Talent Management Processes

"Addressing" the Corporate Careers Web Site

by Taleo Research

The corporate Careers Web site is the focal point of the recruitment strategy for many companies. To maximize its effectiveness, companies pay particular attention to how the Careers Web site is branded and promoted. This article discusses an important but often overlooked aspect of online positioning, the URL address.

404s and Redirects 
A Web site administrator of one Fortune 500 company noticed a strange phenomenon in the reports of “404” (missing document) incidences recorded in the company’s Web server logs. Many jobseekers were unsuccessfully attempting to guess at the location of the company’s Careers Web site, by entering a URL that consisted of the company’s “.com” homepage address followed by “/careers”. Rather than navigating through the “Careers” button on the corporate homepage, these jobseekers wanted to type the full URL and go there directly. These URL-guessing jobseekers received an unfriendly “404” error message in their Web browsers instead of an inviting corporate Careers Web site, because the actual URL for the company’s Careers homepage ended in “/corporate/about-us/hr/search.asp”.

The Web site administrator suggested that the Careers page should be moved to the simpler URL ending in “/careers”. In the end, this company’s Careers pages stayed put, but the Web server was programmed with a simple “redirect”, which automatically forwarded those that tried “/careers” to the actual URL of the company’s Careers Web site.

Company Dot Com Slash Jobs 
What the Web site administrator of this Fortune 500 company discovered is that jobseekers have an expectation that the URL for a company’s Careers Web site is easy to remember and conveys the idea of recruitment or hiring at the company. There are three ways to accomplish this.
  1. Extend the corporate homepage address with a subdirectory string that suggests recruitment, such as “ www.company.com/work” or “www.company.com/jobs.”
  2. Create a customized second-level domain name for the Careers Web site such as http://www.companynamecareers.com. (The second-level domain is that which lies between “www” and “.com”.)
  3. Create a third-level domain, as in “http://careers.company.com,” which leads directly to the Careers Web site.

These techniques are becoming increasingly common in the Fortune 500. In the annual review of the Fortune 500, Taleo Research found that almost half (47%) of the group uses an easily remembered URL for the Careers Web site. The bulk of these companies use the directory tactic, with “/careers” or a variation. Additionally, Taleo Research discovered that five percent of the Fortune 500 companies use a customized, second-level domain name for the Careers Web site, while four percent use a third-level domain.

Dos and Don’ts of Easily Remembered URLs
  • Do assign the corporate Careers Web site or Careers section of the corporate Web site an easily remembered URL, like “www.megacorpcareers.com,” “jobs.abcinc.com,” “www.xyzco.com/careers”.
  • Don’t have the Careers section buried in layers of sub-directories (“/about/hr/careers”). If you cannot get a top-level directory, create top-level directories, such as “/careers”, that re-direct visitors to the Careers homepage.
  • Do give a multi-language Careers Web site URLs that will come naturally to speakers of each language in which you recruit. Use “www.company.com/carriere” instead of “www.company.com/fr/career” as the URL for the French-language version of the Careers Web site.
  • Do consider registering a catchy domain name, like “mybankingcareer.com”. If this is not suggestive enough of your company’s employment brand, create a domain name that incorporates your company’s identity with an employment theme, such as “www.WorkWithCompanyName.com”. Domain names can be registered for a small fee.
  • Don’t have the URL of the Careers section end in a file name, like “careers.html,” “search.asp,” “frame.htm.” These are not conducive to bridging the gap between offline media and the Web.

  • Do assign a default page for the directory on the server containing the files for the Careers pages. Don’t allow URLs ending in a “/” to result in a “403 (Forbidden)” error, or even worse, a listing of the files in the directory.
  • Do publish the Careers section URL in all print material, especially employment classified ads.
  • Do provide an easy way to re-identify a job requisition once online, for instance by providing jobseekers with a text box and search button to search for the requisition number quoted in the print ad.
  • Do test market a proposed URL for the Careers Web site, to see if it fits with the company’s overall recruitment brand.
  • Do target critical segments of the workforce with an easily remembered URL that leads to content developed expressly for that audience (e.g., “http://mba.company.com”).
  • Do use an easily remembered URL to direct other sources that generate high paper volumes (e.g., employee referrals, campus hiring) onto the Careers Web site so that these candidates can be processed digitally with a minimum of scanning, data entry or other non-value-added intermediary steps.
Location, Location, Location 
To do its job, the corporate Careers Web site needs a good supply of jobseeker traffic. Companies must capitalize on all sources of traffic, including the corporate homepage, search engines, job boards, and online employer directories. The Web positioning techniques discussed in this article improve top-of-mind presence, word of mouth referrals, and recall among jobseekers for the corporate Careers Web site.