May 2 2001 -
An iLogos Best Practices report defines recruiting industry standards for career Web
site features.
One of the main recommendations is incorporating
a link from the corporate home page directly to the careers section on the
company's Web site. 73% of Fortune 500 companies do this. Another Best Practices feature,
utilized by 55% of Fortune 500 companies, is to make information available to candidates
about a company's culture and work environment.
"This personalized assessment for companies helps them to measure their
current performance against the standard for online recruiting and presents
them with an opportunity to make a marked improvement in interacting with job
seekers on the careers sections of their Web sites," said Yves Lermusiaux,
president, iLogos Research. "It is critical that all companies make the most
effective use of their corporate career Web sites, to brand their companies
with potential candidates, who may also be customers and shareholders.
Benchmarking practices against those of the Fortune 500 provides a useful
measurement and perhaps motivation to implement best online recruiting
practices."
Canadian companies have a lower rate of adoption and usage of online
recruiting best practices compared to their Fortune 500 counterparts. This can be
explained by lower overall penetration of corporate career Web sites among Canadian
companies (64% versus 89%). Take away the Canadian companies without career sites
and wefind that the remaining Canadian companies lead the Fortune 500 in over half
of the best practices and by greater margins - and are well ahead in some of the
most innovative best practices.
The top 100 Canadian companies lead the Fortune 500 in their use of some
leading best practices on career Web sites, including:
- urgent jobs highlighted (4% versus 3%);
- submission of formatted resumes (13% versus 9%);
- e-mail to a friend (10% versus 9%);
- anonymous applications (3% versus 1%);
- online job agents (8% versus 6%);
- customized pre-assessment tools (5% versus 1%).
But the top Canadian companies fared less well in a number of other respects:
* Just 64% of the top Canadian companies had career sections on
their corporate Web sites - compared with 89% of Fortune 500 companies.
* 45% of the top Canadian companies posted job positions on their
Web sites - compared to 76% of the Fortune 500.
* Only 42% of Canadian surveyed studied post job positions and accepted online applications
- compared to 71% of the Fortune 500.
Key areas where Canadian companies are behind their Fortune 500 counterparts include:
- ability for jobseekers to search a database of available jobs (17% versus 42%)
- link from the corporate home page to the career Web site (47% versus 73%)
- one click to apply for a job (36% versus 56%)
- information about company benefits (21% versus 55%)
- information about company culture (37% versus 44%)
- separate college recruiting section (21% versus 42%)
- automatic connection of an application to a job posting (24% versus 39%)
- candidate profiling (16% versus 19%)
- reuse of candidate information for multiple applications (9% versus 18%)
- ability for candidates to cut and paste their resume or use a resume builder (9% versus 14%).
"The identification of the best practices is the result of more than
three years of iLogos Research monitoring the online recruiting activities of
Fortune 500 companies. These results have become the benchmark against which
corporate online recruiting practices are measured," said Yves Lermusiaux,
president and founder of iLogos Research. "By failing to adopt key practices,
Canadian companies will continue to fall behind Fortune 500 companies in the
race for qualified talent."
Canadian companies were selected and ranked for this report on the basis of revenue.
The online recruiting practices of these top Canadian companies were compared with
corporate career web sites of the Fortune 500.
"The corporate career Web site is an important, yet underutilized tool
for Canadian companies," said Louis Têtu, CEO of Recruitsoft. "More than 14
million Canadians have access to the Internet at home and we have seen a
significant rise in the number of people conducting job searches online, yet
only 64 percent of the top 100 Canadian companies have a career section built
into their corporate Web site, compared to 89 percent of Fortune 500
companies. In fact, six percent of the top 100 Canadian companies still do not
have a corporate Web site. In order for Canadian corporations to effectively
compete for top talent globally, they will need to be more innovative in their
online recruiting practices."