Pulling people in through portals

Get your gateway right and you’ll keep hold of your talent
25 SEPTEMBER 2015 | SUE WEEKES

FROM OCTOBER 2015’s RECRUITER MAGAZINE

Get your gateway right and you'll keep hold of your talent

DEFINED: IMPORTANCE OF PORTALS

A web portal is a specially designed web page bringing information together, often considered as an entry point or gateway to a main website. Why do we need a portal when we have career site with vacancies, employee videos and other information about working for the organisation? True, a portal can feature similar/duplicate information but the key difference is that a portal can take the relationship with the candidate a stage further than the corporate careers site. It can also reinforce the brand values and demonstrate good practice in the recruitment process far more than a career site can. You can respond to the candidate’s queries, keep them informed about their application and, if they aren’t successful this time round, explain that they have been moved to a talent pool. 

There is a fine line between a corporate careers site and a career or candidate portal but they both perform different functions. 

“Once a candidate is in the realms of a portal, they expect self-service tools and the ability to communicate with the recruitment team, whether it is about career routes, the application process or onboarding,” says Chris Bogh, technical director at recruitment software provider Eploy. “You need to think of them as two different things that work together.” 

A candidate or career portal, which establishes a personalised and live connection between a prospective employee and an organisation, can make the difference between an individual simply browsing your corporate site for vacancies or deciding that your company is a great place to work.

(1) Give them ownership

The portal’s function is to build the relationship between the organisation and the candidate. These aren’t people who have casually checked out your job vacancies and quickly moved on; they are showing a real interest in working for the organisation.

Personalise the experience as much as possible and make sure they feel ownership of their section of the portal. Make it easy for them to register and create a user profile. 

“I would expect to be able to use a social profile to register and to upload my CV from cloud storage,” says Bogh.

(2) Interact and engage

Do not overload the portal with dry and text-heavy content. “A great career portal relies on interactive tools that really engage users,” says Joanne Parker, head of digital and communications at People 1st, which has created portals for the hospitality industry. 

“Our career map [on the Hospitality Guild site] is a great example of this, giving users a visual representation of the progression routes available.”

Similarly, don’t simply post a list of job vacancies but allow a candidate to click through to an authentic ‘day in the life’ of an employee in that position. “Candidates are not just looking for advice, they want to hear first-hand from others who’ve experienced the industry,” Parker explains.

(3) Obey the rules

A career portal may perform a different function to a career site but clients sometimes forget that many of the same rules relating to usability and ease-of-access still apply, says Russell Dalton, director of Basis Media, which provides career sites and related online services to a number of organisations. 

“The goal is for candidates to apply or register so we can begin to build a talent database,” he says, adding that while employers should “think big” because this is essentially their shop window, “even wow-factor ideas need to be quickly understood”. 

And ensure this user experience extends to the mobile environment. “Remember, 86% of users will visit your site on a mobile device,” he says. 

(4) Seamless journey

Typically, the portal will intersect with the organisation’s applicant tracking system (ATS) once an individual applies for a position. How it does this can make the difference between keeping and losing a candidate. “Candidates want to remain on the same site,” says Dalton. “So ensure this is a seamless journey.” 

As well as a smooth experience technically, it also needs to be seamless in terms of the brand. Bogh says even some big consumer names still aren’t following through with their own branding once the candidate applies and finds themselves in the ATS. 

“You really need to think about the journey and ensure you try the candidate experience for yourself,” he says. “The website/portal will have been built by a third party or internally, and the ATS provided by the software vendor. The discussions sometimes happen separately, but the two sides need to work together.”

(5) Ensure consistency 

This consistency should apply to every aspect of the portal and its content.

Dalton explains that candidates expect the brands they know and love to put the same level of care and excitement into their career offering as they do their consumer site. “Same impact, same creative delivery,” he says. 

And Bogh agrees, adding that a consistent voice is crucial. “If the brand talks in one way but the job descriptions and emails/communication from the recruitment team talk in another, a candidate will notice. It is vital everyone involved takes on board the importance of tone of voice.”

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