March
2005 - Graduate career site rankings
Too many companies are missing
an important opportunity to win over the goodwill
of potential recruits among the thousands of graduates
entering the European labour market every year,
according to a new set of rankings launched this
month by a Swedish market research company.
The European Top Employer Web
Benchmark says it is the first study to rate companies
on the quality of their web-based career sections.
The rankings are based on feedback collected by
Potentialpark Communications in a study of 3,012
graduates across Europe.*
While those at the top of the
rankings are praised for the sophisticated way
they have tried to link their recruitment and
marketing propositions, too many companies, say
Potentialpark, are letting themselves down by
using stodgy or ill considered recruitment process
that undermine their reputation as an employer.
On the other hand, some employers
are stealing a march on their competitors by ensuring
that the recruitment areas of their web sites
provide feedback, useful information and a positive
experience for would be applicants.
The best career web pages, says
Torgil Lenning, senior consultant at Potentialpark
Communications, are those that have been put together
as a co-operative effort between the human resources
and corporate communications departments.
“Too often the development
of these sites falls between the HR people who
don’t think marketing is their responsibility
and those in corporate communications who know
little about HR processes. The sites that work
best are those where these two functions have
developed a close working relationship,”
says Mr Lenning.
He points to Lehman Brothers,
the investment bank, that was judged superior
to its competitors using the criteria that were
considered by graduates to be most important when
assessing the strengths of a site. These include
access and usability that can encourage job seekers
to go further with their search, information content,
the online assessment experience and the degree
to which the company attempts to build a relationship
with the applicant.
The Lehman site was admired for
its simplicity. It is certainly frank enough in
its description of typical working days for various
employees that leave potential applicants in no
doubt about the gruelling work schedule expected
of them. Such candour is expected by graduates.
As one of them appealed to recruiters: “Be
honest and specific about what you want. Don’t
be worried about scaring potential employees away.”
Heading the rankings is ABB,
the Swiss-based engineering group, that experienced
a series of scandals involving the hiding of losses
three years ago and over-generous pensions payments
to two former chief executives Percy Barnevik
and Goeran Lindhal, none of which appears to have
tainted the company’s appeal to potential
recruits.
The site offers simple links
to various international regions where applicants
can register their interest in their native language.
The ABB site is a particularly good example, says
Mr Lenning, of co-ordination between branding,
communications and human resources needs.
Some of the top sites, he says,
are exploring the concept of “recruitainment”.
This clumsy attempt at a verbal cross-breeding
of recruitment and entertainment is a way (not
my way) of describing processes that can be informative,
challenging and, just occasionally, fun.
The idea is proving popular where
companies inject games or puzzles in to their
sites as a substitution for or as an addition
to their on-line assessments. The career section
of L’Oreal, the cosmetics company, for example,
includes various games, including an international
competition for teams of undergraduates or MBA
students to develop competing cosmetic strategies
in a business simulation.
“This is a great branding
exercise for L’Oriel among students and
it also brings them in to contact with talented
individuals who may become future employees,”
says Mr Lenning.
He cautions against the use of
tortuous on-line assessment, particularly if it
fails to provide any useful feedback beyond a
rejection note. “Some of these web-based
applications can take an hour-and-a-half to complete
and can leave people with a feeling that they
have wasted their time. Word soon gets around
on a campus about the sites that are worthwhile
and those that create a negative reaction,”
he adds.
Some big brand names and big
employers are omitted from the 77 companies chosen
for the final list. Sectors such as the supermarket
and airline industries were not included, sometimes
because a company might not have an extensive
European reach or because a company did not have
a strong presence on the university milk round
or in other graduate recruitment media.
The compilers were unwilling
to disclose the names of the worst sites although
they admitted that at the bottom of the list was
France Telecom, principally because it did not
have an English language section, regarded by
Potentialpark as a vital feature of a mainstream
European cross-border recruitment offering.
The increasing importance of
cross-border recruitment was stressed last week
at the launch of Sourcing International Talent,
a new report from ESCP-EAP European School of
Management that provides listings of some of the
most significant international degree qualifications.
The report, which also includes comparative overviews
and lists the highest-ranking universities in
32 countries, is a useful pointer to the progress
that has been made towards a convergence of degree
standards promised in the Bologna Accord. The
Bologna declaration of 1999, now including 40
signatory countries, is a commitment to harmonising
higher education courses and qualifications across
Europe by 2010.
Top Employer Web Benchmark 2005 –
The Top 40 Career Websites
The top 40 career websites across Europe are presented
in the table below. The winner is ABB followed
by Bayer, Infineon, Procter & Gamble and Lehman
Brothers.
The Best-In-Class – Looking in to
the different categories
In order to understand what makes the best corporate
career websites the different categories were
looked upon in detail: Access, Content, Usability,
Relationship Management and Online Assessment.
*www.potentialpark.com
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