What’s the best approach for online recruiting—outside websites or your own career site? We turn to HR Hero’s Technology for HR guidebook for tips on achieving online success.
Recruiting on the Internet
It is not an overstatement to say that the internet has totally revolutionized how people find jobs. If you are not currently using the Internet as a part of your recruiting strategy, you are likely losing out
First, you’re missing a lot of good candidates who don’t respond to traditional recruiting methods. In addition, since many companies are turning their attention and recruitment advertising dollars away from traditional media like newspaper classified sections, those media continue to shrink in both size and importance in the mind of job seekers.
When you are looking for your next team member, there are four external channels to consider:
Job Aggregators
These are the “big boys” that have millions of applicant profiles and visitors, and can even buy advertising during the Super Bowl. Indeed, to attract all of those résumés and eyeballs, these firms (CareerBuilder, Monster, Yahoo Hot Jobs) have to charge fees to fuel their marketing efforts. These fees ($300+ to post a single job) are not unsubstantial for some employers, especially those with access to relatively low priced effective traditional classified advertising.
Importantly, these fees drop with the number of jobs you post—so spreading around your job postings would be counterproductive in this instance.
The biggest downside with the aggregator sites, aside from their fees, is the enormous number of resumes produced by posting on them. Anybody and everybody can and does view your posting; and many of them will decide they would be “perfect” for the job even though they live 2,000 miles away and possess no relevant skills.
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Paid Specialty Sites
These sites attempt to solve the problem of unlimited response by segmenting the market. Some sites target geographical areas (e.g., CareersinHouston.com), while others focus on specific industries or specialties (e.g., Dice.com for high-tech jobs).
Free Specialty Sites
These sites are typically run by government agencies, universities, charities, and other nonprofit organizations. Other sites are “loss leaders,” used to attract applicant eyeballs for advertising another product or service.
Database Sites
At this point, the originator of the database concept is also its overwhelming prime example—Craigslist.com. In markets where it is entrenched, like San Francisco, it has had a withering impact on daily newspapers.
Better idea—Your Own Website
Then other side of the coin is your own career site. When designing your site, bear in mind that you have literally seconds to explain why a person should work for you. Some tips:
- Keep your design clean and simple. Experts suggest that users shy away from sites with bad design. But bad can mean too elaborate—”cutting edge” may just confuse and alienate potential job seekers.
- Sell your company. Online job seekers want to learn quickly and easily what your company offers and why they should work there. One expert, Peter Weddle suggests answering these questions:
- What would they get to do?
- What would they get to learn?
- What would they get to achieve?
- Whom would they get to work with?
- Make the job lists interesting. Add a personal touch with testimonials from employees, pictures of work spaces, video tour of the company, and perhaps links to company intranet pages.
- Stay in compliance. Be careful not to include any discriminatory language in your job postings. And watch out for the definition of “applicant.” You don’t want everyone who visits to become an applicant that has to be tracked for EEO purposes. Applicants who indicate a specific interest in a specific job listing may be “applicants,” however, those who just submit a résumé usually are not.
- Stay honest. Honesty is the best policy. It may be tempting to oversell your company, but that’s going to backfire, especially as current employees see it, or new hires find out the truth.
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What About Hiring Part-Timers on the Internet?
When you have a particular assignment but don’t have the staff to accomplish it, and it’s not enough to justify hiring a new employee, consider Web employment services focused on contingent workers. For example, Elance.com is a job auction website. Steps in using Elance include:
- Providers set up a profile and create a portfolio to showcase their skills and services, including samples of past work, credentials, and certified skills.
- Employers post jobs, listing the skills required, timelines, requirements, budget range, etc.
- Providers respond to companies by offering their services in the form of proposals.
- Companies evaluate proposals, and interview candidates typically using chat, instant messaging, or telephone and award the job
- Companies put money into an “Elance escrow” account
- Work is accomplished and interaction takes place at an online shared workspace for employers and providers called the “Elance Remote Work System.”
- When work is done, Elance collects four to six percent of the fees (and also charges membership fees to providers.)
In tomorrow’s Advisor, recruiting and social media plus some good news—your job descriptions are written and ready to go.