Looking for a job recently gave me chance to analyze the job recruitment and career building website, and I’ll have to say I’m very disappointed. Most recruitment website are very generic, fighting an uphill battle competing for advertising space against the popular job boards like Monster, SimplyHired, and JobFinder.
Bad idea.
Recruitment companies have a bad rap, but this industry is potentially great and fulfilling. Its a shame they try to imitate Job posting boards which are disastrously impersonal and ineffective. I think we are going to see a major downfall for recruitment companies because they just don’t seem to get it. Here are some tips for recruitment companies to improve their websites and survive the big bear market:
- Recruitment companies have a great resource which I’ve never seen utilized: their recruiters. They are the boots on the ground, they have great interpersonal skills, they are experts in their field– why are you hiding them? Find ways to connect your professionals with your users.
- Be more courteous! It is usually a hard time (especially in this market) for job seekers. Sending out an application for a job shouldn’t be like throwing a resume into a black hole. It’s depressing. I’d say only 30% of recruitment companies actually contacted me back, and I’m in a highly demanding industry. There is no reason for that.
- Build relationships with your users. Never once did any of the sites I visited gave me an immediate (or eventually built an) attachment to the organization. People change jobs more often now than ever so keep your clients coming back. Especially with the temping industry, you’d think recruitment companies would do more to try to repeat your business.
- Grow on your base business and expand into new territory. There just isn’t any creativity out there. Recruitment sites have a ton of traffic (we’ll see a jump soon) and generally have 1 function: job search. You have all of that traffic, when don’t you grow a little? Seek out some partnerships, find some useful content, and break out of mold to make yourself more profitable.
- Go 2.0! Yes, ok, it’s a buzz word, but its a great way to build relationships with your users.
- Build on your job trend analysis tools. SimplyHired is off to a great start with their trend analysis graph tool, but don’t stop there! Let’s see some more in-depths content and articles and an improved interface.
