Dear HR Executive:
Here's our SHRM Day 3 report from Dave Clemens, Editor-in-Chief of B21's newsletter Human Resources 21.
Stephen Meyer
B21 Publisher
Report from SHRM Report -- Day 3
LAS VEGAS, June 26, 2007 -- I had planned another multi-themed post today, but when I sat down to write, one presentation by Gerry Crispin of CareerXRoads stood out.
His talk -- "Improve Your Online Candidate Experience and Win Quality Hires" -- dealt with companies' own websites, specifically their staffing or recruiting pages. So if you're interested only in recruiting through job boards or other third-party providers, you needn't read on.
The candidate as consumer
The power of Crispin's thought is two-fold: First, it's based on exhaustive examination and data collection on best and worst practices among companies, both cutting edge and not so. Second, it considers the job seeker as a multifaceted human being, not simply somebody looking for work. Specifically, he points out, that person who's starting to poke around your website thinking she might be interested in working for you, is probably also a consumer who has some experience buying or receiving customer service online. And as a consumer, she's probably gotten used to some pretty exceptional service.
Crispin gave the example of his business partner, who, having sent in a $3 rebate coupon for a bag of lawn fertilizer, was astounded to get a series of e-mails from a CSR at the lawn care company walking him through all the stages of his $3 check's passage through the corporate "digestive system." The partner first got an e-mail introducing the CSR -- Jerry -- then another e-mail when the coupon was processed, another when the check was cut, another when it was mailed, and a final one asking whether it had arrived.
So what's Crispin's point? If this same person then went to your website to apply for a job, and never got any acknowledgment of his application, or got only a form acknowledgement, HE MIGHT BE DISAPPOINTED!
And if he were disappointed, recent data suggests, he'd probably tell at least three other people -- maybe also potential recruits for you -- about his bad experience. You have enough trouble recruiting qualified people to not want to create more.
4 aspects of a top-class site
Crispin says building a top-class recruiting/staffing site or page means doing four things well. They are:
- Target. The potential applicant needs to see evidence that you are looking specifically for him or her. What's this evidence? A couple of examples (these are from big companies but there's no reason a smaller company couldn't follow):
Schneider National, the big trucking line, features pictures of couples on its driver recruitment page. And they take pains to make sure one of the couples is an older man and woman. No surprise: Many of Schneider's drivers, by the company's choice, are retired couples driving together. McGraw Hill has an "en español" button on its main staffing page. And Micron Technology flies an American flag atop the phrase "transitioning from the military." So-so websites, by contrast, don't make clear whether you're likely to be the kind of person they want, or not.
- Engage. Key to this point is telling your potential applicants why people join your company and why they stay. Crispin noted that of the Fortune 500 companies, 55% have no such statement on their websites, while another 16% have only a clichéd statement like, "because we're the best at what we do." Only 24% of these websites contain a specific statement or statements on why people sign up and then stay. A great technique for conveying this message is a series of profiles of employees explaining why they joined and still enjoy being there. These can use either still photography or video, if you want to make it fancy.
- Inform. Here you need to provide data and other hard facts to support the claims you've put forward at the engagement stage, Crispin says. If you don't, you risk having big retention problems farther down the line. You may want to provide information on awards and recognition won by your company, career progression of people like the person you're wooing, the company's social responsibility commitment, employee testimonials, mission statement, diversity statistics, benefits and FAQs. (Crispin cautions that these should be real FAQs asked by previous applicants, not questions you make up.)
Some companies have gone much farther, providing such experiences as job-shadowing streaming videos where potential applicants actually watch somebody doing the job they're interested in, and virtual simulations of situations someone in the job might encounter -- like an unfriendly person getting ready to slam the door on a salesperson. With any or all of these elements, you're answering the candidate's question, "How do I know I want to work here?" Crispin says people want a job description they can understand, to glean realistic expectations about day-to-day activities, and to know what rewards they can expect if they succeed.
- Respect. This entails six actions by the company, Crispin says:
- Acknowledging all actions the potential candidate or applicant takes.
- Telling them what comes next.
- Promising to protect the privacy of their data.
- Offering them updates on their status.
- Telling them if the company plans to screen them.
- Telling them what it takes to complete the application process, immediately or later.
A final point
It doesn't hurt if potential candidates can click through very quickly to the page they want, from the page where they originally landed -- usually your main corporate page.
Crispin says that of the Fortune 500 companies, only 2 percent have websites that allow people to arrive at a specific job description within 1-2 clicks. Another 16% needed three clicks, while 39% required four clicks and 24% five clicks. The rest either had no staffing page, published only generic job descriptions with no specific openings, or required applicants to use six or more clicks.
This "click factor" is one reason why SHRM is pushing the new .jobs domain category that it helped create. SHRM says more than 1,000 companies nationwide have adopted the .jobs category in an effort to make it easier for applicants to find staffing pages without clicking here, there and everywhere on an employer's other pages.
RISK-FREE TRIAL -- ONLINE TRAINING LIBRARY FOR HR AND MANAGERS: Want to learn about an amazingly effective and affordable way to train yourself, your HR staff and your managers and supervisors? Sign up for a risk-free trial to the HR Cafe Training Center Online. It's a powerful resource that allows HR executives to deploy high-impact training modules effortlessly throughout their organizations. Want to see what it's about before you sign up for a trial? Check out just one program from the huge library of content in the HR Cafe. It's a six-minute "Quick Take" training module called "Why 95% of Training Doesn't Stick."