Corporate Values on the Corporate Website
March 25, 2009
Wouldn’t it be great in these days of gloom to find something bright, a ray of sunshine like a philosopher’s stone to bring businesses together in everlasting win-win situations?
Well, according to Business In The Community (BiTC) there is such a thing: a company’s statement of corporate values.
“A Purpose Beyond Profit”
At the beginning of the month BiTC released a briefing paper entitled “The whys and hows of corporate values”.
At its heart is a list of the benefits a company can reap from having a good, strong set of corporate values.
The actions required boil down to stakeholder engagement. Employees, customers, suppliers and clients are all much more likely to be loyal to a company which has a clear ethos and understands its position in the wider world.
The paper also has one of the best definitions of corporate values I’ve come across:
It is not a mission statement that describes what task the company aims to fulfil. Neither is it a set of commercial objectives. …. Corporate values are about what the company stands for and how its employees behave. They are about framing a role for the business that gives it a purpose beyond profit. (my emphasis) Read more
Test Question
March 24, 2009
Actually, it’s one strategic question with ten tactical sub-questions, and it was asked recently by recruiting guru Lou Adler: “Is Your Career Site Turning Off Top Candidates?” Adler breaks out his query into a scoring system for site assessment and discusses each item in some detail, so the article is well worth a read. Meantime, I’ll recap Adler’s questions here, and then add two more Qs for good measure.
I’ve put a brief explanation of each topic in parenthesis:
1. Can candidates just look, or are they forced to “buy”? (Visitors should get plenty of information without having to apply.)
2. Are jobs easy to find? (Visitors should be able to locate relevant job listings efficiently.)
3. Can your career site be found easily? (Visitors to the corporate site should be able to locate the Careers area quickly.)
4. Are your job descriptions boring or compelling? (Descriptions should “wow” a top candidate.)
5. Is the application process simple or an endurance contest? (Application should take less than five minutes.)
6. Is there a way to stay connected without applying? (Visitors should have options to submit a resume or sign up for something even if they do not apply for a job.)
7. Is there a CRM nurturing process? (Follow-up contact campaigns should be in place for “candidate relationship management.”)
8. Can your ads be found by those who are Googling for jobs or those not looking? (Jobs should appear on the first or second page of a reasonably targeted online search—and extra points if jobs appear on social media.)
9. Do you use SEO’d talent hubs for groups of similar jobs? (Adler uses the term “talent hub” in a specific way—best to read his explanation.)
10. Can your candidates find employees they know within your company? (This point is about the importance of an active employee referral program—not clear how it relates to the corporate website.)
Questions 1-6 make up a handy checklist for doing your own site review, and questions 7-10 provide food for thought about recruiting strategy in general and web presence in particular. But there are a couple of additional queries I think would make an excellent addition . . .
Adler begins the article with an assertion that “most career sites are designed to repel the best and attract the worst.” There’s definitely truth in that statement, though in most cases the effect is probably not due to design, but to lack of design. And lack of attention. So a very good question would be: Is there a dedicated resource for coordinating and maintaining the design and functionality of the Careers site? And if so—does that person have the requisite skills to do the job, and enough time to do it?
The other question I’d suggest (and I would make it the very first one) is: Can you state the mission of your Careers site? Different companies have different recruiting needs and strategies. Sometimes these are well-defined, sometimes they are not. And even if there is a definition, sometimes it is intentionally and skillfully utilized to create a “just-right” Careers site, more often it is not.
And that sets up another post. In the meantime–let me know if you think there are other questions begging to be asked!
The Bully Media Want Bloggers and Online Journalists to Go Away
March 24, 2009
Why?
Because they are cramping their style.
Google has been approached by the mainstream media to give them preference in the search engines for content-driven traffic. Here is an excerpt of the story, drafted from the Ad Age site:
Major media companies are increasingly lobbying Google to elevate their expensive professional content within the search engine’s undifferentiated slush of results.
They want first dibs, first choice and to be recognized first with top stories, news and developments, entertainment, etc. – - you name it. It seems that the mainstream media do not feel that they have enough of the pie and they want more. They want the pieces that the bloggers have too.
