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It is safe to assume that most job seekers’ top priority is to make money. But what else are these potential employees looking for? While compensation may be the ultimate goal, it certainly is not the only important factor.

According to the United States Department of Labor, the Employment Cost Index (ECI) was up +0.4% for the first quarter of 2012. In other words, it is costing you more to employ others, so now more than ever it is crucial to ensure that you are attracting quality candidates. How?

By offering what they want, what they need, and what makes the most sense for your business.

Competitive Compensation. Compensation is about more than dollars and cents. That is why, as an employer, you must be confident that the compensation you are offering is not only fair, but is in line with job requirements (i.e. education, experience, skill) and is also competitive. Offer much less than your competitors, and your pool of candidates will likely decrease in value. Offer much more, and you may run into the same problem. Balance here is key.

Balance. Speaking of balance, your potential employees are searching for it as well. Many job seekers are in the market for more than just a job; they are looking for an opportunity that will fit into their lifestyle. That may mean leaving time for family or for a second job, but regardless of the reason, work-life balance is more than a nice concept; it is a must if you want to keep your employees happy, healthy and productive.

Benefits. Benefits packages have become nearly as important, if not equally as salary when it comes to what job seekers want most. However, you must be smart when it comes to the benefits you are offering. Be sure that your current employees are taking advantage of the benefits you offer as a good indicator of how effective and valuable these options will be to potential employees. Benefits are only as valuable as their demand, so be sure that what you are offering is worth your while, and money.

Opportunity & Growth. Potential employees want to be sure they will have room to grow within your organization. Is there room for advancement? Are there opportunities for them to flourish? In other words, they want to know if their hard work will pay off, and it is up to you to let them know what possibilities exist. A large part of the equation is appreciation. Be sure to let your team know how valuable they are and that their accomplishments will not go unnoticed.

Job seekers aren’t only looking for a way to spend 40+ hours each week. They are looking for fulfilling opportunities where they can grow, be fairly and properly compensated, and most importantly, where they can feel appreciated enough to work their hardest and give their best.

Whether it’s the weather or memories of struggling in past years, employers are starting their summer hiring earlier than before. Nearly half of hiring managers said they will complete their summer hiring in April. 79% of all summer jobs will be filled by Memorial Day.

And now experts are saying that for the first time in years, students will be more likely competing against other students—not underemployed adults—to find summer employment. They’re out there, and they’re ready to work. So how do you find them, and how can your company compete with big business?

1. Make it easier to get hired. Large corporations typically have an extensive and time-consuming hiring process. Get the jump on your competition by streamlining your process. This approach will allow your business to outmaneuver bigger companies and help you nail down the right candidates in much less time.
2. Look beyond the top schools. If you’re hiring college students, approach smaller schools that often get overlooked by high-powered companies. You’ll find just as many motivated, intelligent students eager for real-life experience.
3. Find the bright side. Smart summer employment candidates want to feel like they’re part of a company, and that’s where smaller businesses can really shine. Showcase the size of your organization and highlight the benefits of working for a small business, such as having a larger role in decision making processes, the chance for quicker advancement and less competition for promotions. Many of today’s students are willing to take less money in exchange for a higher potential and a better working environment.
4. Get creative. Find unique ways to attract candidates to your company. The more inventive you are, the better your chances will be of finding candidates. This is particularly important for businesses in a creative field. Be nimble and think outside the hiring box. You’ll attract more candidates and you’ll level the playing field.

Whatever you do, don’t wait until the last minute to start looking – or to make your hiring decisions. Even in today’s job market, that could be a fatal mistake, as you just may find yourself heading into the summer months without a sufficient staff to deliver warm weather success.

Here’s another way to attract great job candidates: help them find your job posting more easily. How?

Keywords and concise job descriptions. There are over 100 million job-related searches being conducted each month on Google alone. You need to make sure your job postings can be found among the multitudes.

To ensure your job description or posting rises to the top of search engine results, you’ll need to select the right keyword phrases.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What terms might a job seeker search for in order to find a job like yours?
• Which of those, and other terms, are relevant to your job description?

The phrases you use in your job posting should be specific, not general. ‘Financial services sales job’ is better than ‘sales job’ because it’s more specific.

Other types of keyword phrases to use:

• Company/branded/product terms
• Location-specific terms: Many seekers search on location + job title (e.g., “product manager Boston.”)
• Industry-specific terms: Tools, software or acronyms that are important to the job and your business
• Alternative job titles: Are there alternative job titles that people may use to describe the same job? (e.g., “online marketing manager or Internet marketing manager.”)
• Abbreviations: Are there abbreviations for the job title? (e.g., Registered Nurse = RN)

Once you’ve accumulated a list of targeted keyword phrases, select the most popular and relevant to use in the creation of your job listing.

