May 25,
1998
POINTERS FOR FINDING WORKERS VIA THE WEB
Mark Mehler, a consultant to corporations on recruiting strategies, is co-author with Gerry
Crispin, of CareerXroads, a directory of 500 job-related Web sites. He talked to Business
Week about ways small companies can use the Internet to find employees. Here are
edited excerpts of his conversation with Pamela Mendels.
Q: How can having a Web site help a small business with recruiting employees?
A: Some small businesses are banding together -- such as in daVinci Times, [the Web
site of a consortium to attract technical employees to Central New York] or SmartDog [a
similar project for the Rochester area] -- to form their own Web sites. Six, 12 companies,
and the chamber of commerce, whoever helps them. And they then have the ability, with
some limited capital, to design some very good sites where they can place their own
banners. They talk about their own jobs and get traffic because they have banded together
so people learn more about the area, the community, and learn about those companies'
jobs.
Small companies need to keep [the Web site] simple. They don't need to put on a lot of
graphics. They need to tell their story and make it easy for people to apply for jobs. They
can list their names with numbers of search engines for very little money.... There's a
small site [of an interactive design company] called Cooper.com.... They have a very
interesting site because they have [included] a little technical test on it for [applicants] to
take.
Q: To be successful at helping small businesses with recruiting, what are the essential
elements of a Web site? What does the Web site have to contain?
A: It has to have a "jobs" button on the home page prominently displayed so people know
what you are asking them to do. It then needs to have particular information about that job,
how to apply. If you have an application online, that's great. That's no problem. Ben &
Jerry's, which is really a small company, has a very simple site. It has a "jobs" button to
the left. You see a picture of Ben and Jerry with a line underneath that says "We Want
You!" It has six or seven jobs on the site, very simply placed. And it asks you to snail mail
your resume to the ice cream company....
[The site also needs] exposure. You need to register [with search engines], and little
companies can put their Internet address on their products, on the side of their trucks, on
their letterheads. They need to keep [the site] fresh by doing something that will keep
people coming back to their site. So you give a technical paper. You write about your
industry. You write about the creative things you are doing in your company. You write
about customer service. You can write about something extraordinary that an employee
did for a customer. To make people come back to your site, you need to do something
innovative.
Q: And the site has to be clean and easy to navigate and easy for the potential job
candidate to get in and out of quickly?
A: You should be able to get in and out in two to three minutes.
Q: Are there ways that Internet recruiting can help businesses that are seeking more
minority or women job candidates?
A: There are many diversity sites that are on the Internet specifically targeted to women
and minorities. If one goes to our April, 1997, update on [the] CareerXroads [site] we list
over 40 minority sites for jobs, careers, or resumes to be acquired.
Q: Can you name some of them?
A: Sure. WITI, Women in Technology International, is geared to women to break the glass
ceiling. They are particularly involved in mid-level to upper-level women's positions,
getting women more involved in higher-level opportunities.
Q: Many businesses are complaining about a lack of qualified technical and
specialized employees. How can the Internet assist companies in recruiting these
employees?
A: Well what's happening is that the technical employees belong to associations like the
IEEE (Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers), the Society of Woman Engineers,
ASQC (American Society for Quality), and others, and all of the ones that I've mentioned
have [Web sites with] the ability for employers to [seek job candidates].
If I were a small employer, I would go to my local library and ask if I could donate
something and [in exchange] put my logo up and link to the library site, because that is the
first site that comes up when the computer is turned on. And [I'd] place my logo on their
site and just say: "Mark's Company, Jobs Available" or something really simple, and
people may link back to me.
Q: Do library sites allow that?
A: They may. I'd ask. Libraries like donations. One can ask.
Q: What are practical, cheap ways that a Web-site owner can drive traffic to his site?
A: The power is in E-mail. So the Web-site owner, if they put up a technical report or
something creative that they've done, they advertise and get people to come to their site.
Then they ask those people to register, so that the owner of the site has permission to
send [them] periodic E-mail about new opportunities. The college graduate of today is the
seasoned professional of tomorrow. So I may not have an opportunity for a new college
grad today. But a year, two years or three years from now, I send him the same E-mail:
They may want to work for me. I've got their address. It's as easy to send 10,000 E-mails
as it is one. You press the same buttons.
ADDRESSES OF WEB SITES MENTIONED
http://www.davincitimes.com/ (daVinci Times)
http://www.smartdog.org/ (SmartDog)
http://www.cooper.com/ (Cooper Interactive Design)
http://www.benjerry.com/ (Ben & Jerry's Homemade Holdings, Inc.)
http://careerxroads.com/main.html (CareerXroads)
http://www.witi.com/ (Women in Technology International)
http://www.ieee.org/ (Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers) http://www.swe.org/
(Society of Women Engineers)
http://www.asq.org/ (American Society for Quality)
