» 2008 » November

Deloitte launched a funny new recruiting video. It’s confusing, and the message isn’t entirely clear, but it’s still funny. My take - they’re using some depreciating humor to poke fun at themselves and leveraging humor to help the video go viral.

The video has 130,000 views already on YouTube.

It ends by pointing users to a site: Born 2 Consult, which in and of itself is a somewhat funny and catchy name.

Whether you think the video makes sense or not, you can bet it will serve its purpose — attract attention, get people talking, linking, blogging, etc. And it will drive a younger generation of candidates through their Born 2 Consult recruitment micro-site.

Just a quick update on some of the press and news at Standout Jobs:

• Business Value in a SaaS Model: A Small Business Customer Case Study: We were recently featured in this case study by IDC on the benefits of using SaaS software for small and medium sized businesses. They used our customer Apption in the case study to focus on saving money, saving time and being able to do something (in this case: recruiting) more effectively than before.
• Interview with Joel Cheesman: On the day we launched our recruitment communication platform, I did an interview with HR blogging guru, Joel Cheesman. We talked about the new product, how Standout Jobs fits into the greater HR ecosystem and plans for the future.
• Interview with Bill Vick: I met Bill at ERE Expo and we sat down for a quick chat about social media recruiting, Standout Jobs, Twitter and more.
• Standout Jobs Partners with Work Communications: We’ve joined forces with Work Communications, a top UK-based recruitment ad agency to introduce our platform to the UK market.
• About.com Review: Alison Doyle wrote a brief review of Standout Jobs from the job seeker’s perspective, noting that having companies do more to represent themselves and “stand out” is of significant value to seekers trying to learn more about companies and where they might fit in.

You can track all the latest news about Standout Jobs in our Press Section.

I recently met Dharmesh Shah, co-founder of HubSpot. HubSpot is a software product, which they call an Inbound Marketing System. The premise is that marketing departments and small businesses need to make themselves more available and accessible online, which in turn will attract those people that are looking for them already (but to-date haven’t found them.) It’s about blogging, search engine optimization, leveraging social media and social networks, and measuring everything to understand what’s working, what’s not working, etc. Unlike outbound marketing (think: Google AdWords), HubSpot is about attracting people by “being out there” and being able to properly convert those people into leads.

This is exactly what HR needs to think about and start acting on immediately.

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To me, employer branding is how a company positions itself to be the employer of choice to its target audience. Standout Jobs, led by the well-known entrepreneur and social media enthusiast, Ben Yoskovitz, is a compelling new example of this concept. Companies have a lot to ponder these days, in light of the outbreak of social media. They may decide that they want to enter the conversation that is already happening online or isolate themselves, losing 100% control of their brand. The funny thing is that the success or failure of a brand relates directly to that of an employer brand.

For instance, you wouldn’t want to work for a company that has lost sales each year for the past five years, nor would you want to work for a company that couldn’t provide you with a decent salary and benefits packages. The key to success these days is to take every positive aspect of your company and shine it to the world in as many ways as possible. What’s even better is if you can discover one or two corporate brand attributes that serve as differentiators and are well received to your prospective hires.

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With the launch of our new recruitment communication platform, I want to make sure we highlight the differences, new features and enhancements versus the original product.

And one of the biggest upgrades is the ability for customers to custom design their career sites easily.

When we first launched, career sites had a standard 3-column layout. This made it easy to allow people to drag & drop widgets and features onto the career site and customize colors. But we knew it wouldn’t be enough for everyone. Some companies love the 3-column layout and style. Others wanted more flexibility to design their career sites in any way imaginable; most often with the intent of matching the design of their corporate site.

That flexibility is now possible through our CSS editor. But what’s really important is that you can still drag & drop widgets and features onto a custom designed career site. This means that you can have any career site design you want, but when it’s time to build out the site and add content, it’s as easy as ever.

Here are a couple examples of custom designed career sites:

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The most common approach to recruiting - especially for small and medium-sized businesses - is really short-term; a “shotgun strategy” whereby a company realizes it needs to fill a position and races around to do it as quickly as possible. Of course, in too many cases, they needed to hire that person a few months ago, and only pulled the triggered on tackling the problem when it became dreadfully obvious.

Companies can’t ignore short-term recruitment strategies - for example, posting on job boards with a 30-45 day window to drive job seeker attention and flow.

But a longer-term view of recruitment is going to be more effective.

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Standout Jobs expands channel partner strategy to international markets with Work Communications.

Montreal, Canada, November 10, 2008 — Standout Jobs, a leading provider of Web-based tools to power companies’ online recruiting efforts, today announced it has struck a strategic partnership with top recruitment advertising and branding firm, Work Communications (AIM: WORK), based in the UK. Standout Jobs lets companies easily create and quickly deploy interactive career sites and recruitment micro-sites using the latest Web technologies such as blogs, chat, profiles and even video to attract both active and passive talent based on skills and cultural fit. Work Communications will become a full solution reseller to clients looking for an advantage in sourcing talent online.

Standout Jobs’ Web-based recruitment communication platform allows agencies to more efficiently deploy career sites and micro-sites loaded with the Web’s latest interactive recruiting tools. Work Communications will add its unique creative vision and service to employers seeking specific, high-value talent in what has become an increasingly tight employment market. Users benefit from dynamic career portals that showcase their company’s culture and people — not just open positions — and builds recruitment pipelines by engaging candidates with Web 2.0 tools and a full suite of relationship management features. The market for career micro-sites that are job category specific or time sensitive around college recruitment is particularly popular in the UK.

“We’re thrilled to be working with Standout Jobs,” said Derek McKenzie, Head of Online Consulting, Work Communications. “We love the idea of matching our creative services and talents to Standout Jobs’ technology. We’ll be able to deploy career micro-sites much more quickly and respond to our customers’ needs with more flexibility than ever before.”

