Archive for the ‘Career Sites’ Category
A Job Seekers Perspective and The Candidate Experience
Posted by JasonBy Jason Buss.
After writing on the candidate experience, I recently caught up with a few tweeps, including @CarolineBoegel, @robpitingolo, @arwilliams, and several other job seekers to get additional insights on what their experience has been from a candidates viewpoint.
5 trends that quickly emerged included:
- Applying for a job on-line is cumbersome, time consuming and candidates leave irritated. Yes, still after years of talking about it, the number one issue raised was still “the black hole of HR”.
- A majority polled start on google or indeed (this should come as no surprise), and spend most of their time on a companies career site. Other tools referenced for job searching and networking were LinkedIn and facebook.
- Job descriptions and postings online can be vague, not represent the role completely, and some are poorly written.
- Resume submission tools on corporate career sites can be very frustrating.
- With all of the evolving tools and technology corporate career sites still lack in creating an engaging, and meaningful experience. It’s still one-way.
This example is so appalling, I had to include it word-for-word: I actually applied for one job online that literally took me through a two hour application on their website. They asked me to upload my resume and a cover letter, and then took me through a complex application in which they asked me the same questions that my resume already covered, such as my education and intership experiences. It was one of those situations that I was expecting to spend 20 minutes filling the form out, but once I was already one hour in to the application, there was no way I was going to quit and start over some other time, but I had no idea how long it was going to take me to finally finish it. And that company has yet to follow up with me at all.
It appears little has changed as all 5 of these trends have been talked about for years in the recruiting industry. While there is no silver bullet, here are some additional links and resources for Recruiters to combat these issues:
- Top 5 List for Deploying an Effective Online Career Center
- Seriously? This a Candidate’s On-line Experience in a Web 2.0 World?
- Effective Corporate Career Sites & Measuring Results
We clearly have opportunities with creating an experience that is both engaging and mutually beneficial. What other issues are you seeing with the overall candidate experience?
Career site Vitruva, Inc. is emplowering LinkedIn users in America to leverage their existing profiles to find jobs using Vitruva’s system.
LinkedIn is a valuable professional networking Web site and a favorite sourcing tool among recruiters. However, finding a job that accurately fits one’s LinkedIn profile is as time-consuming a chore as it is on any job board due to the inefficient, manual keyword-based job searching.
Now, for the first time, millions of U.S. LinkedIn users can enjoy the benefits of high-accuracy job matching by leveraging their existing professional profiles. Users can import their profiles into Vitruva’s system, where its patent-pending artificial intelligence engine matches the profiles with thousands of pre-qualified job opportunities. The matching is done instantly, confidentially, at no cost to job seekers.
Profile-based job matching is completely effortless for job seekers. Once the public LinkedIn profile is imported into Vitruva’s system and the user’s preferences are specified, the matching engine automatically creates dynamic connections between the job seeker and matching jobs. Vitruva evaluates users’ profiles in recruiter-like fashion. This results in a level of job-matching accuracy that has never been possible before. Each match is scored and ranked to quickly guide a job seeker to the best opportunities.
Members automatically receive notifications about job opportunities that accurately match their professional experience, skills, education, and personal preference such as compensation, location, insurance and retirement plans.
Vitruva’s system accurately matches professionals at all levels of an organization, from high-level executives to junior staff members, in seven areas including information technology, sales, marketing, engineering, accounting and banking, human resources, and legal. “The hours and days spent scouring LinkedIn for jobs is reduced to seconds with Vitruva’s job matching technology,” said Jindrich Liska, chief executive officer and founder of Vitruva. “Users can focus on networking and advancing their careers while their job assistant - Vitruva - searches non-stop on their behalf.”
To view the live demo, visit vitruva.com.
Employers shed more jobs last month than in any month in more than five years. The economy lost another 159,000 jobs in September, and is the largest decline seen since March 2003. The unemployment rate remain unchanged in September 2008, at 6.1% which is the highest unemployment level seen since September 2003.
The economy has now lost 760,000 jobs since January. Economists have said the economy needs to create about 100,000 jobs each month to keep up with new workers.
If you are looking for a new career opportunity, there are hundreds strategies and places to begin your job search. This article contains several ideas to aid in your search from Recruiters.
- Start your search on-line. The best place to start is with job aggregator sites, which include job postings from job boards and companies. Try Google, Indeed, or SimplyHired for starters.
- Get jobs delivered to you. Set up search agents to do the work for you, and have the results e-mailed to your in-box.
