Corporate Eye

...compare, compete, excel

Archives for 2009

One free ticket available…

conferenceI wrote a post a while ago announcing that we’d arranged for Corporate Eye readers to receive a 20% discount on the price of a ticket to the Rebuilding Reputation conference that Communicate Magazine are running on 22 September, in London.

That’s still true… but there’s more. We’ve been given one ticket to give away for free to one of our newsletter subscribers. So if you’ve been thinking that you’d really like to go, but that the budget wouldn’t allow it, here’s your chance.

Not yet a subscriber but would really like a chance for a free ticket? See that box in the top right? Sign up for the newsletter there, and you’ll be on the list to receive the next one. As a new subscriber, you should get a copy of the last newsletter fairly quickly – but that’s not the one.

The next newsletter, which should come out early next week is out now, available to new subscribers until next edition is out [edited by Lucy to update], is the one with instructions on how to enter this competition. It won’t be difficult, but you will need to be quick – only one ticket available.

So go ahead – sign-up! You might win a ticket, but if you don’t, you’ll still be able to get 20% off the ticket price, and I hope you’d find our newsletter interesting too.

Of course, if you’re already signed up for our newsletter, just keep your eye on your inbox – and thank you!

A Font Causes an Uproar for IKEA

Over the past few weeks, IKEA has been challenged from multiple directions over its new logo — specifically, the font change in its new logo design.  Remember the old IKEA logo that used the serif Futura font (check it out below)?


ikea logo old-400px


Now take a look at the new IKEA logo with the sans-serif Verdana font (check it out below).


ikea_logo_new


Apparently, this font change has caused an uproar with 3,000 consumers signing a position against the new logo and USA Today and the New York Times writing about it.  Is this font change really so bad?

Here are my thoughts: [Read more…] about A Font Causes an Uproar for IKEA

Boost Website Appeal with Tourism Lessons

 

la_turbie_1894_poster

According to SmartBlog on Workforce, this presentation was a hit at the recent annual conference of SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management):

10 Ways To Jazz Your Recruiting and Employee Self-Service Web Sites: Learn from Top Tourism Sites

Description: “Attract and retain top talent through your recruiting Web site and employee portal using the design concepts from the world’s top tourism sites. These sites offer rich, interactive and personalized experiences-the same keys that will boost the effectiveness of your online HR presence. Mr. Rotella will share strategic elements to enhance your Web site.”  Presenter: Joe Rotella, chief technical officer, Delphia Consulting

As of now it appears you will have to time-travel back to the June meeting in order to get the presentation in toto, and I didn’t find further information in the SmartBlog post (or on Rotella’s site) concerning the proposed parallel between recruiting sites and tourism sites.  But my fantasy of what that means is pretty simple:  Tourism sites are designed to make people want to visit [wherever].  A recruiting site should be designed to make people want to work at [wherever].

Simple, maybe.  Important?  Definitely.

The Smartblog summary included a few highlights from the presentation, selected by poster Mary Ellen Slayter.  Here are three of her descriptions–and these points would definitely help in making the corporate Career site more like “invitation to the perfect cruise” and less like “here’s some stuff about jobs at our company.”

  • Get rid of your FAQ. “It’s the junk drawer” of the Web, Rotella said. You should be incorporating that information into your regular content.
  • Know what type of content appeals to your users. And be particularly cautious about using glitzy flash applications. People usually skip them, he said. “Why do you want to pay me to build you one?”
  • Avoid using generic addresses for submitting questions or resumes. “People want to talk to people, not ‘hr@’.”

Some thoughts:

Two thumbs up for the point about email addresses!!  This is one the lowest-hanging items in the fruit basket (i.e., a cheap and easy improvement), yet an amazing number of companies overlook the opportunity.

Two more thumbs up regarding Flash.  Seriously–meaningless motion just looks like filler nowadays.  The new has worn off, and in these serious times, most visitors do not want to spend minutes watching a company romance flick (or even a company action/adventure flick).  The bigger point here:  Think about what your actual target audience would actually want to see and do on your site.  Here again, an amazing number of companies just don’t take that seemingly obvious step.

But about the FAQ . . . I can’t entirely agree.  “Don’t use it as a junk drawer” is spot-on advice.  It shouldn’t be a miscellany or an afterthought!  But that doesn’t mean the FAQ can’t serve a useful function.  FIRST, be sure that every item of needed information is included appropriately in the part of the site where it fits.  THEN, organize and summarize important information and links in an FAQ-type format that will be genuinely helpful to visitors.

