Toolkit
Addition
Toolkit:
Career Explorer
I'm sure
you've heard the following axiom used by Realtors in describing
the three most important aspects of a property for sale. They are,
in ranked order of importance, "Location, Location, and Location".
On the Web, the story is not much different. Why does anyone visit
any Website?
Content,
Content, and more Content.
If your
site doesn't have interesting information to offer that literally
compels your target audience to:
1) Seek it out, and
2) Make repeat visits, then:
You are
the proud owner/manager of a dying website. As sites become more
expensive to design, develop, and maintain, this can become an albatross
around your company's neck. Recognize your problems now, and take
steps to solve them.
Take a look
(or another peek, if you've already been there) at Microsoft's Career
Explorer site. It recognizes a fundamental truth about workers:
They work because they have to. Despite this, workers have aspirations,
families, and a need for both personal and collective fulfillment.
Understanding a broader perspective of your target audience yields
significant benefits over the long term.
Career Explorer
offers a combination of the following:
- Job searches
by skills and location, including an interactive database.
- Candid
interplay between present Microsoft employees about working conditions
at various levels of the corporate hierarchy. Plus video spiels
by current employees about 'The Microsoft Life'.
- Discussion
area, sometimes live, with recruiters and employees describing
the life cycle of their Job hunt, Job expectations, Employer promises,
and Work realities at Microsoft.
- Digitized
Video, Audio, & state of the Art Web Technologies
In conjunction
with ZDNet, this site exemplifies the best of Web Recruiting. You
should leave this site with one idea clear in your head: Job Posting
is not enough. Anyone and their out of work brother-in-law can throw
job reqs up on a site. Your posting is competing with millions of
other postings, and sooner than you think it will be competing with
over a billion others. You'll have a better chance of hitting the
Lottery (pick your State) than placing someone in the Job listed.
See if you
can figure out the next level down that your Job seeker can be reached
at. Is it fly fishing in Montana? The climate of the San Francisco
Bay Area? Change of Seasons north of Atlanta? Or does she subordinate
the regional aspects to some part of the benefits package that might
make This Job reach out and grab her attention? Is your site bettering
her chances for professional growth? Put yourself in their shoes
for a short while. What would you want to see? What would bring
you back?
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Search Tips
Search
Tip: Internet Sleuth
Subject
searches can be very fruitful. A great tool you may not be aware
of is Internet Sleuth. For general subject search tools, go to the
center of the page. For broader category searches, use the left
side of the page. Databases are divided into types such as:
- Reviewed
Sites
- New Sites
- Web directories/
Search Engines
- News,
Business, Finance, Software
- Usenet
& Discussion Groups
Using Internet
Sleuth has the following advantage over search engines. You can search
once, but get results from multiple sources, giving you hotlinks with
brief descriptions.
You can
use the left side of the screen to figure out the proper categories
to search in. Though time consuming, the alphabetical listings are
pretty comprehensive. Internet Sleuth finds the databases you want
and lets you search through them without ever leaving the site.
For example, try searching for employment or technology in the search
box. Dig down through several layers, narrowing your search where
appropriate. As always, the key to successful Web searching is persistence
and perspective. Keep hacking away at the target, remembering that
sometimes the most successful attack comes after circling your prey
first.
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