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Confused about .jobs Job Boards? Join the Secret Club.


Dot Jobs

To catch up on this topic (I admit I was way behind) you will have to follow several steps.

Step 1 Read this post by John Zappe on ere.net:  Guests Invited to Hear Million Job Board Plan.  My summary: Direct Employers, a “nonprofit association of employers” has invited 29 people to a meeting which will “answer questions that have come up” about the Direct Employers plan to build “tens of thousands” of new job boards using the .jobs top domain.  The names of the 29 people are not revealed, but Zappe says they are “easily recognizable.” Included are “recruitment leaders,” “job board CEOs,” and “a few industry writers.”

Step 2 Read this other post by John Zappe on ere.net:  A “Universe” of .Jobs Job Boards is Set to Launch. Follow carefully (it’s very twisty) and continue to the end—which is a bit challenging to common logic.

Step 3 Visit the curiously cute Employ Media sales site http://goto.jobs/.  View the tutorials if you like, then click Buy Now and choose GoDaddy.  There you will see a nuts-and-bolts explanation of the .jobs “rules,” available from links in the right-hand column.

Step 4 Visit the stately Direct Employers website http://www.directemployers.org/.  Scroll down and click on “Enter the Universe.”  Oops—apparently Universe has been sucked into a black hole. [Now fixed – Ed]

Step 5 Re-read Guests Invited to Hear Million Job Board Plan.  Notice the following statement by Direct Employers Executive Director Bill Warren:  “We are not so vain that we think anyone really cares about what we are doing. However, we have had many phone calls with questions about what we are doing and how we are building out the domains.”

Those two sentences do not seem to fit together comfortably. But it gets better!  Scroll down and read the Comments section, which turns into a very subtle scrap among apparent stakeholders in the issue.

Since I am the outsidest possible outsider in terms of these proceedings, my only goal in the present post is to encourage attention.  After a few readings of the above items (plus another Zappe post on the topic, which provides valuable background), I think I’ve figured out what the flap is all about. But your guess is just as good as mine, so I won’t attempt to interpret.

However, I will hypothesize.  Suppose a not-for-profit group joined forces with a for-profit group and sort of annexed a large amount of potentially high-value territory in an area that was supposed to be controlled by a certain set of rules.  Suppose other people with interests in the area asked questions about this, but couldn’t get very good answers.  Suppose it was all awfully important to begin with, but—since everything moves so darn fast these years!—it may turn out to be somewhat irrelevant in the end.

According to the Comments exchange noted above, the  names of the invitees were not publicized as a matter of courtesy.  And it appears many of them were expected to be otherwise engaged at the time of the scheduled meeting, while Warren expects to be otherwise engaged at the time of a public forum where matters might have been clarified to a larger audience.  So it doesn’t look as if there will be an outcome to this story any time soon.  But it’s definitely worth knowing about . . .

A Closer Look at the Candidate Experience


Black Hole

“Improving the candidate experience” is a frequently used phrase.  But—who’s really doing it, and how?

I was motivated to look into this question more closely by this  comment on a recent post that discussed some psychological aspects of unemployment:  “I am currently ‘in transition’ and can tell you that the suggestions you made would go a long way in making job seekers feel as though there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

The suggestions?  Offer encouraging messages and helpful advice on the Careers website; communicate with candidates; send rejection letters—and make them nicer; give every candidate a fair shake, even if they are not “passive.”  Those steps seem like common courtesy and common sense.

So I decided to check out what the experts are saying on this topic, and what I found was very interesting.  Most presentations and posts on this topic relate to increasing social networking and improving functionality.  Generally, the advice is about technology 2.0  rather human interactions.

If you haven’t seen Improving the Candidate Experience, a 2009 presentation by consultant Elaine Oursler, catch it now on SlideShare.   It’s an excellent overview, and offers some good insights.  But only one slide (out of 28) is focused on how the candidate is actually treated. Slide 13, “Seven Ways to Build a Better Relationships Today,” includes these important points:

  • Remember the golden rule:  Treat every candidate the way THEY WANT to be treated.
  • Avoid the “black hole” syndrome:  No matter how many resumes you receive, acknowledge the receipt of a person’s resume or job application.
  • Use technology for what it does best:  Give the candidates what they want most – timely feedback. Use email for frequent, short communication.
  • Recognize that small things lead to big impressions: Be attuned to professional details.