Here are some additional tips to help you integrate your related keyword phrases:

• Use bullet points to make the description easy to read
• The length of the job description should be at least 150 words (search engines like text!) but not too long (seekers don’t like long descriptions.)
• Use brand, industry, and occupation-specific phrases
• Avoid using internal company jargon or abbreviations that will confuse the reader

Titles Are Important, Too

The job title is important to your job listing for three reasons:

1. It appears in the body as text. Search engines use it to understand what keyword phrases your job listing is relevant on.
2. It appears in the browser <title> tag. Search engines weigh the job title heavily when determining what keyword phrases your job listing is relevant on.
3. The browser <title> tag also appears as the clickable hypertext in search engine results.

Your job title should be relevant so that seekers click on your job listing over others.

Here are some guidelines to help you pick your job titles:

• Choose a simple, concise title that job seekers actually search on, not a creative hook. ‘Sales Star Needed!’ is not an effective job title. Instead, choose ‘Sales Representative.’ And be specific, e.g.: ‘Pharmaceutical Sales Representative’.
• Indicate the career level of the job in the title if possible. ‘Online Media’ is not an effective job title. Instead, choose ‘Director of Online Media’.
• If a skill is essential to the job then be sure to include it, such as, ‘Customer Support Representative – Spanish Speaking’ rather than just ‘Customer Support Representative.’
• Don’t abbreviate job titles. ‘Sr. VP’ is not an effective job title. Spell out ‘Senior Vice President’.

Stated simply, mobile recruiting is the ability to market to prospective talent with or on a mobile device.

More in depth, mobile recruiting is about keeping up with new and emerging recruitment trends and a terrifically effective way to connect with job seekers anywhere, anytime.

Mobile recruiting isn’t just a trend—it’s increasingly important for companies that want to stay competitive.

The World is Going Mobile. You Need to Go With It

Consider the following:

• 85 percent of Americans currently own cell phones (up from 65 percent in Sept 2009)
• 72 percent of Americans use their phones to send or receive text messages
• 63.2 million American mobile phone subscribers over age 13 use smartphones (60 percent more than a year ago)
• Time spent on mobile devices has increased nearly 30 percent since 2010, faster than any other medium
• In Q4 2010, smartphone sales surpassed that of PCs, according to the International Data

With job seekers increasingly using this technology to search for employment opportunities, research companies and receive job alerts, employers have not just the opportunity, but the need, to embrace mobile technology and make it part of their overall recruitment strategy.

How to Start?

3 Musts for Adding Mobile to Your Recruitment Strategy

1. Know your audience. The ability to successfully attract and recruit top talent, no matter what channels you use, depends on your ability to understand your audience. When it comes to mobile recruitment, extra attention must be given to job seeker behavior. Before you implement a mobile strategy, find out how your target talent is using it. Active job seekers may be using mobile job apps, while passive candidates may be using smartphones to simply search the mobile web.

   Remember, there is the web and then there is the mobile web. Mobile web and smartphone usage may be on the rise, but if members of your target audience have not yet adapted them, a strong focus on mobile may not be your primary recruitment method.

2. Be engaging. Passive and active job seekers are drawn to brands and organizations that offer compelling content and engage in conversation. Job seekers often connect with companies because they want their career-related questions answered. So don’t use your social and professional platforms only to post job openings. Instead, have conversations with your users about company culture, your employee value proposition and industry news. Engaging discussions will attract users to your talent network and build relationships with candidates.
3. Don’t eliminate other channels. Mobile is the current hot topic in recruitment and will be around for a long time. But completely eliminating other channels like social media, job boards and career sites will not produce the desired ROI. A majority of your target audience may use the mobile web and mobile apps in their job search, but it’s not a one size fits all strategy. Mobile can extend and enhance – but not replace – other recruitment channels.

If you’ve spent time preparing for job interviews, you’ve probably discovered that there are different types of interviews – informal, structural, behavioral, panel. What you may not have considered is that there are different types of interviewers.

Your interviewer’s personality and style both play bigger roles in determining the outcome of an interview than you might think. If you misread the personality of the hiring manager, you could miss out on the job.

So without further ado, here are 5 common types of interviewers-—and how to handle them.