Bloggers and online journalists have a pretty exciting job writing on topics that are of interest to sparse sections of audiences online. They have the unique ability to act as sort of “rock stars” in the media world. Bloggers who are pretty popular even have their own groupies and people who hang on their every word, doing or trying whatever they say. Almost cult-like in a way. Right now, it’s pretty darn cool to be a blogger because your opinion, well-researched and fleshed out of course, can rank you right up there at the top of a Google search result. These rankings are giving the mainstream media a virtual headache. Why? Because they feel like since they are the “real” media source, that they should of course be first. Kind of reminds me of my kids and that whole “line-leader” business.
Of course mainstream media does have the advertising dollars and the resources to rank wherever they want, but is that good for the online user? Moreover, is it good for the media companies? Sure, it’s great for Google’s purse, but what does that for the discriminating online user who’s looking not for the most popular information, but the most accurate information? Do online users want to read “paid”, biased content or do they want good reads? What would you want?
What I find disturbing about the whole thing is the bullying that the online media (as a whole) is doing by throwing their weight around and saying that they should be more recognized than a lowly blogger. Says who?
”You should not have a system,” one content executive said, “where those who are essentially parasites off the true producers of content benefit disproportionately.”
Why, I don’t think I’m a parasite at all! I simply feel that the role of an online journalist is to further research and capitalize on the information that is already out there. Are we “taking” anything away from anyone by doing this? Does this make our work sub-par? Part of me does understand and agree with the big media folks in that there are content millhouses and lazy bloggers who will regurgitate what they’ve read and not bother to investigate or put their own spin on a story. Those types get no points with me either. But good bloggers aren’t doing this. Good bloggers are opinionated, well-read sources who offer their readers a direct light into a story without the fluff, the “paid spin” or the salesy type of material that you will read in some places.
Ariana Huffington of the famed Huffington Post runs quite a controversial blog on her site. There are many, many bloggers over there who deftly report and blog on politics, news, business and even gossip. Does that mean because the site is full of regular bloggers and not professionally paid journalists that they should not be recognized in Google’s search engine as much as a designer media’s name?
And then there’s my former colleague, Darren Rowse who I had the pleasure of working with for a while when I 
blogged for b5media. The man is a gold mine of knowledge and information when it comes to blogging and making money from it. In the online world, he is the go-to person for whatever you need to know about professional blogging. Darren started his whole blogging gig as a hobby and has built it into a leading, multi-business online venture. Since he doesn’t blog for any of the mainstream media, should his opinions on “how-to” be ignored? In addition, should he rank lower in the Google search engines for “pro-blogging”, “online entrepreneur” because he doesn’t have the backing of media dollars and resources?
There’s a place for the mainstream media and there’s a place for the blogging journalist in the online world for both parties to be a cohesive unit together. There is a way for everyone to get along and be successful in whatever venue they choose to find their way into Google. It’s called competition, and it’s doing quite well, thank you.
If the mainstream media wants to really be recognized, then they should do what it takes to be recognized. Throwing their resource weight around does nothing but make them virtual bullies. In a healthy dose of good old-fashioned competition, the search engines will pick up content that is relevant, pithy, original and unique. If that’s coming from the media folks, great. If that’s coming from the blogger journalist, great again. But the media has to understand that they can’t be greedy, they can’t have it all with resources, money and paid rankings and search results. Play fair and let the “best” content win. Readers deserve that. Message to the mainstream media: You can’t have your cake and eat it too! It’s not that type of party.
Oldies but goodies from Corporate Eye
March 23, 2009
Corporate Eye reaches a mini-milestone; this is our 500th post.
To celebrate, I’ve identified the most popular posts over the last year in each of our main areas of interest.
Curiously, these aren’t the posts that I would have expected to have received the most traffic – and, given the power of Google, the longer the posts have been on our site, the more visits they’ve received, so the newer posts may prove to be more popular in the long run – nevertheless, these posts have been your favourites …
They cover a very wide range of topics, from the need to write a brand statement, through the use of Excel to provide more information for your investors, to corporate blogging, and from accessibility to the uses of social media. The current financial climate has spurred a lot of interest in our posts on ethics and corporate governance; and corporate responsibility is an increasingly popular topic for discussion as the level of concern about responsibility rises.
We hope we’re providing posts that you find interesting and useful. If there are other topics you’d like us to cover, please let us know by commenting or by email – in the meantime, I’m sure there’ll be something in this list that you haven’t seen.
