Career Site Branding - does it really count?

Career branding or positioning is so critical today as recruiting has become global for all but the smallest firms. The last hires for my own company have come from the UK and Egypt, with candidates in the Far East and South Africa having been closely considered.

Career branding is however difficult for many companies to get their heads around. Recruiters to continue to spend many thousands of dollars on advertising for specific jobs, but little effort or budget goes to advertising the career brand or company career site.

One of the worlds largest recruitment networks (Reed) have just published results of a survey of 2,500 graduate jobseekers. The results should alarm the majority of companies in the Middle East and Africa as over a third actively switched brand loyalty (stopped buying your products!!) following a negative experience while applying for a job with that brand. When you think about it graduates are not the most fussy when it comes to brands, however they would most likely apply for work with brands that they previously admired or used. So for them to switch due to a bad candidate experience shows you just how bad some companies are at recruiting and that it costs them lost sales.

Worrying for the Recruitment Departments out there, the research revealed that 22% had turned down a job offer because they had been put off by an organisation's behaviour during the recruitment process.

Just to counter this and let you know how much a positive career brand can pull good candidates to your company, one of our clients who's career site is www.kojcareers.com received over 30,000 visitors in August 2006, and had in the region of 70 jobs posted at the time. They ensure the candidate experience is so well taken care of, and their brand well represented that they receive an average of 400 jobseekers per job with minimal advertising.

I am awaiting stats from their HR department on how much the quality (sales performance numbers) of their hires have increased which I'll write about later, but I would also wager that KOJ have received a few new customers into their retail stores as a result of how they handle recruitment.