As everyone knows, Cinderella worked hard while the stepsisters just lounged around. But her industry was not appreciated! At best she was ignored, at worst ill-treated . . .
Sometimes it seems as if the corporate Careers site needs a fairy godparent. In many cases Careers is the hardest working part of the company website, since it not only promotes the employer brand and woos prospective employees, but also provides job-search functionality, gathers online applications, and may even carry out testing and pre-screening. Yet the Careers site often receives very little attention or appreciation within a company, and even less from the HR establishment at large.
So it’s nice that the annual ERE.net competition includes a dedicated award for the “best” Corporate Careers Website, and also considers the Careers site in the Employer Branding and Best Function categories. Analysis of this year’s winners and finalists is in four parts—start here and follow the links on the right of the ERE.net screen. But you’ll have to go back to Part 1 every time, as the links only appear on that page . . .
Also on ERE.net, another excellent checklist from John Sullivan, this one on authenticity in recruitment messaging. Many of his points relate to the Careers site, so the article is well worth a read. But you’ll have to wait (or hunt) for the Part 2 that’s promised by the title “Part 1”! At least I couldn’t find the second installment . . .
If you noticed a theme developing in those last two paragraphs, right again. Although the ERE.net website is home to a lot of good material, it’s not a great exemplar of online organization and user-friendliness. Seems like another case in which a hard-working website doesn’t receive the attention it deserves!
Finally, there’s the question of what happens after Cinderella leaves the ball. Suppose that every corporate Careers site on earth were magically transformed to perfection, today. What next?
One hopes that Cindy herself lived happily ever after—but that will not, cannot, should not be the fate of any website. Technology moves on, really fast. For example: Intuit, which created an extensive and expensive all-Flash Careers site last year, may already be regretting that it didn’t choose a more mobile-friendly development approach. (And the site is also quite slow, at least on my desktop.)
HR guru Kevin Wheeler writes that our current model of corporate recruiting is doomed, as companies progressively outsource non-core functions. So what does that mean for the Cinderella website? Stay tuned.
(That’s Cinderella rethinking her career plan in an 1865 version of the story by the Brothers Dalzell.)
Cynthia Giles has followed a serpentine career path from academia to publishing to marketing and design to information technology and corporate communications. There’s plenty of detail about this journey at www.cynthiagiles.com, but briefly--the common theme has been ideas, and how to present them effectively. Along the way, she became an accidental expert on data warehousing and business intelligence, and for the past ten years she has combined corporate contracting with an independent consulting practice that focuses on marketing strategy for smaller businesses and non-profits.
Having spent quite a bit of time looking for work, and anywhere from two weeks to two years inside a wide variety of American companies—she has given much thought to what works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to creating a great employment fit.