This is Safe for Work, the Workopolis podcast.
Hi I'm Sal Ciolfi and today on
the podcast we're going to take a closer look at career pages - more specifically
why are these pages on your company's website important and what can you do to
get the most out of it. To help shed some light on the fine art of career pages
we're here with Sonya Matheson, Workopolis' employer branding and
recruitment services manager. Hi Sonya.
Hi, how are you?
I'm very good. So,
why don't we look a little closer at your background when it comes to career pages
and recruiting. You've been doing this for quite some time right?
Yes, I have. So, I've worked in talent communications for about 15 years now. My
first role out of school it was actually at a recruitment advertising agency and
that was back in the day where recruitment advertising was really just
placing print ads. I was there for the whole paradigm shift when we went from
placing print ads to find employees to using online predominantly for job hunting.
OK. So, why is it important for a small business to have a career page?
First of all, what is a career page? When we say that what are we talking about?
Well, a career page is a link off of your main home page that talks about working
for the organization. Normally, career pages will have information such as, you
know, available positions, reasons why you should work at the company, some of the
benefits and perks of working at that organization, and sometimes great career
pages they do some company profiles about people who are within the business
and the different jobs are available. So quite truly it's everything, ideally, that
an applicant would want to know before making the decision to apply for a position.
OK, there's so much being said now about
social media and importance of that. Are these career pages still important? Or
can a lot of this be done on the social media front?
Well I think that social media plays a big aspect but I think that a career page is very important. If
somebody invites you to a restaurant you've never been to, you Google the menu.
Right? And the same thing is when you're looking for a new position. So, if you're
considering the commitment of starting a new job with an organization, you really
want to know a little bit about them and what it's like to work for them.
So not all companies have the advantage of the notoriety of, you know, the
huge global organizations - the Walmart or McDonald's.
You know, a lot of companies are small/ medium-sized businesses under 500 people,
and you want to know a little bit about what it's like to work there. A career page
also adds a bit of credibility to a small business - many people may
not have heard about them before.
OK so you touched on a few of the
components of the career page. But what would you say are the really essential
elements? Is it about culture? Is it awards? What do you
think is really an essential component of the career page?
So I think it's very
important to talk about what you do, why you do it, and why it's important. I think
that when a company is passionate about the work that they do, it's infectious. So
realistically small/medium-sized businesses, they can't always entice
through salary so in a competitive market, it's really not reasonable to be
able to do that. So it's important to be able to tell the applicant what makes working
for your company special. And what most will find is that candidate state they
don't really make choices on who's offering the highest salaries. It's truly
a decision that's both intrinsic and extrinsic. So you know candidates still
weight all factors, which includes culture, reputation, opportunity for advancement,
before it making that decision to move.
So how can a company a small
company, let's say, what are some of the ways they can show those things you're just
talking about without telling them. You know is there way an easy way for them
to do it is it through videos? Through images? What would you suggest?
I think
that what's very important is to be quite realistic about what you're
offering. So what we actually call - and it's a term that a lot of people will,
when you start looking at employer branding and start looking at you know
working for an organization, the term that will come up is EVP which is really
the employee value proposition and what that EVP is it's pretty much your promise
when you hit the market when you're looking to attract but also to retain
employees. So, every company, they have one, whether or not it is already
defined or not. And it's not just the to-market message. It's everything. So if
we're talking about some some great ways to start to hone in on the EVP - I think
that that's what's important - you truly have to be open and honest and realistic
about what your value proposition is that you're offering for
employees. First and foremost the best way to do that is support from the top
down. You have to have executive sponsorship because your entire
organization has to live those promises that you are going to be putting out
your talent community. It's also very important when you start talking to your
talent community that it's not just the HR folks or senior managers that are
putting this together. It's important to get the feedback and the
information from all levels. If you have corporate and you know field sales it's
important to get it from all of those different divisions within the
organization to ensure that it really does ring true to what the reality of
life working in that workplace actually is. Otherwise your EVP it's really going
to be misaligned. And a lot of time when you're starting at an organization and
you think the opportunity is going to be one thing because of what you've been
promised and then 30 days in, 60 days in, et cetera, you find out that this isn't at all
what I signed up for. That's when you start getting problems with attrition
and you lose the talent that you work so hard to get and
work so hard to train. You lose it to your competitor.
It's misleading.
Absolutely. So, I think it's really important. The number one thing, I sort
of a roundabout way to say it, the number one thing is just be honest and really
realize when it's time to maybe reset some of the goals. Or if you are looking
at your competitors and you see that you're not quite stacking up to what
else is in the market, you have to be able to have an honest conversation with
yourself about it.
So that's really good advice to kind of set something in place
in terms of a culture. What would you suggest for companies that are looking
at specific ways when they're coming to write it, to kind of crystallize it down
to one simple statement. What can they do to simplify that process? You know not
everybody is a writer, and you know they don't have that background. Is there
something you suggest?
