Give Your Careers Site Or Recruiting Blog Some Character

There is no getting away from the fact that most job seekers begin forming their opinion of you as an employer from the first click of their mouse on your corporate web site. As such, how your “online candidate experience” measures up has become one of the hottest topics in recruitment this year. CareerXroads just came out with their list of the top 25 careers sites, reviewing the ability to “Target, Engage, Inform and Respect the job seeker.” According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal on the same topic, the type of experience that a job seeker is looking for is one that:

1. Acknowledges them
2. Provides an easy process
3. Targets their interests or considerations
4. Protects their information
5. Provides details
6. Informs them about your company
7. Makes them feel wanted
8. Has a quick and easy application process
9. Application process is ONLINE
10. Has job listings that are easy to locate on the site

Most corporate careers sites don’t even come close to meeting these job seeker “bill of rights”. In fact, most are woefully pitiful with horrible navigation, lacking in updated information, confusing instructions regarding the ways for the candidate to connect with a recruiter that may be interested in them…etc. The result? A SAD overall candidate experience. Today I found something that might go a long way to helping all that.

Remember CareerBuilder’s Monk E-mail? Hilarious right? This fun viral campaign (one of the best CareerBuilder.com campaigns ever from a creative perspective in my opinion) was created by their agency Cramer-Krasselt along with the technology from an interactive company called oddcast. The Monkeys that you could add audio to and have them say whatever you wanted, is an example of the “talking avatar” products that oddcast develops. Their products can be delivered to any device including browsers and mobile devices, clearly enabling companies to personalize online communications.

Oddcast has ads running on Technorati for a new product that they have created called SitePal. According to oddcast, SitePal Avatar is:

…a virtual talking character that you can easily add to your Blog, Website, Flash movie, or even MySpace profile to express yourself online. SitePal avatars help you connect with your visitors (readers), impress your friends, and bring your website and blog to life, or just to be cool!

Such a component on your careers site could be used to provide job seekers with live audio information on where to quickly find jobs; give information about benefits; fun stories about working at your company; instructions on how to apply; and yes – even give job candidates information on next steps after they apply.  An annual subscription to SitePal is about 1/3 of the cost of a recruitment newspaper ad for a single sunday.

Go on over to the site and look at their examples. You have to see it to really get how this would work. You can see how sites are using SitePal to help close sales here (just translate this to say: how to use SitePal to sell candidates on your company and positions). You can even incorporate these into your recruiting blogs – see how one blogger is using a SitePal avatar here.

Adding a “SitePal” might be an interesting way to interact and connect with your site’s visitors and online job seekers.  Very Cool – very effective.

technorati tags: oddcast sitepal Careers Site Recruiting Blogs