Top 10 to maximise online success

I was recently asked how to create a decent online candidate experience, and a great career portal. There's a good article on change work now's website where they talk about their top 10 factors for online success when encouraging online applications. The list is beautifully simple and if you do all of them then you won't go far wrong, so here they are:

1. Design the online process as a transaction
2. Career website content must be relevant
3. Do not be overly concerned with how long the online application process is
4. Provide immediate feedback online
5. Don't force candidates to register upfront
6. Provide specific feedback about why a candidate is unsuitable
7. Remember online recruitment is still a human activity
8. Ensure candidates are kept informed at all times
9. Speed and functionality matter to the candidate
10. Go through the process as a candidate

In a UK recruitment conference, Google also set out their top 10 hints for online advertising success. Naturally it gets slightly more technical and Google specific so I've added in a few words of description where appropriate:

1. Campaigns always on - nature of the Internet, and jobseekers. Great advantage over print media - although to be fair most print offerings now counter this by replicating their content online.
2. 100% product coverage SEM - search engine marketing can/should be used across all your products, and cross-selling opportunities arise. So basically if I'm looking for flights on BA out of Heathrow to JFK, I might also be served BA jobs in Heathrow airport.
3. Dynamic keyword variations
4. High traffic CPC campaigns -yield should be measured and focussed, but essentially you can get a lot of traffic from segmented audience if yo udesign your campaigns correctly.
5. Landing page quality - the better design and relevance of the entry page (where somebody lands having seen an online ad or sponsored link), the higher number of candidates you'll convert. It really is like your shop window. You have to think of jobseekers as literally running through the job high street, glancing in your office window. If they don't like the look of the decor, or the blinds are shut altogether - well they'll go in the shop next door which has comfy chairs and a smiley shop assistant.
6. Fresh creative - ad content and creative should be aligned with your job/s message and employer brand. I imagine Heineken would run a recruitment campaign along the lines of "Probably the best place to work in the world".
7. Local Seasonality - if your target demographic are all offline celebrating Chinese New Year or sat on the sofa watching the FA Cup final - then probably best not to run the ad campaign. If you're hiring teachers, or Graduates for that matter; then there are specifc times to run recruiting efforts, and that is very much supported through internet advertising and CPM campaigns.
8. Leveraging brand - what are your audiences interests - maybe they are checking up on the sports news, or searching for science DVD's online - again this can be used to target people very well and to communicate to them when they are not necessarily looking for a job ad.
9. Google Tools - Google Maps, Youtube - even registering your sitemap for your careers site with Google is very worthwhile.
10. Regional focus - the internet offers great support for local campaigns, and you'll get better click-through rates and relevancy if you localise. There's little point in having 400 candidates come through to your, if you can only interview the 3 people who own a car and live within 20 minutes of the office.

With more and more tools and options coming out with regards to candidate attraction, I can see more roles being created within HR for marketeers with very special skill sets. Thankfully the so-called web 2.0 tools are easy to use, but with the abundance of them, and the speciality, I don't think an active recruiter can handle secondlife, blogs, search engine optimsation, AdSense, etc.

Ben Fawcett.