Why You Should Develop Department-Specific Recruiting Content For Your Website

As the job market hopefully continues to recover, it is imperative each enterprise do all it can to attract the best talent. One of the ways this can be accomplished is through a top-notch careers page on your website.

A careers page populated with the right content shows candidates your company offers a great work environment, fantastic benefits, and above all, a fun culture that fosters innovation and advancement. Testimonials from employees, a strong list of benefits, and pictures of company events can all be very impressive to the right candidates – especially the ones you are really hoping to bring onboard before they accept a competing offer.

If you have the means to create them, videos of employees talking about your company’s culture and videos of past company events like holiday parties or company outings can help seal the deal with the best candidates. But, I bet I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, and hopefully, have already implemented.

So, how do you set your company’s career page apart if everyone already knows to include all of the items I’ve discussed above? I have a pretty simple solution, though it is going to take collaboration between H.R., Marketing and some of your other departments as well as the expenditure of some resources – both human and capital. But, in the end, I feel you will be really glad you took this extra step.

I say it’s time for businesses to stop having just a single careers page and single recruiting video that acts as a catchall for every candidate. It’s time to start developing recruiting content specific for different areas of the business. It’s time for enterprises to not only have an overview page in their careers section, but a careers page for every one of their major departments such as sales, marketing, product development, etc.

Let me explain the benefit of these specialized careers pages through an example. Your candidate is a seasoned marketing veteran and she’s decided this time around, she is going to take however long it takes to find the perfect opportunity. She goes to your site and sees the generic company video that has the CEO and the CFO talking about how great the place is and all the benefits of working there. She sees the product demo video that explains what you sell. She reads a little about the culture and a little about the executives. You feel your careers page stands out because it even has some pictures and videos from a couple of last year’s employee-focused events.

Then, she goes to your main competitor’s site and in their Careers section, she finds links to department-specific pages like Marketing Careers, Sales Careers, Developer Careers and Finance Careers. She clicks on Marketing Careers and there she finds a video of the CMO talking about the overall marketing strategy and vision, and what it is like working in their fast-paced, highly-appreciated marketing department where the CEO is still closely involved in the company’s day-to-day marketing operations. She reads testimonials from Marketing Managers, Graphic Designers and even a Marketing Coordinator, all touting the company’s innovative work and fabulous culture, and explaining how much they love working in your competitor’s marketing department.

When it comes time to accept an offer letter, which company do you think this industry-leading marketing veteran is going to choose? The company that threw up a general careers page, or the company that took the time to explain to her what it is going to be like working and thriving in their marketing department?

I know it might seem like some extra work and you might be at a point where you are trying hard to reduce costs, but the enterprises that really want to attract top talent are going to need to put forth that extra effort and expenditure when it comes to building out the careers section of their website.

Photo via Negative Space

Some Horrid Hiring Stories...

Let’s face it...good people are hard to find. It is important for us to make sure that our hiring processes are not costing us extremely talented and dedicated personnel.

Whether we conduct the interviews ourselves, or delegate that responsibility to one of our managers, I think it is important for all of us to continually monitor our hiring practices to ensure quality. Let me share with you some of the situations that I have recently heard of prospective employees enduring.

First, be sure that the person doing the hiring knows the ins and outs of the company’s policies and procedures. Imagine that you go on an interview, let the person doing the hiring know that your main focus for taking the job is not necessarily the pay rate, but the hours and the health benefits offered by the company. Later, after accepting the job, you come to find out that your training is during hours you said you would be unavailable and the health insurance benefits that you were told started in two months, actually do not start for six months.

How many times have we all been on job interviews where we were told that a decision would be made by the end of the day and that if we did not hear from the person doing the hiring by the end of that day, we could assume that we did not get the job? I had my share of interviews back in the day and folks back then got back to you right away, but what I am hearing is that now-a-days, prospective employers are telling prospective employees this, not getting back to them at the end of the day, taking a few days to consider applicants without contacting them, then calling to offer jobs two to three days later.

Naturally, a prospective employee has other interviews and in each case, the prospective employee had taken another job by the time the person who told them to assume they did not get the job without a call by the end of the day called them back. In each case, the prospective employer lost the candidate that they felt was most qualified, simply because they did not follow through.

Keep in mind that even if you have not made a decision, if you have told prospective employees to assume they did not get the job if they do not hear from you by the end of the day, you should call and let them know you are still considering the candidates. Why would they do anything other than assume they did not get the job if they have not heard from you? All we are talking about here is professional courtesy. Make the calls in your last hour at the office, or on the way home, but do not leave people hanging...that’s just rude and translates into bad business.

Lastly, though it is important to take the time necessary to consider candidates for a position, we must also consider and understand that in many cases, the candidates are interviewing with other companies so though decisions should be thorough, we must take care not to drag out the interview process too long.

For example, one prospective employee went on a job interview on August 12th and was told that the employer was interested in hiring her, but that a second interview was required. Then, there is no word from the prospective employer until two weeks later, when on August 26th, the prospective employee is asked to come in for a second interview on August 28th, a full 16 days after the first interview. Naturally, the prospective employee had already been hired by someone else, again, a loss to the employer.