We recently asked the visitors to the WEDDLE’s Web-site to tell us how many times per month they visit an employment site on the Internet. A total of 1,063 people participated in our survey. Here’s how they described their job board usage patterns:
What the Findings Mean
As you might expect, when someone is engaged in an active job search, they visit employment sites frequently. Over half of our respondents stopped by a job board at least twice a week, and a third visited these sites at least three times a week. If most people spend at least twenty minutes per visit (see WEDDLE’s newsletter dated August 24, 2006), then they are normally devoting more than an hour per week to searching job postings and posting their resumes at job boards.
Is that a lot? Probably not in comparison to the time at least some people spend on social networking sites. However, consider this: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that, at any point in time, about 16% of the U.S. population is actively looking for a job. Job boards are visited more than 13 times per month by more than twice that many people. And just 2% never go to a job board, while a much greater percentage of the population is unlikely ever to post a profile or look for a friend at MySpace or Friendster.
There are, of course, many different kinds of job boards. Some are general purpose sites-providing recruitment support in a wide array of career fields, industries and locations-while others focus on a specific niche of the workforce or workplace. As a consequence, all of that traffic to job boards is spread across a large constellation of sites that is also growing in size and diversity.
Bottom line: online employment sites reach deeply into the workforce on a regular basis. Sure, they attract active job seekers, but many also attract what is undoubtedly a sizeable cohort of the so-called passive job seeker population. How can you recruit these high caliber potential applicants? As a minimum, it’s important to:
Since 1996, WEDDLE’s has been surveying both job seekers and recruiters on the Web. We’ve amassed hundreds of thousands of data elements probing:
and most importantly,
To add your insights and opinions to our research, please visit the Polling Station at the WEDDLE’s Web-site.
This Issue’s Sponsor: WorkplaceDiversity.com
This issue of WEDDLE’s newsletter is brought to you through the generous support of WorkplaceDiversity.com.
Diversity is an important component of any online recruiting campaign. Achieving a diverse workplace is not merely a destination, but an ongoing process.
WorkplaceDiversity.com offers a variety of diversity job posting, resume database and branding packages to meet your online diversity recruitment needs. For more information please contact [email protected] or call us today at (973) 992 7311.
Section Two: From WEDDLE’s Archive
Peter Weddle has been writing columns for his own newsletter and for the Interactive Edition of The Wall Street Journal since 1999. The following column has been drawn from that work and updated for 2006. For a complete collection of Peter’s writing, please see our book Postcards From Space.
Brand, Brand on the Wall, What Will Attract the Best of All?
Let’s begin with a rash statement: You can’t win the War for the Best Talent with the highest quality candidates. That’s right; simply going out and recruiting the best and brightest in each career field is not likely to get the performance gains your customers-those pesky hiring managers-really want. Why not? Because only the right quality hires will actually work well in your organization. In other words, the goal of your efforts should be to find and hire the best and brightest who exactly fit both the specifications of your openings and the culture of your organization. They must not only be at the top of their field, but they must be challenged by the work that needs to be done and fit in with the team, department and company where they will do it.
While assessment enables you to make such distinctions among candidates once they have applied, it is your employment brand that ensures you have the right quality candidates to evaluate, in the first place. In other words, assessment is useful only if your organization can (1) attract the top talent who will fit in and (2) persuade them to apply. Fail at those two tasks, and assessment is a waste of your time and effort. You are simply picking the best credentialed person who likely won’t perform as required or stay around very long.
How does an employment brand accomplish those tasks? It must address the issues that matter most to the people you most want to hire. It must focus on the key motivators for the unique cohort of the workforce that is right for your organization. In essence, it must answer two questions:
Answering both of those questions is central to an effective employment brand. However, if you don’t get the second one right, working on the first is an exercise in futility.
To put it another way, recruiting and retention are inextricably linked through the operation of your employment brand. The external facing aspect of the brand is the promise your organization offers to the right talent during the recruiting process; the internal facing aspect of the brand is how well the organization delivers on that promise. In other words, how much of your employment brand message actually comes true on the shop floor and among the office cubicles? And, how much of it is hype or wishful thinking? Sure, there are other issues that impact on retention, but the alignment between what you say about your organization in your brand and what is real on-the-job and in-the-culture is the key to winning the War for the Best Talent. It sets the tone, or more precisely, becomes the lens through which all other factors (e.g., an employee’s relationship with their supervisor, a revision to the benefits program) are viewed.
This alignment is accomplished by ensuring that your employment brand has four key attributes:
Build a brand with those 4 attributes, and you’ll elicit exactly the response you want from the talent you most want to hire … AH HA.
How can you create such a brand? I suggest you use the following 4-step methodology:
Step 1: Ask the experts. Conduct a series of focus groups with the best performers in your organization in each of the career fields for which you recruit. To the greatest extent possible, these sessions should be candid, uninhibited and unconstrained. If necessary, have a third party conduct the meetings. The goal is to get highly precise answers to those two key questions I noted above: Why did your organization’s best employees decide to join the organization and what keeps them there? Capture the exact words and phrases they use as well as their caveats and reservations.
