More Corporate Career Sites
Satisfy Job Hunters’ Demands
By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN
February 13, 2008 9:51 a.m.
Companies are making a greater effort to cater to job seekers by improving their recruiting sites, making then easier to navigate and more robust. A new study shows a large majority — 90% — of the most visited company career sites now provide the information job seekers value greatest — plus a simple way to find it.
![[Potentialpark Top 30]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-BA516_career_20080212142208.gif)
Potentialpark Communications, a market-research firm based in Stockholm, ranked 102 corporate career portals according to the expectations of more than 1,250 college students, M.B.A.s and recent graduates. Features that respondents say they most want to find easily include detailed company and job profiles, descriptions of ideal candidates, insights into long-term career opportunities and a clearly defined application process.
While the survey was based on input from U.S. students and grads, the top three spots went to European companies. Deutsche Bank landed at No. 1 in the three-year-old study for the second year in a row, followed by ABN AMRO Holding NV in second place and UBS AG in third. Overall, employers that earned the highest marks in this year’s survey are investment-banking, engineering, professional-services and management-consulting firms, Potentialpark reports.
Companies outside the U.S. most likely fared well because they have a greater need to proactively go after potential recruits, says Torgil Lenning, co-founder and chief executive officer of Potentialpark. American students and graduates are less familiar with foreign employers, he notes. “If you’re No. 2 in a market, you have to try harder,” he says.
Regardless of location, top-ranking employers excel in satisfying job hunters’ most basic needs, plus offer distinctive features, the study concludes. What’s more, employers lacking in these areas are now at a disadvantage in drawing young job seekers.
“As someone who grew up with the Internet and started using search engines more than 10 years ago, I want to find what I’m looking for very quickly,” says Benjamin R. Burney, a second-year M.B.A. at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Business. “If it takes too long, it will bug me. It doesn’t put the company in the best light.”
More employers are tailoring their career portals to appeal to recent graduates because they’re highly active and savvy Web users, says Mr. Lenning.
HOW THE TOP 10 FARED
![[Top 10]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/it_pj-medal03082006104806.gif)
“We’re paying attention to voice of generation X and Y,” says Paul Clegg, director of global talent acquisition at Raytheon Corp., which holds the No. 26 spot in the ranking. “Their values are so different than the boomer generation, and in order to attract and retain them, we’ve got to shift gears.”
Meeting job hunters’ expectations is critical for employers. Company Web sites are the second most common source of new hires, preceded by referrals, according to a survey of 50 U.S. companies with 5,000 employees or more due out later this month from CareerXroads, a staffing-consulting firm.
According to the Potentialpark survey, one way that some employers are distinguishing their career portals is by adding interactive features, such as games, self-assessment quizzes and blogs. Last summer, Lockheed Martin Corp., at No. 8, added a real-time chat service that lets job hunters write to the defense company’s recruiters and get immediate responses. The virtual discussions focus on a variety of subjects and take place about 20 times a month for an hour each.
COMPANIES MOVE TO BOOST TRAFFIC
![[Web search]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/it_websearch09142004171604.gif)
More employers are enlisting the help of firms that specialize in search-engine optimization to draw more applicants to their sites. These firms study company’s career pages and find ways to increase their exposure on search engines like Google.com.
For example, jobs2web Inc., based in Minneapolis, now has more than 40 clients using its optimization services for their online career portals, up from six a year ago, says founder Doug Berg.
Corporate career sites tend to get little exposure on search engines because many are managed by applicant-tracking programs, says Mr. Berg. These often require users to complete registration forms to access a site’s job listings, a task search engines can’t perform. What’s more, job titles vary from company to company and are often abbreviated on corporate career sites, he adds. As a result, it’s unlikely that a job hunter who searches for a term such as “occupational therapy assistant” will be directed to a job ad with the heading “OCC THER ASST,” he explains.
Getting high rankings on search engines can be challenging for employers given the competition they face from one another as well as job sites such as CareerBuilder.com and Monster.com. According to Google, searches with the word “job” are nearly as popular as ones with “movies” and “sports” in them.
Many employers may also be able to draw traffic to their career sites by investing in pay-per-click advertising on search engines. But jobs that are most in demand could run up costs for employers using this model. By contrast, Mr. Berg says his firm charges a flat annual fee for optimization services based on the volume of job ads a company lists on its career portal.
More employers are also producing videos and podcasts on career topics, the survey shows. But unlike in the past, these are now being tailored to address specific interests and concerns among job hunters. For example, Deutsche Bank’s career site features a podcast of an employee discussing what it’s like for women to work in investment banking. Another gives insight into the role technology plays at the global company.
Microsoft Corp. recently added a comical short to its video library featuring a cowboy singing and playing guitar as he describes the job of a software-design engineer. “Our feeling it doesn’t need to be boring,” says George Meng, director of staffing marketing at Microsoft Corp., which landed at No. 10 in the Potentialpark survey. Other videos follow workers as they perform various tasks, which also give insights into the technology company’s culture. Previously, its career videos were mainly of employees talking directly into the camera about only positive subjects, says Mr. Meng. “We’ve taken a different approach to have a more honest voice so it’s not all sunshine,” he explains. “Some of the [new] videos talk about the challenges employees face.”
For companies that operate around the world, an increasingly popular recruiting strategy is to create distinct Web pages that describe career opportunities in their various offices. For instance, Intel Corp.’s Web site links to information on jobs in more than 46 countries, including the kind of culture each location offers.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the recent enhancements to corporate career sites are helping to attract larger and more qualified applicant pools. Recruiters report an increasing amount of positive feedback from job candidates during interviews. “Candidates are starting to call out our Web content as a factor in their decision to choose Microsoft,” says Mr. Meng.
To be sure, upgrading a company career site can be costly and time consuming, says Potentialpark’s Mr. Lenning. Expenses typically involve technology upgrades, legal inspection, advertising and more. Also, some popular features require regular maintenance. Blogs, for example, need to be kept fresh and engaging for job seekers, and videos depicting jobs may require changes as job functions evolve.
But given the growing importance of these sites, the investment might be worth it, says Mr. Lenning. Today’s job hunters are more Web savvy than ever and they expect employers to meet them on the same level, he explains.
Still, some corporate career sites continue to disappoint job hunters. For example, many that accept uploaded resumes do a poor job of interpreting the information, says Scott Wicke, a second-year M.B.A. at the Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University. He also recalls visiting one company site that required users to answer 50 questions on a range of topics before they could access any job postings. “It took close to an hour” to complete, he says.
Some employers also have gone overboard with enhancements to their career portals by adding too many graphics and links, notes Matt Dunn, a second-year Harvard Business School student. “Companies have become addicted to technology,” he says. “They’re making their sites even harder to navigate because of all the bells and whistles.”
