End of the Day for Career Sites?

Thought Leader Guest Blogger

Bill Boorman
Conference disorganiser, key note speaker and social recruiting implementation consultant
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It’s come up on my radar over the last few months that a number of corporate companies and at least one branding expert (@AndsomePeople) are letting their career site and website slowly slip away, replacing it with Timeline-ified Pages on Facebook. I’ve also had a conversation with a major employer this week who is removing all other means of applying for work other than through their Facebook application built for this purpose. Their reasoning behind this is that the candidate experience when applying through Facebook is much better than any of the established means of applying.

Now that application tabs for career and jobs have become more visible because of Timeline, compared with the old page set up where they were tucked away on the side, it is reasonable to estimate that the numbers of applicants will increase. A number of the companies that I work with already get over half of their applications and hires through the channel, so we can confidently forecast that with Timeline Facebook will become the principal source of hire. It’s an exciting proposition.

Timeline also enables visitors to a page to easily scroll through the page to locate content in particular photos and video, perfect for employer branding content, as well as the opportunity to feature content that you want to stand out. This keeps your featured content at the top of the page and across the full width to get attention. The timeline shows the history of the business with milestones highlighted. With the right content, you get a real feel for the culture of the business, information that is increasingly important to recruiters.

The biggest factor however is the level of engagement that goes on with Pages. Content led Pages where employees are encouraged to post content, engage with visitors, invite friends and share help build a brand’s identity. With this dynamic, many Pages are becoming the informal talent community for hiring companies. I got feedback from recruiters at Oracle that after their Community Page had been running for a few months candidates had a much better understanding of the culture and a clear reason for wanting to join. This has inevitably led to a big improvement in the ratio of interviews to hire.

I see well run, content rich Pages forming the ever-elusive talent communities. I can understand why some businesses are beginning to look to switch from a one dimensional career site which acts mostly as a noticeboard, over to the more engaged Facebook Page environment.

What are your thoughts?

Bill

Comment by Sylvia Dahlby on April 9, 2012 at 3:18pm: new media never replaces old media, only the balance shifts - this was true at the dawn of the internet as a recruiting resource and remains true with the emergence of social media platforms

Comment by Sylvia Dahlby on April 9, 2012 at 3:30pm: ps - see interesting discussion on ERE re this topic http://community.ere.net/blogs/sittingxlegged/2006/10/the-impending...

Comment by Sylvia Dahlby on April 9, 2012 at 4:22pm: and seems that job boards still rank #6 in quality of hire http://www.ere.net/2012/04/05/our-most-effective-source-of-hire/ so I don't expect sudden death anytime soon - despite predictions to the contrary that go back more than 5 yrs

Comment by Jamie Horton on April 9, 2012 at 5:26pm: Hey Sylvia,

I definitely agree that job boards are nowhere near done, but I do think the end is in site for career sites--job listings housed within a company's own website. These sites are difficult to access unless you're expressly looking for them, whereas postings on social media sites come to a person's attention in a stream of other social info they're already receiving.

Comment by Amber on April 9, 2012 at 5:38pm: There are many different opinion, stats, and articles about where hires come from. And I haven't looked, but really would think most companies want to know where the quality hires come from. Most systems are impossible to be 100% accurate for tracking these type of stats because of human input, as well as numerous other variables.

@Jamie, I think we still get a lot of value from our job listings, especially with the aggregate sites pulling them.

(Which is another example of what I referenced above - it's very difficult to always know exactly where applicants/hires came from originally!)

Comment by Jamie Horton on April 9, 2012 at 6:01pm: @Amber, any good recruiter will absolutely have their job postings in all locations possible. Having said that, tracking can be difficult when you have jobs listed on so many different sites. However, I think it is actually easier to track from social media since there is such a wealth of information. I currently work at Work4 Labs (http://www.work4labs.com) and our app Work for Us allows you to track your ROI for each posting, see how it was shared, and even be integrated into your ATS.

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