Are companies doing these things?  Most are not avoiding the black hole syndrome, apparently.  In a recent story titled Lifting the Curtain on the Hiring Process, Wall Street Journal Online reports:  “Job hunters should expect to wait anywhere from a few days to several weeks before receiving a response to an application, if at all. A recent survey of 56 companies with at least 500 employees found that just 27% have a formal process to decline every external candidate they consider for an opening, reports CareerXroads, a human-resources consulting firm in Princeton, N.J.”

And speaking of CareerXroads, since 2002 they have been conducting an annual “Mystery Job Seeker” investigation, which regularly reveals unfortunate truths about the candidate experience. Have a look at their reports. On a more positive view, see Leslie Stevens’s 2008 article Improve the Candidate Experience, which features a nice case study on efforts at Whirlpool.

Finally—check out Kevin Wheeler’s prescription for Using Career Sites to Create a Positive Candidate Experience.  Though not focused on human interactions, the article offers some good suggestions for engaging candidates through blogs, webinars, and even contests.  Plus this idea for personalizing content:

Make the site adapt to the candidate’s needs. Build in choices so that candidates who are analytical can get data, facts, and charts while those candidates who are more verbal get similar information in text or pictures. Creating various forms of the same content is a clever and effective way of adding what seems to the candidates a personal touch to the website.

Takeaway: Technology can only go a little of the way toward making human resources more humane.  In the final analysis, it’s the attitude of the company–from top leadership right down to resume screeners–that creates a positive (or negative) candidate experience.


(Thanks to lautsu for providing the impressionistic “black hole.”)


All Jobs are Local: Divisions, Departments, Groups, and–


You are Here 2

Every year, when Fortune publishes its list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For (2010 should be along soon, by the way), a healthy percentage of the reader comments are some version of “that may be true about Company X in general, but where I work . . . “

For the most part, people employed by large corporations identify with the local office or agency where they work, the division or department they work in, the group that they work with.  And that has several implications for the corporate Careers site.

1.  Very large companies may have many separate divisions or subsidiaries, multiple global entities, and/or  numerous entry paths (new graduate,  experienced professional, hourly worker, and so on).

Q: How can the site effectively communicate across all these possibilities?

2.  Mid-sized to large companies may have dozens of locations and/or many different departments and groups.

Q. What if there are differences in culture and policies among these various entities?

3.  Employee profiles and testimonials from selected segments of the organization may not reflect other segments accurately at all.

Q: Are there issues of misrepresentation (intentionally or otherwise)?

4.  Combining a variety of entities into one site may be confusing for visitors—but splitting them up into a lot of semi-related sites may be confusing in a different way.

Q: What’s the best approach for a specific company?

5.  Different entities within the organization may have different (even radically different) visions of the Careers site–objectives, approach, style, functionality, et cetera.

Q: How can competing needs be reconciled?

6.  Unfortunate events, management problems, and other negative circumstances may afflict just one component of the company but spread bad publicity to other components.

Q: Can the employer brand be protected from the effects of localized difficulties?

Those are just some of the issues—and there are no easy answers.  However, each question is worth serious strategic consideration

Two observations:

  • Microsites can be used to present smaller employment segments more effectively and accurately.
  • It takes attentive oversight to successfully communicate one employer brand across many employment segments.

Two good examples:

Far-flung KPMG does a nice job of integrating multiple locations and career pthats.

