percentage of the first year’s gross salary. This will range anywhere from 15-35%.
Cost per Applicant (CPA)
The gross cost of recruiting a qualified applicant by an employer. The cost per applicant is equal to the cost of an advertising campaign divided by the total number of applicants.
Cost per Click (CPC)
With search engines, cost per click advertisements are usually text ads placed near search results; when a site visitor clicks on the advertisement, the advertiser is charged a small amount. Variants include pay for placement and pay for ranking. Pay per click is also sometimes known as Pay per Click (PPC).
Cost per Exposure (CPE)
The cost of marketing (branding) your company, position, or product to a target audience.
Cost per Hire (CPH)
The gross cost to make a hire. Different sources would be Internet, local newspaper, referral, career fair, or third party placement fee.
Cost per Interest (CPI)
The cost for an actual job opening. This will only be accounted for when a candidate clicks on your specific job posting.
Cost per Mille (CPM)
System where an advertiser pays an agreed amount for the number of times their ad is seen by a consumer, regardless of the consumer's subsequent action. Heavily used in print, broadcasting and direct marketing, as well as with online banner ad sales.
Creative
An advertising term referring to graphic design work like logo’s and banners.
Directories
A type of search engine where listings are gathered through human efforts, rather than by automated crawling of the web. In directories, web sites are often reviewed, summarized in about 25 words and placed in a particular category.
Editorial Engine
A software development created by Recruiting Nevada that is managed by live editors. Our editors source all of the news outlets in Nevada for positive news that allows us to best present the opportunities Nevada offers future candidates. Stories get entered into the Editorial engine and are then distributed to our other websites via RSS feeds.
Geo-Specific
Ads specific to precise region. Can be targeted by city, county or geography.
Hits
this is an often-misunderstood term referring to the number of times a web server is “hit” by a request for information. These requests include the web page and any graphic on the page. For example, if you go to a web page that has 5 graphics on it, you just registered 6 hits (1 for the page and 1 for each of the 5 graphics). As you can imagine, this number can be very misleading. A more meaningful number is “page impressions” or “page views”.
Impressions
refers to the number of times a banner is displayed. Each time a banner is displayed, counts as one impression. Also called Banner Views.
Index
The collection of information a search engine has that users can query against. With crawler-based search engines, the index is typically copies of all the web pages they have found from crawling the web. With human-powered directories, the index contains the summaries of all web sites that have been categorized.
Industry Specific
Ads targeted by a specific industry. For example hospitals or nursing homes would be specific to the healthcare industry.
Job Aggregator
A new type of employment website that aggregates jobs from as many job boards as they can in order to sell advertising to their clients with better placement. Job Aggregators typically show the largest number of job postings and are also responsible for the distribution of the jobs they aggregate.
Job Board
An employment website built for recruiting employees. There are national, local, and industry-specific job boards. National job boards include Monster, Yahoo HotJobs, Career Builder, etc. Local job boards include those such as RecruitingNevada.com or the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce’s Career Center. Industry specific would be Dice – for technology jobs. Then you have local, industry-specific such as NVNurses.com, NVConstructionJobs.com, etc.
Job Listing
an individual job posted to a website. Typically these postings are a 30-day posting. Job Listings are many times referred to as a job posting.
Keywords
The words (or word) a searcher enters into a search engine's search box. Also used to refer to the terms a search engine marketer hopes a particular page will be found for. Also known as search terms.
Landing Page
The specific web page that a visitor ultimately reaches after clicking a search engine listing. Marketers attempt to improve conversion rates by testing various landing page creative, which encompasses the entire user experience including navigation, layout and copy.
Link Popularity
How "popular" a page is based on the number of back links it has.
Link Text
Also known as display text or link name; The text that is contained within a link.
Listings
The information that appears on a search engine's results page in response to a search.
Membership Package
a package of job postings purchased at a discount. A membership package may also include additional exposure or branding.
Multi-Posting System
software developed that allows an employer to manage all of the job boards where they place their ads. This is a single point of entry and allows the employer to edit and remove ads as well. Typically there is a fee associated with each posting.
Niche Job Board
A job board particular to an industry or demographic group.
