Over the last couple of years, I’ve enjoyed sharing my knowledge and perspective around analytics and .JOBS. While I will continue to write, some of my colleagues and peers will be joining me as contributors to The Data Robot blog. The following post was written by Katie Pfledderer, Social Media Manager at DirectEmployers.
It’s the middle of the week, and you get an email announcing a new location opening. While it’s great news for your company, you now have an extremely tight time frame to search and hire for 50 positions. Or, maybe your company was just awarded a new contract, which means over 100 vacancies that you need ”butts in seats” for training starting next week. Oh, where to begin?
You might have some luck finding candidates in your CRM or ATS, but it’s likely you’ll need to put together a recruitment marketing campaign.
Depending on the target audience and location, campaigns typically consist of online job postings, hosting a hiring event, promoting on social media, launching an employee referral program, email marketing and possibly some print or broadcast ads. Pretty straightforward, right?
What about the call-to-action on these deliverables? It’s often the case for job seekers to be directed to corporate career site to apply online. Makes sense, but have you put yourself in the job seeker’s shoes to ensure a positive candidate experience? Here are a few questions to consider:
1) Can a candidate easily find the specific positions and location you’re hiring for?
If a candidate must spend a lot of time navigating through several clicks and filters to just find the job, you risk a bad candidate experience and the possibility of that candidate dropping off.
2) What if someone wants to learn more about corporate culture or find more details about the new location? Is that information available on your website?
If you’re new to the area or recruiting in a competitive environment, adding these details can help you stand out as an employer.
3) In your recruitment marketing pieces, is your website URL short and easy to remember?
Especially in the event that your marketing campaign includes radio or television advertising, having a tedious URL will make it difficult for candidates to recall. For print, a website address that takes up the whole width of the ad can look unappealing and waste real estate
If you answered no to any of the above questions, it’s definitely worthwhile to consider investing in a microsite. They can live within or outside of your current career site, give you more flexibility in marketing your turnkey needs, get candidates directly to your open positions, and enhance the candidate experience. There are, however, some potential hurdles to consider:
Turn around time
How long will it take to get up and running? Can your internal or external resources develop and launch your website quick enough to align with your timeline to fill the open positions?
Corporate branding and web standards
Do you know your company’s corporate communication guidelines, or how to find them? What about your company’s web standards? Many organizations have specific policies in place regarding the layout, hosting and branding of any online assets. The last thing you want to do is invest a lot of time and money only to find out you have to pull down your website because it violates the rules set forth by your IT, legal or marketing departments.
Technical specifications
Do you have the knowledge needed to create a microsite and pull jobs onto it through your applicant tracking system? Would you know the right configurations needed for the site to load fast and be search engine optimized? How will you keep up with site maintenance and hosting? Do you know how to secure a domain name? Your website should also account for job seekers visiting your site from their mobile devices. These are just a few of the many components that make up a career microsite.
Budget
How much can you comfortably invest while still keep your cost per hire within reason? Another aspect of budget to consider, especially when working agencies or freelancers, is the cost of making edits or updates once the site is live. Depending on your initial agreement and scope of work, making future updates or modifications can be costly, especially if you are getting billed hourly.
Creative resources
You’ll also need to designate resources for graphic design and content. It might be as easy as putting in a request with your marketing or corporate communications department, but if internal resources are stretched thin, you might have to dip into your budget more to hire an agency or freelancer. As mentioned above, you’ll need to also be cognizant of hourly fees.
We have developed flexible solutions through .JOBS microsites to account for all these questions and hurdles. The turnaround time is very minimal. From the time we have all the needed deliverables, it typically only takes 10-15 business days to get up and running. From a technical standpoint, we have the ability to handle hosting and work with your applicant tracking system to get the correct jobs to show on the page, while having analytics and reporting on the backend. The microsites have short and memorable domains since they’re on the .JOBS top-level domain. We are also very accustomed to partnering with agencies to maintain your employer brand and repurpose brand assets. To chat more in-depth about best practices or learn more about our microsite solutions, give us a ring at 866-268-6206, or check out My.jobs to schedule a demo.
- Mobile vs. Tablet, Which is More Popular for Job Searching? - October 8, 2014
- My.jobs Microsite Branding of the Week (P66onCampus.jobs) - August 13, 2014
- My.jobs Microsite Design Guidelines – Get them to the Jobs - June 18, 2014
