Most people look at the WOW factor when evaluating an organization’s career website, says Gerry Crispin, but that's not the point. "Say you see a site filled with impressive technological tricks. That's cool," says Crispin, "but does it work?"

The factor you really care about, he says, is the quality of candidates that the site attracts and the quality of hires that are ultimately made from those candidates.

Crispin is a founder of CareerXroads.com, a consulting practice specializing in staffing.

Career Site Is Critical

How important is your career site? Surveys of jobseekers indicate that especially for younger workers, a company’s website is where they go to see if they want to apply, Crispin says. Jobseekers want to see what employees say about working there.

Check Out Some Great Sites

In the old way of thinking, says Crispin, recruiting is a quick thing—advertise, interview, hire or not. In the new way of thinking, you may court people for some length of time, looking at an eventual hire that’s some time in the future. That requires a new approach. Consider the following examples, Crispin says.

  • At the Tennessee Valley Authority (tva.gov), they’ve basically already hired all the available electrical technicians, so their website pushes a 2-year training program.
  • Deloitte has set up a virtual team challenge, in which groups compete—and get to know the company.
  • Enterprise.com touts 50 million "reasons why our logo is green." (The company is committed to planting 50 million trees.)
  • Intuitcareers.com is set up like a reception area. You can wander around the building, entering different rooms, and so on—heavy technology similar to many fantasy games.
  • A number of sites offer job shadowing opportunities to attract potential applicants, says Crispin. Another approach is a speakers’ bureau that facilitates getting staffers out into the community to meet prospective employees, he adds. Another site shows the number of new hires who achieve leadership positions within 2 years—"That's good stuff," Crispin says.

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Go Army

Check out goarmy.com, Crispin suggests. They have really thought about what their prospective candidates are looking for, and they've also thought about the parents of the candidates.

Topics featured include:

  • What it's like being a soldier
  • Army parents
  • Straight from Iraq
  • Technology and Weapons
  • What it's like for single and married people living at an army post
  • Army games and downloads
  • Chat with a recruiter
  • Ask Sergeant Star (our virtual guide)

 

This is the site with everything, says Crispin. It's well worth a look for anyone designing a recruiting website.

Are You a Kiwi Working Overseas?

As an example of tailoring your site to your customers, Crispin points to New Zealand Air. Their site ran a box titled "Are you a Kiwi working overseas?" Since so many New Zealanders spend some time as expatriates, this headline, with a follow-up, “Want a free flight home and a job you can look forward to? Click here,” was very successful. "They knew who their target group was and they knew what would attract them," Crispin says.

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One good approach, says Crispin, is to ask candidates like the people you are looking for how they communicate, what sites they frequent, what they look for in a site. You can use that valuable information to redesign your site to make it more appealing.

Here's another tip from Crispin: Ask employees to put a widget on their personal Web pages that says, "Click here if you want to work with me." And link it to your career site.

In tomorrow's Advisor, we'll look at Crispin's tips for evaluating what candidates experience on your recruiting website, and we'll take a look at a program for managing the most basic of recruiting tasks, job descriptions.

 

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