http://www.adidas-group.com/en/careers/new_site/adidasgroup/

(on the bottom, you can see links to Reebok, TaylorMade, etc.)

1. As a conceptual site–uses the full capability of what’s possible on the screen. Almost all sites are still built with the mindset of “pages” and most are moving in the direction of a “blog” template look and feel. We are using the web as open space–you can move forward, backward, side to side–the possibilities for interaction become limitless with this format. The brand can be personalized through experience versus copy, widgets and gadgets.

2. Brand Principles & Differentiation–almost all sites we have seen still try to sell candidates on HR Speak—Work-life Balance, Benefits, Training, etc. Very few are truly differentiating or applying true marketing and branding principles–the industry approach has become homogenized. The approach here is simple–keep it to one single truly differentiating factor. In our case it’s “You get to come here and shape the future of sports and work with your favorite athletes while doing this.” I can go to hundreds of career sites and I can find a lot of stuff about the benefits of working at the company–but I’m hard pressed to find the single differentiators. If we can show that this allows us to derive a disproportionate amount of the “RIGHT” talent we believe others will follow suit. Product marketing experts get this. If you were to ask Harley what their single differentiator was they would say it’s about a middle aged accountant putting on chaps and driving through his/her neighborhood feeling like a bad ass. They wouldn’t go on and on about the companies great assembly line process. That doesn’t sell bikes. Yet this is how our industry tries to sell jobs.

3. Interactively Serving Information—the industry tends to serve all information up front and with a lot of corporate jargon. Global Operations may mean something completely different in five different companies. So instead of following traditional HR/Corporate Jargon paths we use consumer logic. Figure out what things our consumers are interested in and let them follow a path that takes them to deeper degrees of information. Nobody reads anything anymore unless it’s highly relevant—so why serve it to them unless they are ready. Our site allows interaction between the job seeker and the athlete to narrow down their interests and only then serve up the deepest level of information. Of course if the consumer wants to skip all that they get this option as well. It’s about keeping it elegant and working without the consumer having to have any understanding about the internal bureaucracies and corporate talk unless they need to.

From my point of view if we can show that this concept allows us to derive a disproportionate amount of top talent then we have done our job. If that’s the case we believe others will follow. Then this disrupts—It changes how sites are built, how brand principles are applied and how we interactively serve information. This wouldn’t disrupt in the product space because great brands already get this—it should disrupt in the Corporate HR/Talent Acquisition space. Then again, it may not disrupt—but if that’s the case then we go back to the drawing board, learn from others and our mistakes and go at it again, and again, and again until we do. In the end it’s about our candidates experience more than anything else. Impossible is Nothing.

Thanks for asking the question Rob!