New survey reveals E-Recruiting do's and dontís - 06/2001

With the dotcom collapses and weakness in capital markets over the past year, investment in Internet initiatives has fallen out of favor with belt-tightening managers at many companies. For recruiters seeking to hire students at either the university or graduate levels, however, this could be a costly mistake, according to new research.

Hanrick Associates, a U.S.-based Internet services firm, revealed some surprising results from its recent two-year study, E-Recruiting: Winning the Talent War. The study focused on the Internet's role in job searches among recent graduates from university and graduate business programs across the United States. Over 80% of jobseekers, according to Hanrick's survey, check company websites before submitting their resumes. In addition, nearly 60% say that recruiting-specific material on the web influences them probably a good deal or definitely quite a bit in their subsequent choices.

These figures verify a surprising new fact: corporate websites are now the primary information source for jobseekers, outranking traditional mechanisms like friends and family, information sessions on campus, and paper-based brochures. The web's primacy holds both before initial resume submission, and before applicants' first interviews.

What we observed over the two years of our study was a steady increase in jobseekers' reliance on the web, said David Rickard, Hanrick's CEO. One thing that interested us was the consistency of that need, no matter what point in the job seeking process.

The repetitious use of company websites was underscored by the fact that 70% of jobseekers valued regularly updated content on career web sites. Hanrick's study paints a picture of jobseekers who come early, come late, and come often in search of information.

When they arrive at websites, these jobseekers are demanding about what they need to see. Company background and recent corporate news/events were the most valued items, with 89% and 85% of users, respectively, indicating that these were very important to them. Respondents rated softer information, like employee testimonials and corporate culture, of far less importance.

This focus on the proverbial steak instead of the sizzle carried through to users' feedback on web site style. Jobseekers in Hanrick's study cared about informative content most, with an overwhelming 97% regarding this as very important, while nearly 40% of respondents noted that font, logos, and multimedia were not very important. This does not imply that companies should be staid or boring in their sites - almost 90% of respondents rated a clever layout as important or very important - but it does highlight the essential truth that ease of use and thoughtful design, not fireworks and fanciness, most help jobseekers.

In addition, Hanrick's survey found that jobseekers display an unusually long attention span while on career websites. At a time when many e-commerce sites struggle to get their average user sessions over 5 minutes, over 70% of jobseekers say they typically spend more than 10 minutes on a recruiting website, and if the site is compelling, 75% note that they will spend more than 20 minutes.

In summary, companies considering how best to use their websites as recruiting tools need to remember several lessons: focus on ease of use over needlessly fancy site design, update the information frequently, and provide solid information about the company and its businesses, rather than trying all-too-obvious attempts to curry favor with fluffy PR spin. In a world where good recruits must be treated with the same respect as any business customer, savvy HR managers will find a critical edge by tailoring their sites to create a lasting, positive first impression.

Vasu Reddy and Angus Maclaurin work as analysts at Hanrick Associates' Seattle and Boston offices, respectively. Both are honors graduates of Harvard University.