Branding
5 factors of brand positioning
Write a brand statement
The rise of comparative advertising
Word of mouth marketing
Interbrand announces the 100 best global brands for 2008
CSR
Sustainable energy: flash games lead the way
FTSE100 companies and the breadline
CSR doesn’t pay: a response
Why sustainable businesses need to fight corruption/
Banks demonstrate a casual approach to sustainability
Governance
Tata Group: a company that lives integrity
The financial crisis + recession (usually) ends in layoffs
Watch movies and learn leadership
The financial crisis and ethics
Ethics and executive compensation
Media
CEOs and managers take note: Obama knows how to get re-elected
The case of shrinking consumables
The advantages of social networking for corporate blogs
5 ways to market your company on YouTube
Proctor and Gamble realise the mommy strategy
Investor
The Investor Relations landing page
Investor Relations: objectives and measurement in 2009
Improving Investor Relations data offerings with Excel
Investor Relations branches out
Who is your Investor Relations site for?
Recruitment
Applying SWOT analysis to recruitment
Conveying corporate culture – do I want to work here?
Back to basics
What is employer branding?
Using networking to target graduates
Whole Site
Corporate websites and accessibility
On harsh truths and the corporate website
Website branding and usability
Favicons: mini branding opportunities
13 recommendations to help retail customers find your outlets
If you’d like to read more, please browse the site; to receive regular updates in your feedreader, you can choose from our range of feeds in our RSS centre.
And sign up for our newsletter (see the link at the top right); this contains additional items that haven’t been covered by one of our blog posts.
Thanks for reading!
Information, Please
March 23, 2009
In It’s not the R, it’s the I, I opened a consideration of how ROI analysis applies to online recruiting in general and social media investment in particular—and I planned to follow up with posts drilling down on these topics. This has turned out to be much more of a challenge than anticipated!
So I’m falling back on an old journalistic trick: make the story the story. And the story is . . . there is very little information or analysis to use in discussing these aspects of recruiting expenditure. Although there are many software products, consulting companies, pundits, and industry associations that refer on their websites and in their literature to metrics (aka “analytics”), online recruiting, electronic recruiting, and so on, their commentaries and presentations seem to be long on rhetoric and short on facts.
I did not find any up-to-date, in-depth case studies or white papers. Maybe they are out there (and please share any knowledge you have!), but I couldn’t find them—and not only could I find no free information, I couldn’t even find anyone selling expensive reports that seem to promise illumination. This is true for HR and recruiting in general, not just the online aspects, as confirmed by experts:
Noted HR commentator Dr. John Sullivan starts off an ere.net post on Talent Management Analytics with the sentence “the subject of analytics is often discussed but rarely executed well, even in the most well-established talent management functions.” He continues with a long discussion about why this practice lags (short version: it’s too hard) and how new techniques like predictive modeling and text analytics will be revolutionary—except that “unfortunately, leveraging new and emerging tools often requires that users step out of their comfort zone.” So it seems we will have to stay tuned a while on those developments.
Ray Schreyer (Program Manager of Interactive Recruiting Channels for IBM and co-author of The Employer’s Guide to Recruiting on the Internet) observes on his Corporate Recruiting Blog that the “big three” job boards experienced a 35% drop in traffic during 2008, explaining that “2009 looks to be the year of Job Aggregators and Job Distribution Networks. The Job Board destination model is near dead, and seems only perpetuated by HR Recruiting folks who are lacking metrics and an ‘in the tank’ Wall Street crowd who does not understand the dynamics of the online recruiting marketplace. More to come in the weeks ahead.” But (again) unfortunately, twelve of the weeks ahead are now in the past, and there’s no further word from Schreyer.
In their Hiring and Recruiting Challenges Survey 2008, well-known consulting firm The Adler Group included a section on how recruiters and recruiting managers rank their use of specific recruiting metrics. An article by Bryan Johanson explains the findings, and notes among key conclusions: “Even with all the talk and focus on metrics over the last few years, recruiting departments and recruiters still struggle to implement real-time metrics.” (Though the survey information dates to 20007, it’s worth browsing Lou Adler’s summary of the findings.)
Of course the connection between internet recruiting in general and the Careers website specifically is another topic—one which also is noted by many as (a) very important and (b) not given sufficient attention. I’ll turn to that in the next post, and in the meantime, will keep looking for hard data to support the discussion.
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