Step 2: Describe what you heard. Using the insights captured in Step 1, draft several versions of your brand message. It’s fine to use outside help in this creative effort, but the themes should be based, as closely as possible, on the key ideas expressed by the focus groups. The goal is to leverage their views into no more than two or three key employment values that will resonate with your target demographics. To do that, look for words and phrases that “have legs” (i.e., they have meaning and impact across the spectrum of high performing employees) and avoid the issues that may create dissonance (i.e., they were identified as one of their caveats or reservations).
Step 3: Test your drafts and select the best. Reconvene the focus groups and ask them to evaluate the various drafts. If possible, pick a consensus winner (i.e., one that is compelling to all). Don’t force fit a choice, however; if none of the drafts attracts general support among the group participants, repeat Step 2 and try again. Continue the creative effort until you find a message that produces an AH HA among your best and brightest in every career field for which you recruit.
Step 4: Use the message everywhere. All too often, employers go to great effort to devise an employment brand message and then use it only sporadically in their recruiting or not at all. To avoid this mistake, make your organization’s brand a mandatory component of every job posting and every classified ad. In addition, make sure that the content in the career area of your organization’s Web-site highlights the brand message. In other words, that message should determine what topics are included and which are not and how each topic is addressed on the site. Similarly, the brand should shape the content of any sites you operate for your employee referral and alumni programs as well as for employee communications and your internal mobility system (to address the internal facing aspect of the brand).
Employment brands are often misunderstood. They are not a public relations strategy or solely a communications initiative. They are, instead, an exercise in asset formation. Indeed, a powerful employment brand is as important to an organization as capital and good will, for it alone enables that organization to attract the top talent that’s right for its workforce.
Thanks for reading,
Peter
P.S. Remember what you learned in kindergarten: It’s nice to share. Don’t keep WEDDLE’s to yourself. If you like our newsletter, please tell your friends and colleagues about it. They’ll appreciate your thinking of them. And, we will too!
Section 3: News You Can Use
Management Recruiters International released the results of a survey that determined who gets the most credit in corporate America: the early bird or the night owl. It turns out that those who arrive early and put in extra hours before the workday officially begins get less recognition for their diligence than those who stay late and toil on after the workday has ended. While doing extra work at any time may help to advance your career, early birds received fewer promotions, raises and other benefits from their efforts than did the night owls. So, if you are going to put in some extra hours, do so later in the day when your contribution is more likely to get the recognition it deserves.
The book, Naked Conversations: how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers, offers a number of tips that can be useful to those of us thinking about blogging for candidates. It urges that you:
Blogging is probably not right for employers that are faint of heart-they are only effective if they are unfailingly honest and candid-but they can put a human face on an institution and help to build relationships with prospects who might otherwise never even stop and listen.
Right Management published the results of a study of the most common mistakes organizations make in managing managers and executives. The most prevalent shortcoming it found-reported by more than 40% of the responding employers-was the failure to define the specific roles that were most important to individual success and to evaluate individual performance according to those parameters. In addition, the corporate self-assessment found:
While much has been written about the need to address workers who intend to switch employers in the next 12-18 months, the same attention should be applied to a no less real corporate vulnerability among dissatisfied supervisors and managers. Make sure you keep your finger on the pulse of your leadership ranks and offer them the support, feedback and resources they need to develop and advance.
WEDDLE’s announced the topics and dates for its Fall/Winter Training Series. These training programs are widely recognized for their innovation and helpfulness. Delivered by WEDDLE’s Publisher, Peter Weddle, they will engage, entertain and educate you … all from the comfort of your own office or conference room.
The Fall/Winter topics and dates are:
A-to-Z in Best Practices for Online Recruitment Advertising
October 5, 2005
Googling, Blogging & Other Sourcing Techniques for Passive Prospects
October 19, 2006
Transforming Your Resume Database into a Candidate Gold Mine
November 2, 2006
Staffing Metrics That Count in the Corner Officer
November 16, 2006
Employment Branding-Creating the Image That Sells Top Talent
November 30, 2006
Blink Recruiting-Getting to “Yes” Fast With Passive Prospects
December 14, 2006
All programs begin at 11:00 a.m. EST, 8:00 a.m. PST and last for one hour.
WEDDLE’s training programs are an effective way to hone your use of Best Practices in recruiting AND do more with less.
Now, that’s the way to maximize your ROI!
But, wait, there’s more:
These are great learning opportunities presented by one of our industry’s most highly rated speakers. In addition, you can’t beat the price; it’s hundreds, even thousands, of dollars less than comparable programs elsewhere.
Registrations are limited, so reserve your seats right away. To sign up, please call WEDDLE’s at 317.916.9424 today.
Note: Sessions are not recorded and reservations are final and binding.
Please Support Our Sponsor: WorkplaceDiversity.com
This issue of WEDDLE’s newsletter is brought to you through the generous support of WorkplaceDiversity.com.
Diversity is an important component of any online recruiting campaign. Achieving a diverse workplace is not merely a destination, but an ongoing process.
WorkplaceDiversity.com offers a variety of diversity job posting, resume database and branding packages to meet your online diversity recruitment needs. For more information please contact [email protected] or call us today at (973) 992 7311.