By Gerry Crispin, SPHR and Mark Mehler
mmc@careerxroads.com
Since 1996 our CareerXroads Update has been a monthly public commentary on the staffing industry. As we kick off our 12th year, we’ve added a second members-only publication: “CareerXroads Colloquium Bellwether” to highlight short news items that we find of interest. If you’d like to learn more about the Bellwether and our Colloquium click here. We welcome hearing from you at 732-821-6652 or mmc@careerXroads.com with ideas and queries.
Company Website Job Posting Best Practices: Dos and Don’ts
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We’ve collected best practices related to posting jobs on corporate websites for years and noted a few in the past. Here's our current list (and we’re always looking for more).
1. DO post and delete openings early in the week if you batch them. Job
seeker activity rapidly peaks and then declines through Sunday.
2. DO use professional “writers” to tailor your job descriptions to target
groups of potential applicants. DO NOT allow generic descriptions from ATS
vendors, hiring managers, recruiters, HR generalists or your compensation
experts. Let them offer their input and acronyms- not their phrasing.
3. DO answer the following job specific questions in the body of every job
description: “Why do people want to do this job?” and “How does doing this job
help the company succeed?” In addition, repeat the corporate staffing-brand
mantra every chance you get.
4. DO clearly differentiate ALL the requirements that qualify a candidate as
being able to do the job (to be an applicant) from those preferred items that
help the applicant compete more successfully for the job.
5. DO embed links in the job descriptions- to the web page(s) of the
profiles of people doing the job; to career maps showing how people progress in
the job; to demographic data about the job (i.e. imagine you could share how
many times the position comes open); to the web-seminar registration page of a
hiring manager willing to talk about the job (or a podcast of the archived web
seminar).
6. DO offer (independent) RSS, and (company- based) agents for the
job-search results page so that job seekers can stay informed.
7. DO place the “Apply Now” button at the top AND bottom of the page.
8. DO NOT include a “Refer A Friend” button unless the process also invites
(opt-in) both the “referr-er” and the “friend” to being contacted proactively by
a recruiter or sourcer (to thank them, etc.). Having a feature that is not
monitored, analyzed, nor utilized is a poor practice, not a best practice.
What does your list look like?
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Monster Makeover Features Jobseeker Comparisons: Feedback or Firestorm
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Monster is claiming to be the “first leading career site to give job seekers an opportunity to compare themselves with other candidates who applied for the same position.” We’ll let others debate the first mover issue but according to their January 17 press release, “the Job seekers can now tell what percentage of other applicants share similar qualifications in terms of educational level and years of experience.”
While this feature is only one of several described in Monster’s press release this week, it is the one that most caught our attention and interest. We’ve been strong advocates of transparency and feedback and this move is a step in the right direction. We hope it is successful and foments better traffic, more reasonable competition among top candidates etc. and minimizes sour grapes for those who fail to get the job. It will be criticized. Everything from “been there and done that” to concerns for additional litigation will surface. I expect that it will eventually need to be tweaked in the sense that it will have to differentiate the comparisons of “must” (non- comparable) requirements to “nice to have”. We can think of several potential pitfalls but it is the pioneering we applaud. Now you’ll have to excuse us as we go off to apply to some jobs under a hatful of assumed names to test this out.
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How Candidates Really Make Choices About Your Firm: What Academics Think Ain't Necessarily So
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Every so often we do literature searches to test our (hypothetical) thoughts about what kind of Candidate Experience corporations might want to create. Obviously, we believe that only those candidate experiences that contribute to the best candidates choosing your firm seem to be the ones you would focus on.
A sample of literature search results includes titles like these: Person-Organization Fit, Job Choice Decisions, and Organizational Entry Recruitment, Job Choice, and Post-hire Consequences: A Call for New Research ; The Effects of Work Values on Job Choice Decisions Corporate Image, Recruitment Image, and Initial Job Choice Decisions; The Importance of Recruitment in Job Choice: A Different Way of Looking; Job choice: The impact of intrinsic and extrinsic factors on subsequent satisfaction and commitment; Achievement, Power and Managerial Motivation: Selecting Managerial Talent with the Job Choice Exercise.
Then of course, you begin to read the actual text of the study and read copy like: ---investigate job seekers' and new employees' subjective person-organization (P-O) fit perceptions-- -we studied 96 active job seekers across three time periods--- initial job search activity to their intended turnover from the jobs they accepted---Hypotheses- --how important are P-O fit perceptions in job choice decisions---Results indicated that job seekers'--- perceptions are predicted by the congruence between their values and their perceptions of recruiting organizations' values but not by their demographic similarity with organizational representatives---Results also suggest---.
And then read them again--and again. Eventually they might make some sense but often we wonder what the question it is that they (the academics) were trying to answer (and more importantly, who cares). Where does research all fit in to today’s staffing strategy and tactics? It is an industry challenge. We’ve plenty of pundits and analysts with co-operating and contrasting opinions. And that is all they are - opinions. If they resonate, we might call them hypotheses. We have polls and surveys and studies by pop consulting groups - but few of these meet even minimal academic standards for legitimate design, let alone the collection of data. What we really need are more serious research efforts funded by practitioner-based organizations in partnership with academic researchers to answer specific questions relevant to the Industry. It’s a worthwhile goal.
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The “High-Potential” Dilemma
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We believe an overlooked article by Peter Cappelli (Wharton Professor) in Fortune Magazine earlier last year that questioned the continued value of corporate high potential programs (e.g. hiring of large numbers of expensive MBAs) may be the most important analysis no one paid any mind to. In the Emperor-has-no-clothes tradition, Dr. Cappelli’s premise is compelling. Fast track programs for high potentials he argues were created after WWII to fill a gap in leadership but had literally outlived their purpose by the mid-1950’s -- that’s fifty years ago.
He rightfully points out that “Few companies bothered to test whether this justification for high potentials was really true, that potential for leadership was identifiable at the point of entry into the company. Did the "hi-pots" really perform better than others who were not accepted into these programs?” Dr. Cappelli also pointed out the loss to the organization of high performers who were left out of the leadership ranks because hi-pots eligible for the rapid promotion were exclusively sought.
In the end bypassing performance criteria in favor of potential for any leadership position is questionable - but frequently done.
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2007 CareerXroads Colloquium
The CareerXroads Colloquium is now in its sixth year and our calendar is set with exceptional topics and great locations. This unique networking group includes some of the country's top corporate recruiting professionals - all with a passion for critical analysis and sharing best practices. One of the unique benefits of the CareerXroads Colloquium is the involvement and quality of its members. All members are interviewed for acceptance to the group and sessions are restricted in size to keep the discussions dynamic. This is your invitation to join us - we are now accepting applications for 2007 memberships.
Where you'll find us next:
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In January you'll find us:
Full details of CareerXroads' schedule can be found here.
Good Hunting! Gerry and Mark
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Site owners, recruiters and job seekers have permission to copy and distribute or post this update in full or part with the following restrictions. a) Let us know and b). We would appreciate your providing proper credits regarding CareerXroads including our names, URL and e-mail.
Links to CareerXroads are much appreciated but we provide no reciprocal agreements with any site. We want to maintain a level of objectivity free from even perceived conflict of interest regarding our opinions. We have no direct relationship with any job board or career site.
Gerry and Mark work full time consulting, educating and discovering how talent and opportunity connect through emerging technology. If we can be of help, you know how to reach us.
CareerXroads
The Staffing Strategy Connection
By Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler
mmc@careerxroads.com - 732-821-6652