Global Website: http://www.kpmg.com/Global/JoinUs/

U.S. Website: http://www.kpmgcareers.com/index.shtml

Multi-functional Sodexo makes great use of microsites for diversified messaging and social media for unified messaging.

http://www.sodexousa.com/usen/careers/careers.asp

One more point worth noting:

Six of the top ten qualities that contribute to job satisfaction (according to SHRM’s 2009 Employee Job Satisfaction Survey) are more concerned with the local workplace than with the company at large:

  • opportunities to use skills and abilities
  • feeling safe in the work environment
  • relationship with immediate supervisor
  • management recognition of employee job performance
  • communication between employees and senior management
  • the work itself
  • autonomy and independence


(Merci to nicholasnova for the great graphic.)

Three Views on Employment Happiness

Dilbert

In a recent Harvard Business Review post, The Problem of Forced Fun, guest contributor Grant McCracken makes an unexpected and fascinating observation:

When we commandeer the emotional lives of our employees we waste a valuable resource. Left to their own devices, employees represent a wonderful variety of attitudes, interests and activities. They are in fact a very good opportunity for the corporation to survey what is happening “out there” in the world. When we ask them to be outward facing ambassadors for the corporation, we flatten their naturally occurring variety, making it much more difficult for them to serve as inward facing ambassadors for the world.

McCracken, a research affiliate at Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT, is the author of Chief Culture Officer—in which he makes a convincing case that corporations need someone who’s focused on understanding popular culture and anticipating trends.  In the HBR post he suggests that using employees to put a happy face on the company has unexpected consequences.

Worth considering:  Employee testimonials on the Careers site may seem more authentic if they reflect diverse attitudes and orientations.

Careening to an entirely different viewpoint, we can look at the Scott Adams theory of job satisfaction, as expounded on Dilbert.com:

My theory is that your degree of job satisfaction is largely a function of who you blame for the necessarily unpleasant job you have. If you blame yourself, that’s when cognitive dissonance sets in and your brain redefines your situation as “satisfied.” To do otherwise would mean you deliberately keep yourself in a bad situation for no good reason, assuming you believe you have options. Your brain likes to rationalize your actions to seem consistent with the person you believe you are.

The post goes on to expound a circuitous method for improving employee satisfaction by convincing workers there are better jobs elsewhere.  Worth a read—and don’t skip the comments, which include some surprisingly long, serious responses.

Finally, a few facts about happy/unhappy job-holders.  According to the most recent Conference Board report on job satisfaction in the United States, only 45% of those surveyed were satisfied with their jobs . . .

“While one in 10 Americans is now unemployed, their working compatriots of all ages and incomes continue to grow increasingly unhappy,” says Lynn Franco, director of the Consumer Research Center of The Conference Board. “Through both economic boom and bust during the past two decades, our job satisfaction numbers have shown a consistent downward trend.”

Job satisfaction is also at an all-time low in the United Kingdom, according to a recent report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) report.

None of which is surprising, in light of findings from the 2009 Employee Job Satisfaction Survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).  The top five determiners of employee satisfaction:

  • job security
  • benefits
  • compensation
  • opportunities to use skills and abilities
  • feeling safe in the work environment

All those factors are in increasingly short supply, so there may not be much room for employers to improve the situation at that level.  However—the next five determiners offer a lot more room for positive action:

  • relationship with immediate supervisor
  • management recognition of employee job performance
  • communication between employees and senior management
  • the work itself
  • autonomy and independence

So . . . maybe Careers sites should focus more on communicating positive messages about the second set of desirables?

Social Networking and Client Communications

Being in the business of online content production in various platforms can be both rewarding and laborious at the same time. Depending on to whom you speak and in what context you discuss it, being online can be a huge benefit for some but a nuisance for others.

Social networking is the booming choice these days for companies who are trying to reach potential customers in various demographics and buying patterns. No doubt that any company will tell you that they want as many customers they can get. They want to attract long-term clients and build solid business relationships that they can enjoy for years to come. How do they propose to get this business? Will old marketing systems still work just as effectively?

The Importance of Networking

Social client networking is critical and necessary for effective client communications. There isn’t any way that a corporation can be effective in the online community without establishing a presence that anchors them in the business world. Customers don’t only rely on brand names or household names anymore as their sole reason for doing business. They want to know what other customers think. They want to know what others clients’ experiences have been. They want all of the information they can obtain before they make a buying decision, whether that’s to buy a widget or to make a long-term financial investment.