The Chatty One
You might feel relieved if you encounter a friendly, gregarious interviewer, but don’t let this type lull you into letting your guard down. Respond with warmth and friendliness, as these qualities are appreciated by the chatty type, but don’t go over the line into unprofessional. You may not get to volunteer important information about yourself, but your best bet is just to engage actively in the conversation and answer skillfully when and if you are asked a question.

The Interrogator
This type of interviewer seems better suited to a career in law enforcement. They tend to fire off questions rapidly, often in an intimidating tone and manner. Maintain your composure – The Interrogator may be trying to see if you are easily flustered. Try to slow the pace of the interview by taking the time to think about your responses and answering in even, calm tones. And be pleasant, but don’t be overly sociable.

The By-The-Books Interviewer
Though not as harsh as the interrogation expert, the by-the-books interviewer tries to stick as closely as possible to a preexisting interview script. This may be because she wants to remain as objective as possible, or it may indicate that she’s uncomfortable. Don’t derail the interview by deviating sharply from the pace she set. This may force her out of her comfort zone and leave a bad impression.

The Inexperienced or Unprepared One
You might assume that all hiring managers are professional and experienced. You’d be wrong. You might find yourself being interviewed by someone who is new to the company or new to hiring, and who doesn’t really know what they’re doing. Don’t let yourself be thrown off message! Stick to your planned talking points and maintain your professionalism. If your interviewer repeatedly states that he can’t answer your questions, you may want to check afterward to see if there is anyone else with whom you could schedule a discussion or tour.

The Nosy One
There are interviewers who will step over the bounds of propriety when meeting with potential hires. If an interviewer repeatedly asks you questions that you feel are inappropriate or make you uncomfortable, first try to redirect, stating that you’d prefer to stick to standard work-related topics. If the interviewer persists with this line of questioning, it’s best to conclude the interview politely but firmly.

Did you know that nearly 1 in 5 job seekers uses their mobile device when searching for new employment? How can you use mobile recruiting to attract job seekers and potentially find your next top hire?

Here are 5 ways you can boost your recruiting efforts through mobile technology:

1. Social Media
You have some sort of social strategy in place, right? Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Foursquare, these offer a plethora of opportunities to tap the mobile market. You can harness Foursquare to promote a job fair you will be attending. You can use your Twitter account to push out job openings and use targeted hashtags such as: job, hiring, career, and interview.

2. QR Codes
Recruiters are beginning to incorporate QR codes into their mobile recruiting strategies. When you post an ad promoting your job opening, you can invite job candidates to scan the code for more detailed information about the opening. You can hand out QR Codes at job fairs to speed up the application process. If you’re tracking its usage, you’ll have a good idea as to how many people stopped by your booth.

3. Mobile Career Page
Studies show that by 2015, Internet browsing via mobile devices will surpass that of traditional desktop browsing. So, having a website that is optimized for mobile has never been more important—and that needs to include your career page. If job candidates can’t access your careers page via a mobile phone, then you’re potentially cutting out nearly 20% of job candidates.

4. Mobile App
Much like a mobile career page, having a mobile app for your business is a great way to push out job openings, as well as any company updates to your fans. In fact, nearly 24% of the U.S adult population actively uses mobile apps. Everybody has heard the phrase “go where your customers are going,” and mobile apps are no exception.

5. Mobile Video
Are you pushing out video content on YouTube? You should be! Why? 13% of all daily views on YouTube come by way of mobile devices. Creating a “day in the life” or “behind the scenes” video of your business and its culture is a great way to attract new talent. Just make sure it’s optimized for mobile usage.

Your employee compensation and benefits package can be the deciding factor for many potential employees. And it’s not just the money. To make your company competitive and attractive to job candidates, you have to offer an exceptional total benefits package.

Here are some suggestions for creating a compensation package that will be attractive to today’s employees.

1.    Salary

Although money isn’t everything, it certainly is one of the top issues potential employees consider when choosing a new job. In addition to whether it’s competitive, decide whether to offer a straight basic salary structure or an incentive-based pay structure. Incentive-based structures are hot right now.

2.    Health and Other Insurance

The three main types of health coverage you can offer to your employees are traditional coverage(fee-for-service), HMO (health maintenance organization), or PPO (preferred provider organization). Most employers also include dental coverage and vision coverage.

It pays to find a good broker when looking for health insurance policies. The broker may represent plans from up to 15 different insurers, allowing you to get a better feel for what is available and do more comparison shopping. You may also want to include

• Disability and Life Insurance
• Long and Short-Term Disability
• Life Insurance

3.    Paid Time Off
Most companies provide paid holidays for all of their employees. The national average is 10 1/2 paid holidays per year. In addition to standard holidays, some companies also provide one to two floating holidays or personal days. These days can be used whenever the employee would like to use them and often make up for religious holidays that are not part of the company’s standard paid holiday schedule.

