Talent Circles

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Career sites will be windows of the marketing and sales soul



And there were those who said the internet would kill business (then with a capital “I”). Crazy, don’t you think? We certainly know better now.

I worked in Silicon Valley in the late 1990s where companies scrambled over another like ants to sugar to get a website up, any website up, in order to have a website up. Fast forward to today and we’ve learned a lot about search engine optimization (SEO), lead capture, call-to-action and the fact that according a recent The Economist article there are 4.6 billion mobile-phone subscriptions worldwide (though many people have more than one, so the world’s 6.8 billion people are not quite as well supplied as these figures suggest), and 1 billion-2 billion people use the internet.

One to two billion people use the internet. Research survey after research survey validates that the first place more and more of the growing internet user world goes in online, so it makes sense that the primary business website (and mobile-friendly website) are the eyes to the window of the marketing and sales soul.

Consumer product companies get that and B2B companies are getting it. But what is still lagging is the parallel (and the parable) of the company career sites, portals, pages, whatever you want to call them.

We treat (we can only hope) our prospects and customers like kings and queens because they’re the livelihood of our businesses. However, so are our employees and managers, because they’re the ones who make and deliver the things that are the livelihood of our businesses.

Just as we profile our customers we profile our candidates (or should be), but unlike our core buyers, we should give our future employees the opportunity to profile themselves, to create a “universal profile” that’s portable and includes a 360-view of all interests and skills and experience, housed anywhere they want – LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, other networks – to then be able to move among the online crowd whether they apply for a job or not. Yet.

Granted, talent acquisition technologies including applicant tracking systems (ATS) have been slow to adapt to the online profile – there’s still the “click here” to upload your resume. That’s changing for the better as the candidate experience improves allowing for easy integration of the online profile to the employer of choice, not to mention the benefits of a search optimized professional profile. Kind of like the way we’ve moved into the product and service marketing realm.

And that means that the company career portals will continue to evolve as the final destination – all employment brand fodder and job opportunities will lead to them like sugar trails of Web lore.

Career sites will become windows of the marketing and sales soul. Amen.

7 comments:

  1. Good understanding made with. Thanks for this helpful post.


    Marketing Careers

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  2. Good article and some interesting points. The conversation is starting for a lot of people out on various social media platforms, but ultimately the career website is the final destination, but in the majority of cases the experience doesn't continue.

    Taking a leaf from e-commerce means that relevancy and personalisation is king. The new breed of career website acts as the content hub, with APIs for the ATS, community platforms, social media etc. Content is displayed that is relevant and helps guide a visitor from information gatherer to candidate,in the same way as Amazon. Potential customer service employees want to see information about the Customer Service Team, not HR or Marketing. Don't make them hunt for it, as they won't.

    We ran a Career Website Lab at the recent TruLondon which you might be interested in. The objective being to use science to create the ideal career website. http://www.4mat.com/blog/applying-science-to-career-websites-trucareers-blog-25928162856

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  4. Good post Kevin. Is it Internet or internet? As it grows in importance and familiarity, it becomes less of a proper noun, funny, Internet to internet. Internet!

    “Career sites will become windows of the marketing,” Very Cool. You know we, @SmartRecruiters, build great free career sites. If the modern internet user finds a company they like, you better make applying an easy and enjoyable experience, before they move on to the next company.

    I’ve been reading “What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” and let me just say multiple windows are open right now.

    @Kevin, I’d be interested to know what you think of this article, “Three Career Page EEEsentials” http://www.smartrecruiters.com/static/blog/career-page-eeessentials/

    Hope All is well in SC!

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  6. Nice post, Critical things are explained in details. I appreciate it. Thanks
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