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Careers

Surfing the Boards: Thought-provoking Hilarity


surfboards-1

In a new occasional series, I’ll be browsing the emerging generation of job search sites to see what kind of  career information seekers are finding these days.  And my first outing is to CareerCast (“Your job search portal”), which has a component called JobsRated.com.  Using a variety of criteria, they have come up with A Comprehensive Ranking of 200 Different Jobs.  Each job type (such as “Software Engineer” or “Roofer”) is explained briefly, and then you can click on a button to see related job listings.

According to their methodology page, the JobsRated evaluations are based on five aspects:  Environment, Income, Outlook, Stress and Physical Demands.  Several are broken out into multiple factors.  Stress, for example, is divided up into 21 factors, and each factor has its own rating scale, ranging from 0-5 through 0-15.  Among the stress factors are two I don’t ordinarily think of in association with jobs, which I now realize is a failure of imagination on my part.  They are:  “Own life at risk (0-8)” and “Life of another at risk (0-10).”

“Competitiveness” has a scale of 0-15, while items such as “Lifting,” “Confinement,” and “Quotas” have a range of 0-5.  Which is confusing at first–and actually remains confusing.  As explained by JobsRated, relative placement of the factor on its scale is based on the amount of X that would typically be present in the job.  So firefighters get a maximum number of points on the “life at risk” factors, whereas accountants get a minimum number.  However, the use of different scales would seem to have a net effect of weighting the factors, in that competitiveness can potentially yield a much higher number of stress points than lifting–or risking your life.

Plus there seem to be overlaps among Environment factors, Stress factors, and Physical Demands.  But let’s move on.

Ratings on various included factors for each of the aspects are rendered into numerical scores (lower=better), with some manipulations applied along the way.  (The factor total of the Stress aspect, for example, is divided by the average number of hours worked weekly.)  Then the five aspect scores are summed up to produce the final rankings.  Data for the evaluations comes from a variety of sources, including the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Census Bureau, trade associations, and industry groups.

In the presentation of the list, rated jobs are divided into sets of 20, and an interesting commentary is added to each set.  For example, characterizing jobs 141-160:

Some jobs in the lower half of our 200 rankings still require extensive higher education, such as physician and surgeon, but a larger percentage need only specialized training or, in the case of janitor, waiter/waitress, and salesperson, basic instruction to master. Surgeon may be a highly-paid, well respected profession, but scoring dead last in stress and fourth from the bottom in work environment helps to lower its overall ranking.

That may lead you to ponder the meaning of “best” in the whole scenario . . . .

First, however, let’s end the suspense:  According to JobsRated, the very best job of all is “Mathematician,” while the very worst is “Lumberjack.”

Reader alert: The foregoing was not the hilarious part. This was the thought-provoking part. The funny bits (and the takeaways) are in the next post.


Thanks to Bob Bobster for the way cool surfboards.


Recruiting and the Corporate Website: Source or Re-Source?

mechanical-well

One more item gleaned from the recent Career Xroads 8th Annual Sources of Hire Study:

Hires attributed to the Company Website are a problem for us (we maintain that the company web site is a destination not a source) and essentially represents one of every five external hires. There is no question about the importance of the company site’s staffing pages as a critical “channel” but its acceptance by corporations as a source likely occludes other, more relevant starting points driving prospects and candidates.

Many companies ask job applicants to self-report their point of entry (e.g., job board, employee referral, web search).  The list of choices often includes the company website-and that is counted as the “source” for those who select it.

Career Xroads makes the point that only an unknown subset of the responding applicants actually either (a) went to the company website on purpose looking for a job, or (b) happened to look at the Careers page while visiting the site for some other reason.  And of those two groups, only (b) might really represent a true source.  In the case of (a), the applicant had some reason for going to the site–an ad, an article, a friend, etc.  That reason is, in fact, the more primary source.

Accurate sourcing is important for calculating ROI on recruiting efforts, and also for successfully focusing recruitment efforts.  So it would be useful to separate (a) from (b).  But it would be even more useful to track the number of prospects who come to the corporate Careers site for some (any) reason, and then either stay to apply, or . . . leave in disgust, discouragement, or disinterest.

Some companies do track abandoned applications.  And some measure time on site.  But does anyone really know why prospects leave, whether sooner or later?  Here again–some companies ask for feedback (“Was this page helpful to you?”) or prompt visitors to rate the site.  But the problem is that most visitors will provide input only if they are annoyed or ill-served by the site.  Only a few will take the time to send compliments or to drill down into thoughtful analysis of their experience.

The Career Xroads report found that a majority of respondents attributed around 20% of hires to their corporate website.  That would be one hire in five-which really does seem a little dubious.  Quoting the report:  “We believe this thinking is too simplistic and continue to argue for a more substantive approach to measuring the influence of the corporate website without diluting the impact of other more legitimate sources of hire.”

Do you have a clue what role your corporate website really plays in attracting prospects or generating hires? Worth thinking about.  (And if the answer is Yes . . . others would love to know your method.)

Thanks to Saxon State Library for the image of a seventeenth-century mechanical well.


