Since electronic recruiting took hold in the mid-1990s, corporate and third party recruiters have increasingly used the Internet as a channel for sourcing candidates. The iLogos Research report, "Value Creation Through Corporate Careers Web Sites," found that 92% of Fortune 500 companies today have dedicated careers Web sites.

The business case for a corporate career Web site is a compelling one:

1. Not only are more positions found on the corporate sites, more hires originate at corporate career sites than on job boards, according to Careerxroads.
2. Jobs are often the most accessed part of any corporate Web site.
3. The term "jobs" is the fourth most searched keyword, according to WebPosition Gold, the search engine marketing software maker.
4. Internet cost-per-hire is 10 times lower than alternate sources.

Candidates use career Web sites to understand what a company does; to get specific information such as locations and contact information; and to learn about specific positions. The key question is, just how helpful are corporate Web sites in helping job seekers explore employment opportunities at their companies?

According to MMC Group, the partnership that produces the Careerxroads directory, the majority of corporate Web sites only satisfy job seekers' most basic information needs, such as listing current openings or available benefits. Others can't meet users' expectations about finding and applying for jobs. The worst sites include no employment information while others provide materials that look like corporate marketing brochures.

Job seeker frustrations with corporate Web sites include lack of response to an application, the length of time it takes a job seeker to input their information, lack of standardization in document formats (cut and paste vs. text resumes), and outdated information.

Corporate Web Site Trends

In tracking corporate Web site trends, iLogos found that the strongest growth will occur in practices that integrate the careers Web site front-end with back-end applicant tracking systems, such as:

• Online candidate prescreening tools - 228% growth. For example, Texas Instruments uses such a "Fit Check" to provide immediate feedback to candidates before they apply for a job.
• Job agents - 120% growth. These can capture critical candidate information, such as in Intel's Job Match.
• E-mail a friend - 117% growth.
• Reuse candidate information - 43% growth.
• Searchable job database - 16% growth.
• Privacy policies - 55% growth.

These practices lead to process savings by eliminating labor intensive and non-value added steps; cost reductions in the sourcing budget; improving candidate quality; and streamlining the recruiting process as well as decreasing the hiring cycle.

Enhancing Career Web Site Usability

Any visitor to your company's Web site is a potential job candidate: customers, investors, competitors, and active and passive job seekers. If the Web site is easy to use and the functions are easy to find, you can attract them to the careers section, convince them that your company is a good place to work, and win them as candidates.

Bad design can cost 40-50% of repeat traffic to your Web site. According to usability expert Jakob Nielsen, your competition on the Web is not limited to other companies in your industry-you are competing for users' time and attention. The cost of going to a different Web site is very low, and the expected benefit of staying at your site is not particularly high. Sadly, companies will invest many hours and thousands of dollars into a Web site without knowing if the design even works, losing potential repeat visitors in the process.

Here are some tips to enhance the usability of your company's Web site and put the "R" back in ROI:

1. There should be a prominent link from the Home Page to the Career section to make it easy for anyone to scan employment opportunities. The "one click" rule also applies to the application process. Don't make candidates hunt for instructions on how to apply once they have identified a suitable job opening.
2. The Careers page should be part of your site's global navigation as well as links to Careers on secondary pages, as shown in Atofina Chemical's Web site.
3. Is it searchable? The most effective and user-friendly tool is to have the jobs database searchable by location, job category, and keyword, for example. This ensures that each opening has an equal chance of being seen by candidates in any size database. ILogos suggests that mission-critical jobs needing to be filled immediately be highlighted as "Urgent" so they stand out from the general list of openings. This practice can also help focus the priorities of recruiters.
4. Job agents keep users coming back. The job agent helps candidates stay up to date on new openings of interest to them. The greater benefit is that these agents build ongoing relationships with jobseekers and stretch marketing budgets.
5. Extend your reach. A function such as e-mail to a friend taps into each visitor's referral network and provides additional candidates to your company at no additional cost to your sourcing budget. Some applicant tracking systems (ATS) software packages, such as Recruitsoft, offer this option. If your company has an employee referral program, think about adding a "virtual referral program".
6. Offer candidates a choice. Not all candidates have a resume on hand so offer a choice between a cut-and-paste form and a resume builder to help users construct one.
7. Reduce unnecessary typing by streamlining the application process. Companies like Lucent and Procter & Gamble invite candidates to create a profile on their sites, which can then be saved and used in applying for multiple jobs. Candidates are more likely to complete applications the amount of "busy work" they have to do is reduced.
8. Are qualified candidates compelled to apply for your jobs? Do your position descriptions lack personality? Work with the Marketing Department to produce the best content possible on the Career pages.
9. Where do you turn up in the search engines? Fifty percent of Web users are "search dominant" and will look for jobs using a global search. Your goal is to be found in the first page of search results; after that the law of diminishing returns takes effect—that is, beyond some point the relative value of a resource diminishes. Job seekers will likely look through the first 2 or 3 pages of results before they lose interest.
10. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. Request your company's Web logs-every Web site generates these data and they are a treasure trove of information. A software program like WebTrends can help make sense of the data by identifying where people are coming from to get to your site, where they spend the most time, and what are the most-and least-popular pages.

A well-designed Careers section that is integrated with a robust back-end database system ensures that recruiting is quick and economical, and that the best candidates are hired.

Sidebar: A Sample of Corporate Web Sites

Corinne Marasco is Associate Editor for Chemical & Engineering News, the newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, specializing in career and employment topics.