Ask most HR people about “talent strategy”, and generally you’ll get a slight glazing over of the eyes and some throwaway comments about candidate experience and talent communities.
In truth, most organisations approach these elements individually as their talent/hiring needs change.
However, the level of competition we’re seeing in the market for highly skilled knowledge workers has changed the old school adage of the “War for Talent” to now, a “War for Attention”.
So it’s with this in mind, that when working with clients around strategy we recommend investing time on 2 core issues. Employer Brand definition and Internal process development. There’s clearly little value in spending time trying to attract candidates if converting them to employees is challenging.
Careers pages or sites that convert visitors to applicants are an important tactical element in the first of these issues, for several reasons;
- Your employer brand is now a product. High-quality talent is now researching employers more than ever before. So, first impressions and all that…..
- Humanising. When they talk about themselves non-stop, businesses run the risk of appearing soulless; including content with real people and leaders emphasises the human element that most of us crave.
- Deeper understanding. Dispel myths, enlighten visitors, and convert mere viewers into informed and enthusiastic brand devotees.
- Referrals. Engaging careers pages with clearly defined missions and values that resonate can increase the chance for visitors to refer colleagues/friends.
- Retargeting. In the same way that e-commerce sites re-target you that pair of shoes you looked at, retargeting your mission, values and individual roles can be highly effective.
The idea of a careers page is to convert visitors (curious potential candidates) into applicants. Maybe not now, but maybe in the future.
Conversion happens by providing a site that’s simple to use and gives the information that’s most relevant to potential applicants. But given that there’s so much that can go into a careers page, where do you start?
The Alfies is about examining, critiquing, and learning from the best careers pages in the region so that we can all work towards improving their effectiveness.
Every month we look at three careers pages or sites and critique them against crowdsourced criteria from the industry.
This month’s winner, by a pretty big margin, is MooseToys
Let’s look at why.
The first criteria Group is centred around the organisation.
Not every visitor to your page knows of the history of your business, it’s the story, why it exists. In highly competitive markets, a story that resonates can hook people into your brand. Humans thrive on stories, it’s how we make sense of the world around us. MooseToys scored consistently highly across the three judges and they have clearly spent time figuring out how to articulate their story. The phrase SuperHappy is a consistent theme and whilst the site has a young feel it’s clear that children are not the intended audience.
We liked the Meet the Moosies page and the individual stories from the team go beyond the normal collage of meaningless images. The link to the YouTube page is also great for providing more video content to deliver more insight into the business, the mission, and the actual products. The back of the napkin math told us that there are ~1m subscribers across their multiple channels on YouTube. So they’ve built a solid brand following.
The second criteria focuses on the Employer Brand.
Visitors to a careers page most likely want to understand what your business stands for and what they can expect if they worked there. Real-life imagery as opposed to stock images, along with video content does a great job of this.
Moose does a great job of this. There are a plethora of profiles of real people on their site. They’ve included details around their LA and Melbourne locations and their people. Reading some of the profiles shows that some of the team have been with the business for 10 years or more. Regardless of whether that’s intentional or not, it’s a good touch. Showing tenure is a strong hook when used well.
All of this month’s judges felt the congruence between the consumer and employer brands was clear and very strong. This is important because it demonstrates authenticity. No one likes lip service being paid to real-life issues. Which leads us nicely too…
The third criteria digs into the EVP.
Strong employer brands that don’t translate into real-life scenarios are quickly found out. In relatively small talent markets, this is potentially fatal. Nothing spreads quicker than a reputation for culture/retention issues.
Moose define and describe their real-life benefits very clearly. We’d maybe like to define the “why” on some of them. For example, Global Footprint sounds impressive, but why is that a benefit to me if I join you? The organic veggie garden definitely sounds good though!
We’d have liked to have seen some dialogue around D&I, although our judges agreed that the Meet the Moosies page showed some diversity, it never hurts to talk about it.
The business has some solid Glassdoor reviews, we’d encourage any client to make them easily accessible on the page. People are researching more than ever, being open about yours shows you have nothing to hide. Unless of course, you do, then it’s awkward.
The fourth and final criteria looks at usability.
Optimising usability and reducing friction points makes the actual conversion of visitors to applicants as smooth as possible. It should allow visitors to effortlessly find and interact with the information they need.
The jobs page is hosted by Taleo, and the site tells you you’re leaving the Moose site, which is possibly counter-intuitive but not necessarily a huge issue. The actual job search function is simple enough. Searching by location and job type should now be a standard career page function and Taleo does a good enough job of this.
Some of the functionality does feel slightly dated now, however. Google + was shut down in April 2019 but Taleo still offers the chance to log in with this, but not LinkedIn. It’s a needless friction point and one that’s relatively easy for Taleo to overcome and given that the optimised Taleo page is actually pretty easy to navigate, it seems to make intuitive sense to fix this minor issue.
Providing some information about the hiring process is always helpful for applicants to understand what’s next and avoid the feeling of “going into the ether”. General applications jobs also allow candidates who’ve felt a connection to the brand but not found a suitable role to register for future opportunities. Enrolling them straight into a newsletter also provides an opportunity to keep them closer to the brand.
In conclusion;
Moose Toys has built what looks like a solid consumer brand and the time and effort invested in their employer brand has been well spent.
The site’s look and feel are clearly targeted to a very specific person and the genuine feel of the overall site does a good job at appealing to that audience. It’s easy for any brand to overdo the “awesome” factor in order to seem appealing, but Moose has done a good job of staying this side of tasteful.
Some of the application processes are arguably slightly clunky and counterintuitive. But the strength of the brand seems strong enough to make this a non-issue
This has the ability to evolve into an exceptional careers page. Nice work Moosies.
You’re the winner of the October ALFIE.
Quotes from our judges;
“You can tell the things they care about and what they invest in. I probably would go to the pain of setting up an account and applying because of the quality of the careers page.”
Jasmine Ayles -Talent Manager @Appscore Digital Tweet
“It feels like a lot of fun to work there – which can only be a good thing for talent attraction right?”
Scott Comte – Snr Consultant @Crew Talent Advisory Tweet
“If the page sells properly then people will apply, and this one does”
Kevin Awayan – Sourcing lead @Crew Talent Advisory Tweet