Who’s Tweeting?

twittercon

Here’s the blurb:  “TWTRCON SF 09 is the first conference entirely focused on Twitter as a business platform: how to use Twitter to reach and engage customers, influence opinions and activate markets.”  No sessions on recruiting, but presenters include some folks who are well known in the social media space (like Guy Kawasaki and Seth Greenberg).

The trend toward talking about social media in recruiting is well ahead of actual adoption or implementation.  Insofar as there is corporate energy toward Twitter and other platforms, it’s mainly toward the goal of customer interaction-and even that is in the early stages for most companies.  As it says on the Wells Fargo Twitter page, “We’re testing this Twitter channel to learn how to best serve our customers.”  For now, the bank’s tweeters provide answers to basic banking questions, and/or instructions for getting answers to basic banking questions.  Meanwhile, back at the Careers section of the Wells Fargo site, there is no sign of social media interaction.

In fact, according to the recent Career Xroads 8th Annual Sources of Hire Study, even an “old” tool like Facebook is barely used by companies, for recruiting or otherwise.  Asked whether they maintain a company Facebook page, fewer than one quarter of the respondents answered Yes.  Over 60% said they use LinkedIn, however, and the report lists “improve social network utilization” as one of the more frequently mentioned items in response to a question about plans for 2009.

While it’s true that there is a good deal of the buzz about Twitter for recruiting, much of that probably stems more from the enthusiasm of third-party recruiters than from the activities of in-house recruiters.  Staffing firms and professional recruiters have been quick to board the Twitter Express–but corporations move much . . . more . . . slowly . . . . . . .

Which companies have managed to get their social media initiatives ahead of the curve?  Careers consultant and HR professional Susan Strayer has been tracking companies using Twitter for in-house recruiting, so if you want to see how those experiments are working out, check out some of the Twitter Names on her list.  And if you want to see companies (your competitors?) that are using Twitter in other ways, Social Brand Index is a good place to get started.


A Place for Transparency?

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“Transparency” has become an echoing buzzword lately, especially in reference to government, politics and corporate affairs.The topic of transparency doesn’t typically trickle down to the corporate Careers site—but it absolutely should.

I started thinking about this while reviewing sites for the diversity series, and wondering whether pictures are showing actual employees, and whether they are accurately suggesting diversity ratios. Then I came across this observation in the very interesting 8th Annual Sources of Hire Study (released February 2009) from Career Xroads:

We are amazed that we have failed to uncover a single firm that transparently shares their internal movement figures on their website to bolster their claims of employee development despite that fact that we regularly review a thousand companies’ staffing pages each year.

I hadn’t actually considered that particular gap. But I have asked myself more than once why I should believe that employee testimonials (even granting that they are honest) actually represent the majority of employee opinion. Wouldn’t it be great to know a little more about employee retention, voluntary turnover, employee survey results, and other factual evidence about employee satisfaction?

So I checked a dozen companies at random from the Fortune 100 Best Places to Work list. It wasn’t a drill-down search, but it was a respectable attempt to find out (spending about as much time as a typical visitor might) whether there was any statistical or quantitative information about employee satisfaction on the site.

And the answer is . . . Nope. The single exception I found in this small sample was the UPS site, where—tucked away in the Social section, discussing the Global Workforce–there actually is a super-simple depiction of retention statistics and a brief discussion of the approach and goals.

transparency-ups

Problem: This information is by now three years out of date. And that’s one probable reason why companies don’t put employee statistics on their sites—i.e., they don’t want to be bothered with keeping the information up to date. Still, kudos to UPS for even a rudimentary attempt.

Cisco has information on its site about diversity in new hires, broken out by percentage, and up to date through 2008. So it would seem that zeal for displaying diversity may trump the issue of information maintenance. But Cisco provides no similar information about internal movement (as brought up by Career Xroads) or retention.

And by the way, it’s not that companies think the word “retention” won’t have value, or won’t be understood. Many sites boast that the company has “excellent” (or “outstanding,” “high,” etc.) retention. But since we don’t know what grading system they might be using, these superlatives are not very helpful. Is 70% retention considered excellent? 80%?

In fairness, it’s always a challenge to communicate statistical/factual information clearly and accurately, providing an appropriate context for interpretation. So companies may prefer to say nothing at all, rather than risk creating a false or negative impression. Or they may not have appropriately current and comprehensive information. Or they may not have a good understanding of how the information would be received. Or . . . they may not have favorable statistics.

Realistically, it may just be too much trouble–or it just hasn’t occurred to anyone. After all, as long as no one is offering this type of information, there’s no pressure on anyone to do so. But it definitely seems there might be something to gain from the attempt. Perhaps–a competitive advantage?

Thanks to greeblie for the evocative window photograph.

Diversity on the Corporate Website: Disability and Unvisibility

I promised (in the third post of this series) to wrap up with a look at disabilities and unvisible differences. “Disability” is a freighted word in itself, but it’s still the descriptive term used most often, so I’ll stick with it. But I’ve invented the word “unvisibility” to refer to minority groups that can’t be distinguished in a visual portrayal.

