Partnering for Success: The First Impression

In the “Partnering for Success” series, we are exploring ways you can develop a top-notch recruitment strategy by partnering internally or externally with experts that can assist you in a variety of areas. In this article we will look at your website and develop strategies to make a great first impression, while gathering all the information you need from your candidates as well as organizing that information into a searchable database. Do me a favor. Go to your website and pretend you are a job seeker. Do you have job search functionality or are you scrolling to the bottom of a very long page of jobs? Are all of your jobs updated and written in such a way that would entice you to apply? Is it easy for you to apply to the jobs you like? How long is the application process? Can you just cut and paste your resume or does it insist you fill out a resume form? Hopefully you have gone onto your site before but my guess is you are too busy to make sure the site is updated-much less quality check it. I cannot stress enough the importance of a well-organized, informative, and easy-to-use website. Your website is your first impression to your candidates. What does it say about your company? If you tout a technology environment that is exciting to work in, then you better have a technologically savvy web site! If you have the time, then I suggest you partner with your internal webmaster to create a site that is user-friendly on the front end and can easily organize your results on the back end. Most of us do not have the time it takes to develop this huge project ourselves, but luckily there is a new breed of vendor who will do this for you. Some new players in the marketplace are BrassRing’s Joboo, Ideal Hire, Hire.com and Intralect’s Job Planet. While I have not been able to review all of the vendors in this field, most offer functionality I find crucial to a successful website. Here are some key reasons to consider using these kinds of services to make your job a lot easier:

Convenient Time Savers: Many of these vendors can have the career section of your site up and running within 10 days. The section would include a job search engine as well as an easy method for candidates to apply to your positions by either building a resume or cutting and pasting theirs in. These web pages have the “look and feel” of your site (they usually will have a “powered by…” logo in the corner somewhere) and can be somewhat customizable.

Information Gatherers: Most of these vendors will have the capability to add profiling questions to the site in order to gather more crucial candidate information. This is extremely important to the recruiter who needs to know whether the candidate will relocate, need sponsorship, or fit the salary specifications of the position.
Resume Storers: The focus of these services are more “front end,” but each has it’s own back end resume storage database where all of the information candidates input goes into a functional and searchable resume database. Not only do you have profile information, but also most of these resume databases will display the key profile information on your search results sheet so you don’t have to click through each resume to find out crucial information. This step alone will save you tons of time!

These are just a few reasons to look externally for this kind of functionality. These companies are the experts at creating top notch websites and have gathered feed back from many HR folks in order to create systems that work. Pricing seems to vary drastically between vendors so I would check each one out thoroughly before deciding to purchase. I suggest going with the vendors who offer subscription-type pricing and need very little up front cash. One vendor I had the pleasure of looking at more seriously was BrassRing’s Joboo. I loved that they stand behind their product by offering a free 60 day trial period so that you can evaluate the product and decide whether it fits your needs…that’s confidence! I also liked its incredibly intuitive programming feature that will break down a “cut and paste” resume into crucial fields (schooling, titles, degree etc…) This gives the system better search functionality yet still has the option for advanced Boolean queries on the back end. It allows up to 10 extra questions for profiling and can host up to 100 jobs at a time. The sites powered by Joboo were extremely fast and the subscription price (after 60 days) seemed very reasonable considering all of the functionality this system offers. Take the time consuming burden of maintaining your website off your shoulders. I recommend you check out several vendors and have listed a few that I would consider: Joboo (http://www.joboo.com/), Job Planet (http://www.intralect.com/), Hire.com (http://www.hire.com/), Ideal Hire (http://www.idealhire.com/). Author’s Note: The author is not affiliated or connected with any of the mentioned vendors, and apologizes for those vendors she may have overlooked.