You've heard it before. Internet recruiting has revolutionized the way organizations of all sizes seek new applicants. But what does that really mean? Two recent surveys reveal the following:

• An online poll by the American Chemical Society indicates that 100 percent of respondents use the Internet for filling jobs.
• Another recent study, The 2002 Recruitment Budget/Cost Survey by Recruitment Marketplace and the Society for Human Resource Management Survey, shows 93 percent of respondents use newspapers to advertise job openings, and 82 percent of respondents use online advertising to fill open positions.

In open-ended questions, recruiters most commonly mentioned how Internet advertising allowed them to penetrate new markets and develop a wider range of qualified applicants. The Budget/Cost Survey also looked at the volume, quality and return on investment of each recruiting source. Sources ranged from online advertising, referrals, radio and television advertising to newspaper advertising.

The top two "source" performers were online advertising and newspaper advertising. However, the quality (25% vs. 16%) and return on investment (36 % vs. 24 %) were higher with online advertising than newspaper advertising.

Of those respondents who used the Internet to fill jobs, 85 percent posted open positions on their corporate Web sites, and 77 percent used online job-posting sites, such as Careerbuilder.com or Monster.com.

But, online recruiting is far from perfect. The biggest complaint from recruiters is that by casting a wider net online, you'll get more candidates that really aren't qualified for job openings. And for job seekers, they're expecting to see more than a few lines of ad copy when exploring the Internet for career opportunities.

Focusing on the Job Seeker

"Ninety-five percent of the ads on company Web sites and job boards are boring," says Lou Adler, a veteran recruiter, noted industry expert, author and CEO of Power Hiring: Best Practices for Hiring People. "They demand skills and experience; they don't offer careers. They're not compelling. They're too general and they're designed to eliminate unqualified candidates from applying-not to attract top performers. Bad ads are the number one reason companies aren't seeing enough top candidates."

"When I started in this business—when newspapers were the main advertising source—the goal of job ads were to be short and basic, and they included lots of abbreviations," says Deborah Stremmel, general manager of recruitment for Landon Media Group. "If you were looking to hire a telephone sales person, the ad might say: 'Must have good telephone voice and type 35 words per minute.' If you put an ad like that in the paper or on the Internet today, you'd be pressed to get a result."

The above example may seem extreme, but it's how job advertising used to work. "The problem is that some companies have those 20-year-old style ads in their files and they are using (versions) of them," Stremmel says. "Then, they don't understand why it isn't working. It's just lousy content."

Today the recruiter's focus is different as well. "The goal used to be how fast you could get an ad placed," explains Stremmel. "Today we are more focused on quality than speed."

When Stremmel works with recruiters to upgrade their ad copy, she always asks the question: "Is this a good reflection of your company's reputation?"

"The navigation systems at most company career sites are another example of how the hiring process disrespects the best," Adler says. "From login screens to pull-down menus, too many hurdles are put in the way before a top candidate can even find an appropriate opening.

When the job description is finally read, it's even more boring than the dull ad. If you keep track of your web stats, you'll see the huge dropout rates at every step. Unfortunately, most of those opting out are the best (candidates)." When job seekers are looking for jobs online, "getting where you want to go is part of the experience, explains Gerry Crispin, Internet and staffing strategist who co-authors CareerXroads, a leading job site reference guide. For example, how easy is it to find the "careers" section on your company's Web site? Can you get to the careers section with one click of the mouse? Is it one of four tabs on the navigation bar included on the Web site's opening page? Is the tab designed to be easily seen and read—in 18-point type instead of tiny 6-point type?

"Every 'click' a visitor must make linking them from one page to the next might be experienced as heightening their anticipation or, more likely, increasing their frustration," write Crispin and Mark Mehler, who also consults internationally on employment staffing strategies and is Crispin's co-author. In a comprehensive white paper called Designing Corporate Staffing Sites That Address Customer Experience, these two experts explain: "We've long held that three 'clicks' is a reasonable standard for a visitor whose active expectations are to find and review jobs and then apply. What we mean by this is that from the company's home page, the visitor will need to travel no more than three more pages to find a description of a specific job.

What Crispin and Mehler actually found among the staffing pages of all Fortune 500 companies is that job descriptions lie from one to seven links away from the home page. Half of all sites were four links away from the home page.

Besides where the career button is positioned on the home page, other navigation factors to look at are 1) a consistent navigation bar for all staffing pages, 2) logical placement of options for searching jobs; 3) practical display of search results, and 4) cross-linking to relevant content.

Employer Sites That Stand Out

Here are some examples that Crispin and Mehler hold up as successful:

Log onto Schering-Plough's site and you've got career information practically at your fingertips. Click on the careers button from the home page and you quickly get more information about who this pharmaceutical company is seeking to hire. The message, "We're driven by innovation. What drives you?" is followed with more information about cultural fit factors, work culture, organizational structure, recruiting programs, as well as specific career opportunities.

Schering Plough provides job seekers with a searchable job-openings database, as well a rich text about all aspects of the business. The employer specifically talks about its mission: "Our commitment to attracting and retaining a diverse population of top professional talent brings the best of both science and business technology to our organization."

According to Crispin and Mehler, this employer site does a good job at illustrating to jobseekers "an engaging and consistent image."

Click on the "Careers" button from Lyondell Chemical Company's home page and you're immediately given related options such as 1) Work at Lyondell, 2) College recruiting, 3) Visions and Values, 4) Benefits, and 5) Job Openings. This Web site is another example of intriguing copy that tells candidates what the employers expect and what they offer employers.

A searchable jobs section is easy to navigate. One of the most unique features is that salary information is provided for the majority of jobs listed. For example, a Scientist/Research III position says, "it pays approximately $87,000 plus bonus. Lyondell, in its sole discretion may modify or change this pay level at any time."

Lots of forethought goes into Abbott Labs' Web site because it's robust in career content—high on the side of explaining each of the job disciplines, which are science, sales and marketing, information technology, engineering, finance and accounting and human resources.

For the new-hire crowd, there's plenty of information about Abbott's Internship programs. Lead-ins capture candidates' attention—for example: "Remember when you were seven years old, standing on a hill where you're kind of the mountain?"

Another paragraph gets right to the heart of what college students want to hear: "Abbott interns aren't extras. During your time here, you quickly become an integral part of our team." This is the kind of stuff that draws candidates close to an employer.

If Communicating About Jobs Is Complicated�

Adler suggests using a technique called job branding on the career site. He says: "If finding the individual job descriptions takes some searching effort, make it more worthwhile to the candidate by adding job branding."

For example, on the company-wide listing for chemists, include a description of typical projects and challenges an employee would face. "Make sure these tie to the company vision and strategy," notes Adler. "By branding a class of jobs under one heading, and presenting it in compelling terms, you're providing the top candidate reasons to spend time looking for this type of job. This is also the same information your recruiters and hiring managers will use to position the job as a career opportunity."

The bottom line with online job postings is truly writing compelling ads and exciting job descriptions, says Adler, and then making them impossible to miss.