Right well I mean definitely if you have the ability to do
so there are many great organizations that can assist you to help hone in on
what that employee value promises and I think that if you have the
opportunity to work with some of these fantastic agencies, do that. But
otherwise if you're going to go it alone I don't know if I can give
you the one, you know, ace in the hole, this is definitely what
you're going to be able to do there write a fantastic EVP. But I mean truly
just look at what the core value is of the people you are working with and why
you do what you do. You know, and that's usually the first starting point: why do
we come into work every day? We can work for a hundred different organizations.
Why work for this one? And I think that once you truly get a consensus, do
some focus groups, or, you know, if they're not highly structured focus groups you
have some one-on-one conversations and you find emerging trends with those
conversations, I think the better you're launching point. And you can
safely say "alright, we have found that by speaking to ten of our top employees
that the reason they stay here is because we have great work-life balance" OK
great so let's start there and let's see what we can build on that when
we start putting together the promise.
So based on that, do you have any examples
of great company career pages out there that you've already run into?
Yeah absolutely. I mean just off the top my head
I mean Amazon does a great job. Not surprisingly right? Amazon does a great
job on a lot of things and and this is really truly no exception. So I find that
Amazon, you know it's very clean, their career pages really resemble what their
e-com looks like. So, it's about that great tie-in. They do really a
great job. Spotify is fantastic. Spotify, the majority
of their career page it is really profiles of some of the folks that are
working there now.
They have playlists.
They do and so that's very cool
because that really personifies, that brings a
personal level of that. Also Airbnb, you know, they're very visually striking. If
you take a look at the Airbnb site you know really beautifully branded. You
know there are a lot of companies that do a really great job of employer
branding. Because employer branding and the EVP, they're not the same. They work
together, but they're not the same. But if we're talking about it from
a perspective, yeah I think that those three companies are great examples
to check out.
Cool. And on the flip side of that, what are some of the
common mistakes that companies make when they're building a career page or
writing that EVP?
Yeah I think that, especially when building a career page,
lack of of information is a killer. So I've
seen many career pages where you go on and there's really not a whole heck of a
lot - it's really just a statement that says "if you want to work here send us an
email." And you're going OK, are there jobs? Are there not jobs?
Is this going to anywhere? So that's I think it is
important. But also too much information, which I know sort of seems like a
conflicting statement but you know a lot of companies they get very hung up on
the origins of where they've been, you know, "the last 200 years we have from our
founders to this to that..." you know that's very important information, but
when you only have you know 20 seconds to engage a candidate, they're going to look
on your page, you want to be able to put them in the driver's seat.
You want to give them information that they're looking for quickly without
having to wade through. They'll have lots of time to learn that if you decide to
hire them. I think that most companies first and foremost they really struggle
with helping to put the seeker into the space of actually working there. So you
know you want to put them in that job in their head and sort of make them
visualize working with the organization. And, you know, that's really what it's all about.
Would you say there are misconceptions
than about what companies do? Based on what you just said, is that something
that they get wrong often? That they, you know, they focus on one particular
thing as opposed to kind of painting that full picture?
Yes. You know, a lot of,
some companies have a great balance. They do it really really well. Some do not.
And that's okay because just because you're not doing everything
you need to do today does not mean that you can't, you know, you can't start
tomorrow working on on starting to engage some more employees. I think
what's really important to note is that in Canada, I was looking at the stats, and
in Canada 90 percent of people who are employed work in small/ medium-sized
business under 500 employees. So I think that, you know, it's a
competitive market with other small/ medium businesses. I think the
misconception is that small/medium businesses they think that they're
competing with the big guys and they're not. They're competing with businesses the
same size of what they are. So, that's why it's really important.
OK that's a
great point. so do you have any advice for the
small business owners with regards to building a career page? What
can they do to compete against those those other small businesses to really stand out in the crowd?
Well I think that first and foremost you have to get rid of the idea
of "this is the way we've always done it." So, that sounds very cliche because I think I've
been hearing that more often than not the last couple of years in my life and
"this is the way we've always done it." Oh, get rid of that phrase. But yet I still hear
it - it's kind of interesting. Um, you know you have to let your talent
community speak to you and you have to take into account really what
is important to them, you know, what - really take a look at what's
important to the new job seekers entering the market. We have to remember
that they are very savvy, they have a very high EQ, you know, very
emotionally intelligent people. And they have the ability to see through
when you're not being sincere, I think, right, so I know that this is the
generation that is coming into market now. So really I also would say use
social media liberally. You know, I was sort of joking about this the other day -
a little Instagramming never hurt anybody. If your company's
going out to Wonderland, that day or they went to the zoo, and had a fantastic time,
take those pictures, put them online, show something cool. And you can do that for
really a minimal cost that that doesn't would cost you very much to be able to
do it. I think a lot of people think it's expensive but it's not - use the tools that
are available for you to be able to do it within your budget.
Great. Well, great advice. Thank you Sonya
You're welcome.
For more on this topic, please
visit hiring.workopolis.com and click on resources for our latest eGuide,
How to attract qualified candidates with an engaging career page. You'll also find
all our latest eGuides and our blog for employers, which has a lot of advice on
recruiting, HR, and management.
Safe for Work is produced by me, Sal Ciolfi, Paige Magarrey
and Madisyn McKee. Music by the band Code Pie.
You've been listening to Safe for Work, the Workopolis podcast.
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