- Paul DeBettignies, from MN Headhunter shared “Create a database of some sort to track resume submittals, email, phone calls and other activities so you can be sure to follow up when appropriate”
- The reality is engaging in a shot-gun approach to applying to multiple jobs on job boards rarely work. Organizations typically receive more Resumes than they can manually handle. Everyone typically gets the same generated e-mail response, and Recruiters rely on key word searches and auto scoring systems to find potential candidates.
- Posting your Resume on a job board as a solo job search approach seldom works - if you think magically your phone will start ringing… Take charge of your search, network, and find others you know in organizations that can help. Keep in mind several positions may not even make it to the internet.
Proactively managing your search for a career can be time consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. Check back, or sign up via e-mail for continued job search and interview tip articles.
By Jason Buss.
A Career Site Conversation with Benjamin Yoskovitz, CEO & Co-Founder of Standout Jobs.
Jason: Please introduce yourself for The Talent Buzz readers.
Ben: I’m currently the CEO & Co-Founder of Standout Jobs, which started in 2007 and launched at the end of January 2008. Prior to that I was the co-founder of another web software company, which I had started in 1996. As a software entrepreneur I’ve touched on every aspect of starting and running a business - financing, operations, recruiting, sales, marketing, product development, customer service, etc. I enjoy all of them, although I get especially excited about product development and customer service. These are areas that I’ve focused on in my career as an entrepreneur.
I have a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from McGill University - and started my first company (1996) while I was still in school finishing the degree.
I’m all neck-deep in the world of social media, blogging and social media marketing. I write a blog on startups and business called Instigator Blog (http://www.instigatorblog.com), and have done consulting work for numerous small and large companies on social media strategy.
On a personal note, I’m the father of two young boys (3 and a half and 14 months), and I’ve been happily married for 7 years. I live in Montreal, Canada.
Jason: How do you think career sites have evolved over the past 3-5 years?
Ben: From my own perspective, as the owner of a small company (prior to Standout Jobs) I don’t think career sites were even on my radar. Certainly they existed, but I think they looked / acted much the same way as they do now; they’re static, uninspiring and provide a very poor candidate experience.
Over 5+ years we’ve certainly seen significant evolution of corporate websites. They’re getting better designed, faster, and more streamlined. They’re targeting prospects better, and many companies do much deeper analytical research into visitors’ behavior. But little of that has translated effectively to career sites, at least for smaller and medium-sized businesses.
Jason: What are some of the biggest challenges with career sites today from your perspective?
Ben: I’ve mentioned some of them above - but I think the crux of the issue is that HR isn’t given the real estate or flexibility to do what it needs to on its career website to attract the right audience and keep them engaged. Corporate sites are dominated by Marketing/Sales - which is understandable; HR’s biggest challenge is being able to translate the Marketing/Sales-driven approach to corporate websites to their career websites. And, I would encourage companies (of all sizes) to give more prominent real estate on corporate sites to recruiting. Every single website should have a “WE ARE HIRING” sign right on the home page, because it works.
Beyond the “who rules the corporate website” situation, I think the next biggest issue is the quality of career sites to provide a great experience to job seekers, interaction and engagement. Currently, most career sites allow you to apply and do nothing else. But you can be sure there’s plenty of people who are “window shopping”, interested in engaging with the company but not ready to apply. Many of those people aren’t being supported effectively.
Jason: With all of the changes in technology, why do you think there have been few improvements in the overall engagement and experience for candidates?
Ben: There’s a lot of technology out there. There are even more buzzwords. That in and of itself is a big part of the problem. I’d say the next issue is that none of the technology, or solutions out there to-date are recruiting-centric. Yes, you can use an existing platform or existing technology to put something together and start to provide candidates with a better experience, but there’s a learning curve, you need to potentially get I.T. involved, and it’s downright overwhelming.
I think we’re starting to see newer technology that leverages some of the newer principles of how to use the Web (blogging, social networking, social media, etc.) targeted to HR, and if that’s done successfully, with easy-to-use tools that don’t require huge cost or time investments on the part of companies, things will change.
Jason: What do you see as the top 2-3 areas of improvement with online recruiting?
Ben: The overarching issue with online recruiting is that it’s not built around active communication between employers and candidates (and prospective candidates). Online recruiting isn’t built to representative how people interact. It’s evolved into a much more transactional model, which has its merits, and you can understand in the early days of the Web why things went in that direction. But times have changed online, and they’ll continue to change at a very quick pace; online recruiting hasn’t caught up, and while I don’t go starry eyed into the night with dreams of “social networking for jobs” or assuming that every Web 2.0 concept is perfectly suited for recruiting, the fact is that online recruiting has to become more conversational and open, and less process-driven.
