I spent last week in Texas, giving a seminar on trends in recruiting
technology, and one slide in particular generated a lot of excitement:
What the job page will look like in the future.
Today, a job page typically contains a single call to action: Apply. That's great if the candidate's really ready to apply, but if they're not--too busy, not quite ready to make the jump, need more information, the boss is coming down the hall--there's nothing else for them to do.
I think that's why the View Job to Apply ratio is typically in the low single digits. But the talent wars are escalating, folks, and that's no longer enough. We've got to figure out how to change today's "look&book" to "look&hook." How do we grab that visitor's identity, get him into our network, in that very brief moment that he views the job listing?
The good news is that most of technologies that help solve this
problem are already available commercially and they're relatively
inexpensive. The bad news is that not enough people are using them.
I've built a little diagram of a Jobs2Web career site that includes
them..and incidentally is a pretty good example of what the job page of
the future should look like (below). Let's look at each of the callouts
in the gold boxes.
Add to personal home page. In two clicks, this button
permits the visitor to insert a list of future, similar jobs into his
Google, MSN or Yahoo personal home page. This is big for recruiters; as
of January 2007 there were SEVENTY MILLION personal home pages. How
would you like to capture that audience?
Subscribe to similar jobs. You've seen this for a long time; it's the classic e-mail opt-in. The modern version is clean and simple: the visitor types in an e-mail address and only similar jobs in matching locations are sent. At most, they can choose job and location filters. If only a few opt in every day that gives smaller, regional clients hundreds or thousands of deferred candidates to contact for future positions. ConstantContact, for example, offers this for only about $30/month.
Add RSS feed. Today's browsers support built-in RSS feeds and RSS readers are popular additions. Using this, similar jobs automatically reach deferred candidates. HotGigs has embedded this feature into Jobs2Web client sites; to do this on your own career site you'll need to embed a script. No programming needed and it's proven.
Feature webinar. This is a call to action to help visitors learn more about the company's work environment. The visitor clicks the box, provides information and is sent an invitation. You've just captured their identity. The webinars are easy and inexpensive to develop with products like GotoMeeting ($50/month) or GotoWebinar ($99/month). Most popular webinars have department or hiring managers talking about issues germane to the work, challenges, opportunities, i.e., anything likely to persuade a prospective candidate to submit that application.
Live recruiter chat. OK, this one generated a lot of skeptical looks when I brought it up. It seems like a heavy IT project (it isn't) and it seems to require extra staff (which might happen eventually but not at first). Live support chat is new to career sites, but becoming common on retail commerce sites and fast becoming an expected support channel. You can choose to use it lightly, where it only pops up for key jobs or categories, or assertively, where every career site visitor receives the opportunity to chat.
Live chat is a fantastic way to engage and hopefully capture the visitor. If you're interested, check out products like PHP Live ($9/month).
These are relatively simple to implement, as I promised, but they can have a big effect on building a candidate community. I know they got the Texans excited last week. It's too costly NOT to add some of these features to your job site. Choose at least one, and let me know how it goes!
Good luck-
Peter Brasket
HotGigs Inc.




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