Bottom line:  The problem is not the FAQ per se.  The problem is using it in a lazy way!

 

Russia’s Norilsk Nickel

I’ve written reviews of many corporate websites around the world, but none in one of the largest countries–Russia. I found a worthy site in Norilsk Nickel —

While not as refined as many corporate websites, the Home Page has useful content. Some observations–

1. Quick access to equity information

2. Internet resources links to a nice site for young people (adults might find this useful) and a corporate blog (Russian only, perhaps they will add other languages in the future)

3. Updated News

4. Corporate presentations, current available in HTML

5. Upper right navigation includes Nickel Advantages, a series of videos that are very instructive.

Next navigate to the Operations section–

The company provides summary displays of where they have a presence. This section also includes information about production and quality.

A few more noteworthy features include —

  • Norilsk displays extensive historical credit ratings
  • On the bottom of the Downloads page, which contains access to many company reports, there are two videos: a movie about the company, and one about ecology.

In sum, what Norilsk Nickel website may lack in glitz, it more than makes up for in offering useful information content.

Which Brand Will Die in Britain – Orange, T-Mobile or Both?

orange mobile phone france telecomThis week, Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom announced that they plan to merge, forming the largest mobile operator in Britain.  Currently, Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom hold the third and fourth highest market shares in Britain behind O2 and Vodafone, but the merger would streamline operations for both Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom, making the new company more efficient and effective.

Should O2 and Vodafone be worried?

The more interesting question from a branding perspective is which brand name, Orange (French Telecom) or T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom), will live and which will die after the merger.  While the tentative plan reported by the New York Times says that both brands will live for 18-months, there is no word on what will happen to them in the future.  Or will both brands die off in favor of a new brand that better reflects the new company’s position as market leader with 37% market share (beating O2’s 27% market share and Vodafone’s 25% market share)? [Read more…] about Which Brand Will Die in Britain – Orange, T-Mobile or Both?

Online Screening: Some Surprising Statistics


magnifying-glass-2

As social media plays an increasingly large role in job-hunting and recruitment, the “public persona” is bound to become more and more important.  Job seekers research the employer, so employers work to build a persuasive employer brand.  (Or at least they ought to!)

So should job-seekers build their own “brands” by crafting a search-friendly online identity?  It looks as if those who don’t may swiftly fall behind . . .

A recent CareerBuilder survey found that 45% of employers use social networking sites to screen applicants–and that’s double the number from last year’s result.  That in itself is surprising, but I was even more amazed at this figure:  35% of employers report finding content on social networking sites that caused them not to hire a candidate.   The top reason (53%) was “candidate posted provocative or inappropriate photographs or information,” followed closely by “candidate posted content about drinking or using drugs” (44%).  Criticizing former employers, co-workers or clients came in at 35%, with poor communication skills (29%), discriminatory comments (26%), lies about qualifications (24%) and sharing confidential information from past employers (20%) rounding out the mix.

On the other hand . . . only 18% of employers reported that online screening had a positive effect on their decision to hire a candidate.  In those cases, 50% of the time it was because a profile “provided a good feel for the candidate’s personality and fit with the organization,” while 19% of the time it was because other people posted good references about the candidate.  In between, were some interesting reasons in the 35% range:  “candidate was creative”; “candidate showed solid communication skills”; and “candidate was well-rounded.”

Unsurprising numbers:  The industries most likely to include online screening (via social networking sites and/or search engines) in their review process were Information Technology and Professional/Business Services.  The most frequently researched sites were Facebook (29%), LinkedIn (26%), and MySpace (21%), followed distantly by blogs and following candidates on Twitter.

Best for last:  14% of employers disregarded a candidate “because the candidate sent a message using an emoticon.”  The surprise here was not that employers found the smiley-face a turn-off, but that there were enough emoticon-includers to produce a statistical effect.   (Much as I love emoticons personally, they just can’t be used safely until you’re not only hired, but the boss of somebody.)

It will be interesting to see how these statistics change in months to come.  The CareerBuilder survey (which tapped 2,667 hiring managers and human resource professionals) found that an additional 11% of respondents plan to add social site screening to their candidate reviews.


(Thanks to Danard Vincente for the great “search” image.)