Jason: When did V1 launch? What upcoming changes are being made with the V2 Standout Jobs product? When will they be available?
Ben: We launched the product at the end of January, 2008. Since that time we’ve made numerous improvements - iteratively adding features, fixing others - and generally responding to our clients’ needs and following our product roadmap. As for V2, who said anything about V2? *chuckle*
What we’ve built to-date is a good platform for allowing HR to quickly and easily create a branded career site. We’ve started opening the doors for more communication of a company’s culture, and more interaction between companies and people. There’s definitely room for more, ultimately to fulfill on the goals of helping company’s representative themselves more effectively and communicate more actively with candidates (prospective or already in the pipeline.) I can say this - we move very quickly - it’s what makes a startup so exciting, the ability to iterate quickly, launch new things fast, test the market and get feedback. I can’t promise dates for anything new, but you can expect lots of news in the next few months.
Jason: How can our readers, Recruiters, HR professionals, and businesses contact you.
Benjamin Yoskovitz
CEO & Co-Founder
tel: 514.582.4749
email: ben@standoutjobs.com
website: http://www.standoutjobs.com
Options:
CareerXroads Top 25 Corporate Job Sites: Highest Rated Companies for the Job Candidate’s Experience in 2008.
Authoria Drives Success of Leading Retail Organizations Through Unified Approach to Talent Management.
From Shally Steckerl: Seven Days Without Sourcing Makes One Weak.
Options:
5 Questions to ask Yourself About Your Career Site
Posted by JasonBy Jason Buss.
All of these people are all waiting patiently to be recruited - and to apply for a job at your company. They would apply, except the process takes too long and 99% of the time it results in an auto generated response and nothing else.
OK, maybe they are watching a football game, but you get the point.
As a follow-up to last week’s recruiting blog poll results, here are 5 considerations and questions to ask yourself when assessing the effectiveness of your corporate career site.
- How does your career site rank with search engines? As more job seekers continue to turn to search engines to launch a search, or to search for specific content related to their career, you need to assess your search engine rankings and evaluate what percent of your traffic is generated through the various search engines. The .jobs domain has resulted in very few success stories, primarily due to the overuse of the domain solely as a re-director.
- What is the overall value of the content in the site? Take a look at the traffic to the pages in your site, and you may be surprised at where candidates and leads spend their time. Typically, it’s not on pages talking about great benefits programs…
- Is your site engaging, with a clear “call to action”? Check out my “Top 5″ for creating an engaging career site for some ideas. In addition, consider the call to action every step of the way, on every page.
- Is your site designed from a candidates point of view? While we all deem our recruiting process as important, nobody will win with a 10% applicant conversion rate. If you frustrate online visitors with an inside-out viewpoint, they will leave. Don’t lose your goldmine to competitors or recruiting firms.
- Is it easy for candidates to apply for a specific job? Can they apply with a 1 click upload of their Resume, or quickly enter their basic contact information as a lead? If your site requires a multiple page, multiple step process with registration, you are leaving yourself open to competitors or recruiting organizations to win.
While there is no one-size-fits-all answer to career sites, creating an engaging experience resulting in high quality applicants is a shared vision amongst recruiting organizations worldwide. As a general observation, we are losing miserably as a profession in a web 2.0 world. Let’s start thinking about what it will take to get to 3.0.
Recruiting Blog Poll: Corporate Career Site Effectiveness
Posted by AdminThe weekly recruiting blog poll results are in from last week.
The question: How would you rate the overall effectiveness of your career site?
The results:
- A little embarrassing (55%)
- About average (45%)
- Award winning (0%)
Check back next week or subscribe to the recruiting blog feed for a post on creating an effective candidate experience. Related articles:
- Seriously? This a Candidate’s On-line Experience in a Web 2.0 World?
- Corporate Career Site Series, Part 1: Measuring Career Site Results
- Corporate Career Site Series, Part 2: “Top 5″ List for Deploying an Effective Online Career Center
- Corporate Career Site Series, Part 3: Job Aggregator and SEO Site Results
The new poll this week: What is the primary focus of your recruiting metrics?
Get Paid To Interview for Jobs
Posted by JasonNotchUp has been testing its’ career agent site for months, and today opens its service to all businesses.
Since January, NotchUp has been approached by more than 1,000 companies to test run its service. 12 were selected based on diverse criteria to take an up close look and give it a try.
NotchUp has received plenty of criticism. The most common reported was that people would say yes to any interview because they were offered money. That hasn’t been the case - about 40% of interview offers are accepted.
New features on the site include:
- When a user updates their professional profile or resume in Facebook, NotchUp automatically incorporates the changes.