Then there are vacation days and paid sick days. Some companies allow employees to use their paid sick days to also take care of family members who are ill. Make sure you set a policy and stick to it.

In addition to regular benefits packages that include health insurance, vacation, and retirement plans, employees are actively seeking companies who offer more of the things they value. Balancing their lives is becoming more important than ever. Because of this, other benefits like flexible schedules, relaxed atmospheres, childcare and other lifestyle benefits are becoming almost as important as salaries.

4.    Flex Time

Companies that offer flex time find that their employees are more productive, motivated, and loyal. And why wouldn’t they be? Employees can alleviate quite a bit of stress from life just by coming in to work an hour earlier and leaving an hour earlier to miss the interstate parking lot scene, and it can also give them more time with their families.

5.    Telecommuting

Face time in an office is way overrated. Today, you have to measure an employee’s worth by what they produce, not by how many hours you see them sitting at their computers (or in the break room, or at their co-worker’s desk). You’ll also benefit from the increased loyalty and boosted morale of your telecommuting workforce.

Other employee-friendly policies and programs include

• Dependent Care Assistance
• Adoption Assistance Programs
• Jury Duty, Military Leave, and Bereavement

You’ll also need a policy on maternity and/or paternity leave. Whether this leave is paid or unpaid is up to you. Domestic Partner Benefits have become more commonplace over the past few years. If yours is a very diverse workforce, you may want to consider covering domestic partners in your benefits program.

When you’re a student, you work to achieve the highest possible GPA. When you graduate, I’m sorry to say, that number doesn’t really matter.

When it comes to getting a job, employers don’t want to know what you did, they want to know what you can do. Here are 9 real-life skills that you can pick up in college – that will actually mean something in the real world.

1.    Knowing how you learn

At some point during college, you should be able to determine how you best learn and retain information. Some people need to see it, some need to hear it, some need to write it and some need to practice it before it sticks. As an employee, you’ll need to learn new things as you go, remember them and prove you’ve absorbed the information—so knowing how you do this best will help you on the job.

2.    Applying theory to real-life situations

It’s one thing to be able to recite the 4 Ps of marketing or draw the purchase decision funnel, but you’ll rarely be called upon to display your knowledge this way in the workplace. What you will need to know how to do: take fundamental information and proven best practices and apply them in new situations or projects.

3.    Time management

By the time you graduate, hopefully you’ll have learned how much time you need to research and write a paper, get to your classes and jobs on time, fit a workout in your day and still have something of a social life. Time management is a vital skill, which you will need in your professional life to meet deadlines, tackle to-do lists and get things done without burning yourself out.

4.    Relevant professional experience

Instead of always studying to get that 4.0, take a job or internship, participate in a student organization or volunteer for projects in your industry. Relevant, hands-on work in your field can help you learn about what you want to do (or in some cases, what you don’t want to do) and pick up important skills and experience. These will be a much better indicator for your potential in a real job.

5.    Create a portfolio

Keep samples of your work from internships, volunteer positions or relevant jobs. Your forethought will impress employers who often want to see your work before hiring you—or will be impressed you provided it. If you’re not building a portfolio through class requirements, create one on your own time. Practice writing articles, press releases, pitches; designing publications; compiling clip reports or research summaries; or anything else you might be hired to do.

6.    The ability to give and receive feedback

As an employee and a co-worker, you’ll be called upon to give and receive praise and criticism. You’ll participate in employee reviews with your boss and often receive comments from clients, so the ability to hear different types of feedback, internalize it and adjust accordingly will matter to your job performance. You also need to know how to give both positive and negative feedback to others, when you collaborate with colleagues.

7.    Writing skills

Too many students leave college lacking solid writing ability. Focus on developing this skill, because it will matter in everything from reports to pitches to emails.

8.    Presentation skills

Whether you’re offering to lead a group in a class or presenting projects as part of an internship, you are gaining crucial experience. Being able to convey ideas clearly and speak confidently in front of others will be an important part of your professional life.

9.    Your network

You’ve heard “Who you know is more important than what you know,” right? It’s true. Start building your network while you’re still in college. Meet new people, maintain your relationships and help others by making introductions. You are most likely to find job opportunities through your network.