Optimization
Placing special attention to ensure better than normal or expected results. A website can be optimized. An e-mail can be optimized. And an entire advertising campaign can be optimized.
Opt-in
A user’s ability given to receive information from a specific company or program. This ultimately is what defines the difference between spam and a true marketing message.
Organic Listings
Listings that search engines do not sell (unlike paid listings). Instead, results are displayed because a search engine has deemed it editorially important for them to be included, regardless of payment.
Page Impressions or Page Views
Refers to the number of times a web page is requested from the web server. This number does not include graphics and is much more useful than “Hits”.
Paid Placement
Advertising program where listings are guaranteed to appear in response to particular search terms, with higher ranking typically obtained by paying more than other advertisers. Also known as Cost Per Click
Pay-for-Performance
Only paying for ads that "perform" in terms of delivering traffic, as opposed to CPM-based ads, where ads cost money, even if they don't generate a click.
Pay per Click (CPC)
To engage in an advertising campaign and only pay for an agreed upon level of performance. When a user clicks on an ad, the advertiser pays an agreed upon amount. Also see Cost Per Click.
Rank
How well a particular web page or web site is listed in search engine results. Typically a site is ranked by review of the website’s importance to the website’s topic. Ranking can be improved in a number of ways not limited to Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, page content and reciprocal linking.
Reciprocal Link
A link exchange between two sites.
Results Page
After a user enters a search query, the page that is displayed, is call the results page. Sometimes it may be called SERPs, for "search engine results page."
ROI
Stands for "Return On Investment" and refers to level of results for investment made. Typically this is compared to cost-per-hire.
RSS Feed (Really Simply Syndication)
Syndication of content to other websites through a universal computer language. RSS allows for the customization of the content a user receives and also allows a user to control what, how much and how often they receive it.
Run of Site (ROS)
This is usually the cheapest form of banner advertising, but also typically the least effective. Your banner ad will be displayed throughout the web site without regard to category or any form of targeting. This form of advertising is most appropriate for general use/interest types of products or services.
Search Engine
Any service generally designed to allow users to search the web or a specialized database of information. Web search engines generally have paid listings and organic listings. Organic listings typically come from crawling the web, though often human-powered directory listings are also optionally offered.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
The act of marketing a web site via search engines, whether this be improving rank in organic listings, purchasing paid listings or a combination of these and other search engine-related activities.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The act of altering a web site so that it does well in the organic, crawler-based listings of search engines.
Search Terms
The words (or word) a searcher enters into a search engine's search box. Also used to refer to the terms a search engine marketer hopes a particular page will be found for. Also called keywords.
Sponsorship
Clients who pay a sponsorship fee for additional exposure and preferential treatment.
Spam
Unwanted e-mails or when a search engine determines a search engine marketing is detrimental to its efforts to deliver relevant, quality search results.
Syndicate
To reproduce content and distribute to others at no charge.
Transparent
Willing to share any and all reporting with shareholders or clients.
Targeted Advertising
Marketing specifically geared to a demographic. As the name suggests, you are using some form of criteria to “target” a particular audience, which will usually lead to substantially higher CTR’s. The criteria could include industry, geographic location or skill level.
Traffic
The amount of users or jobseekers coming to a particular site. Anyone can build a website, but to get “traffic” to a site requires marketing and advertising. Traffic is the most critical element to the success of any website.
Trailing Spouse
The partner of a jobseeker who is also looking for gainful employment.
Unique Visitors
Refers to the number of “unique” individuals have visited a site in a given time period (usually a month). If you visit the same site 5 times in a given month, you would count as 1 unique visitor.
Vcruit
Strategic partner that produces video recruitment ads.
Vertical
A website specific to a particular industry or geography. Also referred to as a niche job board.
Visitors
The total number of times a site has been accessed by someone in a given time period (usually a month). If you visit the same site 5 times in a given month, you would count as 5 visitors (but only 1 unique visitor).
XML Feeds
A form of paid inclusion where a search engine is "fed" information about pages via XML, rather than gathering that information through crawling actual pages. Marketers can pay to have their pages included in a spider based search index either annually per URL or on a CPC basis based on an XML document representing each page on the client site. New media types are being introduced into paid inclusion, including graphics, video, audio, and rich media.