Spotlight for Recruiting Professionals

Websites are vital tools for employers to use to attract candidates—and that is especially true now that traditional modes of attacting students, e.g., in-person activities and events, are largely unavailable.

However, there is a disconnect between students’ use of employer websites and students’ perception of their usefulness.

Mary Scott, founder of Scott Resource Group, delves into what employers can do to rectify that in an upcoming webinar based on a forthcoming publication. Succeeding in the New Normal: Student Attitudes and Effective Virtual Recruiting, which combines NACE benchmark data with qualitative data gathered through focus groups, provides recommendations for authentic recruiting in the virtual world.

In terms of the effectiveness of employer websites, Scott points to NACE research findings that highlight the importance employers placed on their website as a branding technique. However, while more than 90% of employers taking part in NACE’s Recruiting Benchmarks Survey agreed that they used their website as a branding tool, less than one in 10 considered their website to be most effective as a branding technique, well behind information sessions, student organizations, and career fairs.

Furthermore, Scott notes that nearly three-quarters of the students taking part in NACE’s Student Survey indicated that they had used employers’ websites during their job search—ranking the website No. 1 overall as a resource—but less than half considered “visiting employer websites” either very or extremely useful.

Scott offers several recommendations to help employers overcome this apparent disconnect and offer students valuable experiences with their websites, including:

• Recognize that most students take seriously an employer’s mission and values statements—but reading the words on the website is just the first step. If “we value our employees” (or words to that effect) are set as an expectation, be sure the candidate experience reflects the same.
• Feature actual new hires (not stock photos) to showcase early career opportunities; credible testimonials are valued, but only if they seem authentic and not scripted.
• Assure that the corporate website “speaks to” those seeking early career positions and that job descriptions are written in language students can understand.
• Provide sufficient detail in job descriptions to enable students to not only assess their match to the requirements, but to gauge the appeal of what incumbents actually do.

Authentic, Effective Virtual Recruiting: Recommendations and Insights for Succeeding in the New Norm will be held on Thursday, January 28, from 1 to 2 p.m. ET. During this webinar, Mary Scott, president of Scott Resource Group, and NACE leadership will share insights and recommendations for candidate attraction, candidate engagement, and the application process to achieve success in a virtual recruiting world. Click here to find out more and to register.