I would urge every in-house recruiter to have a go at doing this – I guess you will start your search by typing your vacancy into Google and wait to see what the results show. You may be surprised to discover that the Job Boards that you spend a lot of money on advertising with do not necessarily appear first with your job.
We recently undertook a survey of over 10,000 candidates and asked them where they search for vacancies – around 54% said it was Google.
When asked:
“Where did you apply for this vacancy?”
Around a third of applicants said that they did so via the company website.
And here is my next point – have you tried to find jobs on your own organisation’s website? For many companies, it is a trial to find current vacancies. It can be tucked away under a sub-heading at the very bottom of the page, next to terms and conditions. Not exactly easy to find.
The problem here is that many companies are sales and marketing driven and there is fierce competition to protect content on the front page of the website. However, that is a limiter when it comes to attracting people to work with you. You may have extensive recruitment needs and have a fantastic Recruitment Management System in place, but if people cannot find the jobs it is a problem.
“Yeah – but not my problem” is what you may hear from your Sales and Marketing teams? But maybe it is part of their problem too.
We found that nearly 20% of candidates told us that a positive experience of applying for a company would lead then to actually purchase more products from that company! In addition, a whopping 74% said that they would share a positive experience – the vast majority doing so via social media (Facebook, Twitter) .
So, don’t simply accept what is currently happening – check your roles for yourself, look at how easy they are to find and be prepared to present a commercial case internally for having a higher profile. It results in more sales and more positive perception of your brand in the marketplace – and that’s good for the whole business.