The primary unvisible community is lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT), but other groups would include the invisibly disabled, as well as those of a minority ethnic group that isn’t visually obvious. The American with Disabilities Act of 1990 defines disability as “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities,” which includes a wide variety of conditions that wouldn’t show up in a photograph. Similarly, many Native Americans and Americans of Hispanic descent are not visibly distinguishable from non-Hispanic whites.

I looked for a company that does a good job of talking to and about these communities, and came up with Ernst & Young. Search “disability” or “LGBT” on their website, and you’ll find a variety of informational articles and other communications, including: a brochure about their AccessAbilities program offers an excellent guide to understanding disabilities in the workplace, and another called Making It Real, “moves beyond corporate policy” to look at the “day-to-day lives of LGBT employees.”

Ernst & Young uses the term “inclusiveness” to refer to all its programs taken together, and “diversity” to refer to ethnic groups. In some ways that’s an attractive approach, since “inclusiveness” seems more about integration than about difference. But on the other hand . . . “inclusiveness” seems more passive. It suggests that folks will be welcomed if they turn up, whereas “diversity” implies actively inviting folks in order to create a more broadly representative workplace.

Ideally, a company should choose the terminology that best reflects their approach and culture. But whatever word is used—there’s still the matter of how to get the message across on the website. Disabled and unvisible groups are more difficult (and sometimes impossible) to represent in images, so there is more dependence on text.

Ernst & Young does a thorough job of covering this territory, but they take a pretty subtle approach! It unfolds like this:

  • Go to Careers, then choose Life at Ernst & Young from the left nav.
  • On the “Life at” page, choose the text link “people from different backgrounds and cultures.”
  • Now you’re at a page titled “Inclusiveness and flexibility.”
  • From here you can click on text links for “gender,” “ethnicity,” “sexual orientation,” and “physical disability.”
  • Each of those links will take you to a page with a pleasantly vague title, like “Supporting women’s leadership” (gender) and “Bringing people together (physical disability).
  • Each of the sub-pages talks about Ernst & Young’s approach to the particular topic and provides links to a variety of communication materials, like the brochures noted above.

Too subtle? Hard to say. But it seems like a good fit for the site, which is restrained, and for the employer brand. Besides, subtlety may well be the trendy direction . . .

Demographic projections indicate that the concept of “minority” will be irrelevant in the not too distant future, because no one racial group will compose more than 50% of the U.S. population. Meanwhile, the LGBT community continues to be more and more equalized, both in law and social custom. And globalization means that the person in the next cube is just as likely to be from another continent as from another race, gender, sexual orientation, or physical condition.

So we can look forward to the time when all these concerns will have been forgotten.

But in the meantime—my takeaway from working on this series is: Companies should give very serious thought to how they present and portray their working culture, both verbally and visually. Are there unintentional “diversity” messages on your Careers website?

Diversity and the Corporate Website: Hot Topic or Obsolete Concept?

scotus

Is “diversity” an obsolete concept in the post-racial, post-gender, post-modern world of the 21st century? It’s still a hot topic at the U.S. Supreme Court, where attorneys recently presented arguments in the latest landmark discrimination case, which revolves around the issue of diversity in the workplace. And most companies continue to include something (often quite a lot) about diversity on their corporate and career websites. But it’s not simple to decide just how—and how much—to present this complex topic.

If you want to immerse yourself in the topic, visit DiversityInc, a website and print magazine that are literally all about diversity. I did not find a lot of concrete advice or analysis there about recruiting and diversity, but in the article How Your Diversity Reputation Attracts High-Potential Recruits, they ask the following question: “How do progressive diversity companies stress their branding as national diversity leaders?” And the answer is: “They start with their web sites, which should prominently feature the Top 50 logo as evidence of their credibility.”

For the several companies that didn’t make it into DiversityInc’s Top 50 (a list that includes Johnson & Johnson, Xerox, Verizon, Comerica, Walt Disney, and other giant corporations ), the article continues with this advice:

  • “The homepage should have a direct link to diversity.”
  • “There should be a prominent quote from the CEO on the benefits of diversity.”
  • “The site itself should feature frequent images of Black, Latino, Asian and American Indian employees and customers, as well as employees and customers with disabilities.”
  • “Content aimed at LGBT people must be included as well.”

This approach makes diversity a top-level point, turning a spotlight directly on the topic. But that’s not necessarily the only “right” approach, or the best approach for a specific company.  And these suggestions actually raise some challenging questions, in terms of both practicality and ethics.

However! I’m now on the umpteenth draft of this post, and it keeps getting so complicated that I have to stop and double back. (No wonder the topic of diversity keeps turning up at the Supreme Court.) So my strategy for now is to divide the questions up into two categories, and explore each category in its own post.

Category 1: What are the various options for incorporating diversity as a specific topic on the corporate website in general and the Careers site in particular? I think there are four basic approaches, and I’ll try to give examples of each.

Category 2: What are the most important considerations about presentation of diversity on the website? Here I’d like to look at both subtle factors (such as imagery and language) and obvious content, such as policy statements and executive messages.

Well, that seems like a lot, so I’d better start sorting it all out . . .