These are skills you can learn in your college classes, even if they’re not always sketched out in your syllabus. And these are the skills employers look at, not at your grades.

When it came time to make your New Year’s resolutions, did you consider your work life? Do you feel like you could use a fresh start? At the risk of sounding like your mother, getting organized at work is a great way to start. And here are 3 quick and easy ways to do it.

1. Your desk is where you spend the majority of your day, so you should create an environment that’s calm, practical and enjoyable. Although having a cluttered desk gives the illusion that you’re busy and productive, you probably waste a lot of time looking for stuff. Clutter can also cause a lot of unconscious—or conscious!—stress. Put a little bit of thought and effort into making your desk a pleasant place to be:

• Simplify. Clear off anything you don’t use multiple times a day, including papers, files, a stapler or extra pens. Put these things in a drawer or tray UNDER the desk. It’s not a big deal to pull open a drawer to get something you don’t use all the time. The key here is to keep the top of your desk as clean as possible, and this will help clear your mind.
• Hide your wires. Bundle them together and let them hang behind the desk and out of sight.
• Consolidate. Get rid of the Post-It notes on your monitor and the scattered papers that are everywhere. Put a corkboard or dry erase board on a wall, and transfer your Post-Its and other random information there.
• Go green. Plants help add color and life to your space. Buy a small indoor plant that’s easy to maintain for your office or cubicle.
• Personalize. Add a picture or two of friends or family, or a photo or other souvenir from a memorable trip. But keep it to a minimum—no more than 1 or 2.
•  Think themes. If possible, when choosing necessary items for your desk, go with a common color, material or style. Whether your style is dark wood, brushed metal, glass, white plastic, bright red or whatever, try to keep it consistent.

2. Now that you’ve decluttered your desk, how about your computer? Do you have multiple files and folders that need to be put in their proper place? And what about your email Inbox? Even though email is probably the most valuable tool you use daily, it’s probably the most disorganized. What can you do about it?

• If there are messages from 2011 in your box that you haven’t read already, either delete them or archive them. If you haven’t read them yet, you’re never going to.
•  The more emails that stack up, the more stressed you can get. If you notice an email chain getting longer and longer, cut it off and continue the conversation with participants via a meeting or a phone call.
• Spend an hour and set up email filters to get rid of messages from certain companies or ones that match certain subjects. Learn what’s junking up your Inbox, create filters and mark all unnecessary files for deletion or archive.
• There’s no reason to take a bunch of leftovers from 2011 into the new year, so give yourself the gift of a clean Inbox.

3. Last, try to live by the twenty-minute rule. You can do anything for 20 minutes. If you’re feeling stuck on a project or worried about a deadline, give it twenty minutes. Then get up from your desk and walk around, or just switch to a different task for a few minutes. Breaking everything into small, manageable chunks of time can make any task seem less daunting. And don’t forget to give yourself 20 minutes at the end of the day to make sure your desktop, computer and Inbox are cleaned up and organized!

Today’s workforce has a great balance of experienced professionals and fresh talent. At the head of the pack is the group of professionals known as Generation Y. Generation Y is categorized by the following traits:

• They were born between 1980 and 2000.
• There are nearly 100 million of them.
• They grew up with exposure to events like 9/11, Columbine, Hurricane Katrina and turmoil in the Middle East
• They are subject to very high amounts of student loan debt
• They are most confident when working with technology.

With every generation, you’ll find that there are different ways to get the most productivity and job satisfaction. Generation Y is no different. Here are some key traits of Generation Y professionals (also known as “Millennials”):

• They want “more.” For Generation Y, they value their time and contributions much more than what they achieve during the 9 to 5 workday. They place a high value on their contributions to society as a whole. And they seek ways to do that outside of the typical workday. To help provide ample opportunity for your Generation Y employees to pursue this part of their personality, be sure to provide outlets for employees to engage in meaningful activities outside of the office. Also consider offering flex time, telecommuting opportunities or team volunteer activities.

• They haven’t stopped wanting to learn. They may just be coming out of college, but Generation Y professionals aren’t done learning. These pros are seeking out opportunities to learn more, not just via books and training, but through shadowing and mentoring within your company. Provide defined mentoring and learning opportunities for these employees, and your organization will reap the rewards.

• They’re ready to move on (soon). Most of us would love to find a company that will keep them happy and growing for the next 40 years, but Generation Y is comprised of realists. They want long-term, but they don’t expect to find it. To keep your Millennials happy and thinking about the long term, define career paths and growth opportunities for young professionals. With a defined path in front of them, they are much more likely to stick with you in the long haul.