Communicating in Networking

Communication is important in any business. Social networking has flung the door wide open for corporations and small businesses to build their network of loyal customers. There are online communities, discussion groups, Twits and fan pages that all serve to sing the praises of any business who has chosen to work online. In order for the business to be successful in their communication efforts they can implement the methods of several ideas:

1.) Set up a social networking platform, whether that’s a blog, an online newsletter, a Facebook page or a Twitter account. Do something to establish a presence in the online world.

2.) Work and develop your online presence. It’s a great thing to have a Facebook page, but is it being put to use? Interact with other social marketers. Answer and ask questions that pertain to your niche. Become the preferred “go-to” person or corporation when someone is looking for information on your subject of specialty.

3.) Vary your social networking platforms. Don’t be narrow-minded: not everyone is on Facebook and Twitter. They just happen to be popular name brand sites that you hear everyone buzzing about. There are other sites that are just as effective and have many users in your demographic area. Find out what groups fit your company’s mission and become an active part of the community.

4.) Keep a polished presence. This counts for both your blog and website and any other forms of communication that you have established. Be as professional as possible at all times. Make sure your site and blog(s) are clean, easy to read, engaging and offer value. Make sure everything about your online presence is outstanding because your readers may visit your site only once, and first impressions are lasting impressions.

Social networking and communicating are both efforts that have to be maintained and tweaked when necessary. They can’t be set on auto-pilot and be expected to work on their own. A few dedicated minutes per day or a couple of hours per week should be sufficient to ensure that your corporate blog is getting the attention it needs and exposure for your body of work. In the long run, the dividends are invaluable and the initial investment of time and skill will have been all worth it.

The Future of Marketing Communications and Social Media

According to a new report from Gartner, companies will learn to embrace social media in the future not only for external marketing and brand-building but also for internal communications.  Earlier this month, Gartner released its five predictions for social software in 2010 and beyond.  They are:

  • By 2014, social networking services will replace email as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20% of business users.
  • By 2012, over 50% of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging, but stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than 5% penetration.
  • Through 2012, over 70% of IT-dominated social media initiatives will fail.
  • Within five years, 70% of collaboration and communications applications designed on PCs will be modeled after user experience lessons from smartphone collaboration applications.
  • Through 2015, only 25% of enterprises will routinely utilize social network analysis to improve performance and productivity.

You can get more details about the Gartner predictions in this press release.

In terms of marketing and branding, the most interesting prediction from Gartner is the first one listed above — within 4 years, social Web tools will replace email as the primary tool for communications for 20% of business users.  The shift is already happening as companies move marketing budgets from email marketing to social media initiatives.  I’m actually surprised that the 20% prediction isn’t higher.

The third prediction, that over 70% of IT-dominated social media initiatives will fail through 2012, doesn’t surprise me though.  I can’t imagine that anyone will fully figure out the perfect way to leverage the social Web from an IT, marketing, or any other discipline’s perspective within the next two years.

I also find the fourth prediction listed above to be very interesting, which states that 70% of collaboration and communications applications designed on PCs will be modeled after lessons learned from smartphone applications within five years.  The move from computers to smartphones for an incredibly wide variety of tasks is already happening so quickly since the iPhone hit the market.  The 70% prediction doesn’t surprise me at all.  I wonder how many businesses are prepared for that shift?  If it’s not already on your radar screen, it should be.

emarketer_social_networks_policiesGartner also predicts that companies will become more open to employees using both business and personal social networks for business purposes, but with that change in policy will come the need for companies to create specific guidelines for use.  According to a study by Manpower (via eMarketer), only 20% of companies worldwide had formal policies for how employees could use social networking sites in 2009 (see the chart for a breakdown by region).

It’s amazing how quickly the social Web has caused the business landscape to change, and these predictions are just a small sampling of additional changes to come as more people and businesses around the world fully embrace the tools of social networking and collaboration.

What do you think of Gartner’s predictions?