Six Figures Blog

Brett Iredale in his post ‘Forget Social Media Until You Have Your Careers Site In Order’ highlights the need for businesses to get their house in order before jumping on the social media bandwagon. In his post Brett says that “Once again the facts tell us that your careers site is one of the most important recruiting tools you have” yet I am sure many of you will agree that your own careers sites are okay at best. I spend a lot of time looking at company careers sites and the unfortunate reality is that I don’t see anywhere near enough good quality career sites. Many careers sites are boring, irrelevant, hard to navigate and impossible to find the jobs or contact details. If it were not for the GFC and the shift back to it being an employers’ market, many job seekers would not persevere with applying for jobs on such poorly designed and un-inspiring career sites.

Brett says that “Job seekers rate your web site as the second most important way they would find a job with your organization.” So when they arrive, what impression do they get of your company? With all the money spent by organizations on recruitment and general marketing, one does have to wonder why so little money and effort is spent on one of the most important recruitment tools a company has.

Social media is a terrific tool when it’s used correctly by an organization to get involved in conversations and build relationships. However, it does require a dedicated team of knowledgeable and authentic people within a company to do this – people who actually have something worth saying and that people want to listen to. Next, it is important to be mindful that the most likely outcome of using social media will be more traffic to your careers site. And herein lies the problem – when they get to your careers site, what happens? Hopefully they don’t take one look at it and bounce! Unfortunately, for some this is exactly what happens; they leave very quickly, making all the social media efforts and dollars spent null and void. On the plus side, if you have a great careers site and are using social media smartly then chances are you will be able to engage with those who visit your site and they will keep coming back – hopefully one day for a job.

Let us know about those organisations that have great careers sites, be it yours or those you have stumbled upon.