- Resume importing
- Users can leverage the Facebook or OpenSocial messaging systems for NotchUp alerts.
- Users can invite friends to join NotchUp through Facebook or OpenSocial.
- Users can seamlessly import contacts from multiple address books.
- Privacy features
According to NotchUp, they are changing the way recruiting is done, one interview at a time.
Options:
Web 2.0 is about enhancing creativity, information sharing, and collaboration. The definition must have been written with the intent to exclude job postings and job boards as part of the world wide web.
With all of the talk about attracting passive talent, the war for talent and focusing on hiring quality, I was surprised to see little has changed - when taking a look at things from a candidate’s point of view.
I started with a simple search on a job board. After closing 2 pop up windows, here’s what the candidate would see with this example:
A page filled with paid ads:
- 1 on the page header
- 8 vertically on the right side of the page
- 1 on the footer
- 2 pop-ups
Within the job posting:
- Grammatical errors
- 40 different daily, monthly, quarterly, and annual responsibilities / tasks
- 9 requirements
Thinking this must be a fluke, I ran another quick search on another board. The first posting I clicked on was from 1 of Fortune’s Best Companies To Work For. Surely, this will be better…
This posting was much shorter, and contained:
- 9 responsibilities
- 8 requirements
- 3 portfolio examples
Since the organization requests you apply online through their site, I clicked the link, and found the following:
We’re kidding right? The candidate has to complete another search to find the position, which ironically isn’t even listed on the corporate career site. If it would have been and they would have applied, the candidate of course would have had to sign up for another profile too.
If you use the big boards for postings, consider the following 5 quick fixes you can control and implement:
- Utilize a branding template with all of the boards. Templates pushes the ads off the page, so the candidate is looking at your posting, in your brand. They’re not forced to look at the online degree programs, or the amazing work from home opportunity ads. All the major boards offer branding as a service and is easily negotiated as part of a package.
- If you believe recruiting is sales and marketing, then sell and market both your organization and opportunity. Don’t utilize a bureaucratic, and time consuming process to accept Resume’s.
- Link your posting directly into your A.T.S., so the potential lead doesn’t have to search again once coming into your site.
- Do not copy and paste you’re job description into your online posting. It doesn’t always format properly, and your main goal should be driving talent to your community or site. You can engage them further if they get there, so focus on selling in your posting.
- Use titles and keywords candidates search for, and limit internal acronyms.
When relying on a poorly written job description or web posting, there should be no surprise less than 10% of corporate career site traffic converts into a completed application.
While most of this seems fairly basic it appears there is still a tremendous amount of opportunity - and we have a long way to go in recruiting - in Web 2.0 standards.
This is a 3 part series, focused on deploying and managing effective corporate career sites. The 3 posts will include:
- Part 1: Effective Corporate Career Sites & Measuring Results
- Part 2: Top 5 List for Deploying an Effective Online Career Center
- Part 3: Results unveiled: Integrating SEO and PPC Tools
Part 3: Results unveiled: Integrating SEO and PPC Tools
After seeing the results of the latest recruiting blog poll - with 81% of respondents stating they do not have an overall online recruiting strategy or they need help - the timing is perfect to wrap up this series. In the first two parts I highlighted several high value metrics on measuring your overall investment with an effective corporate career site, as well as 5 ideas to integrate social media into your online recruiting strategy and candidate experience.
For this post, let’s begin with some basic grounding on job board traffic over the past 3 years - as the picture tells the story.
If you’re still relying on the big boards (which can still play a role in your overall strategy), a good place to start is taking 30-50% of your annual spend and trying something different. Sounds aggressive and possibly harsh depending on your overall reliance on the big job boards, but the results are very telling. After implementing a site overhaul in addition to a 6 month pilot with SEO career site leader jobs2web and job aggregator site leader indeed, here are the results:
- Visitor to candidate conversion ratio doubled - from 9 to 18%.
- Percentage of traffic generated from search engines from 2.2% to 11.3%
- Career site ROI tripled
- Visitor time on the site skyrocketed from 3 minutes to over 8 minutes
- Site traffic and candidate contacts increased by over 300%.
While it is to early to measure overall the impact on new hire quality, several of the metrics outlined point to an increased number and more targeted audience visiting the site, a higher conversion rate, increased time on the site, search engine traffic doubling (with no change in job board referrals to the top 5 referring URL’s), and the ROI of the site tripling.
Based on the initial success of this initiative the overall online recruiting costs were cut in half, with stronger results. If you’re still not convinced, I know the names of a few job board reps that are trying to recoup lost revenues and are playing let’s make a deal.