Standout Jobs’ recruitment communication platform is provided as an on-demand solution, so no IT or technical experience is required. Companies with limited resources or personnel enjoy a dedicated, interactive career site that attracts candidates from across the web in just minutes. Standout Jobs is simple to use and saves valuable cycles while presenting potential candidates with a professional look and feel to the company’s brand.

“Work Communications is a great partner,” said Benjamin Yoskovitz, co-founder and CEO, Standout Jobs. “They understand the value of our technology and how it can be used effectively to meet the growing and evolving needs of their customers. Their creative talent is incredible, and combined it’s a wonderful opportunity for both of us. We’re also very excited to be working with a partner overseas. I see a lot of growing potential in markets outside of North America, and we want to make our platform available as far and wide as possible.”

About Work Group:

Work Group (AIM: WORK) offers a range of HR Consulting Services which enable employers to win the war for talent. It focuses on providing services in “talent acquisition and talent development” which enable employers to more effectively recruit and retain key staff.

Work Group’s approach is to help employers reduce their traditional reliance on third-party recruiters such as head-hunters and recruitment firms through helping them establish and maintain a direct relationship between employer and prospective employee. It also helps employers reduce attrition costs through better people development and retention of key talent.

Work Group currently operates through three divisions; Executive Research, Employer Marketing and Recruitment Process Outsourcing and provides services from its six locations in the UK and an office in New York.

About Standout Jobs:

Founded in February 2007 by Benjamin Yoskovitz, Fred Ngo and Austin Hill, Standout Jobs provides a Web-based hosted employer branding and job marketing platform to power companies’ online recruitment efforts. At the heart of Standout Jobs is a do-it-yourself interactive career site that leverages social media tools and principles, including video, blogging and widgets, to showcase a company’s culture and team. Standout Jobs also includes candidate relationship management tools enabling HR managers to identify, interact with and track candidates effectively.

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Even in a downturn economy, companies need to remain aggressive in their recruitment strategies. It’s not enough to sit back and wait for an influx of recently-downsized people to apply willy-nilly for your job opportunities. Yes, you may see more applications, but more people in the market doesn’t automatically equate to better quality. Nor does it automatically equate to more people applying either.

Jason Buss points out that around 90% of people who visit a career site don’t apply. Of the 10% that do 50-60% abandon the application process. Those are dismal numbers. And of the 4-5% that do end up applying, what are the chances that they’re the right candidates?

Employers need to improve the odds that more of the right job seekers will apply. And they can do that by connecting more openly and effectively with them. It means doing more, putting in a bit more work, and realizing that you have to reach out and find people, engage and communicate with them, instead of sitting back and waiting. It’s about building up the right employer brand and providing a great candidate experience.

The right job seekers will reply to the right messaging. Everyone else will either self-select themselves out and abandon the process because they realize it’s a waste of their time, or they’ll continue to apply. You’ll know very quickly from someone’s application whether they’re a good fit or not; you’ve provided more information and opened the door for applicants to make more effort as well.

A downturn economy isn’t a time to sit back and wait. Employers need to think about conversion - converting the right job seekers to the right applicants (and ultimately into the right hires). A small percentage increase in the right conversion could significantly impact your time & cost to hire.

Remember: Even if you see more applicant flow, if you can’t improve the quality of those applicants by making the effort to find the right cultural fits upfront, you’re not going to be in a better position.

Kim Giglio, Director of Recruiter at MultiCare Health System presented at the recent ERE Expo about redesigning her company’s career site.

The presentation was aptly titled: From Awful to Awesome: Creating a Recruitment Website that Stands Out from the Crowd

And here’s their career site: http://www.multicarejobs.org.

And here’s the actual PowerPoint presentation:

No surprise, I’m a huge fan of her presentation. I wish I could have connected with Kim at ERE, but I didn’t get the chance. Nevertheless, here are a few things she highlights that I believe are critical:

1. Employer Brand Matters. Kim highlights the importance of developing a strong employer brand, and using dynamic content.
2. Candidate Experience. It’s about what the candidate wants and needs, not about you. Highlighting key information, segmenting it into easy-to-find areas and digestible bits, and drawing job seekers’ attention into your career site. Slide #22 does a particularly good job of explaining the difference between what employers think is important and what candidates want.
3. Your Site Has To Be Findable. Having a great career site isn’t enough - you need to make sure it’s accessible and reachable, especially through means like search engine optimization. You have to think about providing areas on your site targeted to specific job categories or job seekers (think: recruitment micro-sites).
4. Budget Does Matter. You can’t pitch corporate on a massively expensive or time consuming career website implementation. It has to be fast, inexpensive and good too.
5. Find the Budget. Kim suggests a few ways to find the budget to build a better career site including reduce spending on job ads that don’t work, show the ROI of a better career website in terms of traffic, higher quality applicants (and hires), and reduced costs in other areas.

Kim points out that it shouldn’t cost a fortune or take forever to build a great career site. I couldn’t agree more…

Bill Vick is a kick ass guy. An ex-recruiter with tons of years and success under his belt, he’s now at the cutting edge of social media, leveraging blogging, video, Twitter, etc. to evolve his reputation as a leader in the HR and recruitment space.

One of his most recent projects is XtremeRecruiting.tv where he interviews a ton of interesting and dynamic people in the HR space.

I am very lucky to be one of those people. Bill and I met at ERE Expo and did a quick video interview about Standout Jobs, HR in general and how to use social media and blogging for recruitment purposes.

Watch the interview here >>

It was great to meet Bill, connect and chat about Standout Jobs and the HR business overall. Hopefully you find the interview interesting and insightful.