I grew up in New York in the ’70s and ’80s and there was a famous public service ad that ran many nights with the eerie message:
“It’s 10pm, do you know where your children are?”
I’ve been reminded of that ad lately as I look at job descriptions these days and wonder if employers/recruiters know where they are at any moment.
To illustrate the point, I’m going to show you what a candidate would see if they were interested in working for a San Francisco social Media company called ThisMoment.
Step 1: Candidate Does Google Search
Let’s start off with a simple search of “Thismoment Careers” on Google.
This starts off simple enough — you see Thismoment.com’s own Web site. Though, unfortunately, because Thismoment doesn’t tag its Careers/jobs pages with words like “Careers” and “Jobs” (many employers don’t!), and because candidates often want a non-employer perspective, some candidates might be inclined to click on one of the other search results.
Let’s say they click on the #10 result (SimplyHired).
Step 2: Candidate Clicks on SimplyHired Result
When a candidate clicks on the SimplyHired result, they get the following page:
Let’s say the candidate clicks the Intermediate Level Custom Solutions Dev job highlighted above.
If they do, they first get offered an option to join a SimplyHired Job alert (below).
Step 3: Candidate Gets SimplyHired Email Capture Request
Step 4: Candidate is Taken to FINS Technology Site
In this case, the candidate chose to skip the Simply Hired job alert and (hoping to finally be sent to the ThisMoment job description).
Amazingly, the candidate is sent off to another job board instead: FINS Technology (below).
On FINS, a candidate sees the job description (above), albeit poorly formatted and with some jobs in the lower-left from other companies hiring.
If the candidate is still interested in pursing the Thismoment dev job, and they click “Apply Now”, they are then sent not to the same job ad on the DICE job board below.
Step 5: Candidate Taken to DICE Job Board
The job ad on DICE (below) has a more nicely formatted job description and, of course, some alternative jobs down the street from Thismoment for the candidate to consider.
If the candidate is still hanging in there and clicks “Apply Now” on DICE, they get…
Step 6: Candidate Gets DICE Survey Pop-Up
…a pop-up to fill in a survey asking for their salary information.
Step 7: Candidate Finally Arrives at the Employer’s Job Page
If the candidate cancels out of the DICE pop-up, or completes the survey, they finally arrive at the job description for the dev job on Thismoment.com (below)
For recruiters who care about Candidate experience/engagement, you might test what same type of hurdles candidates are jumping through as they try to land on your job opportunity.
How Did the Thismoment Job Get Commodotized Across all These Web Sites?
I call this whole process the “commodization” of job descriptions because of the way the JD is treated in many cases like a commodity. Here’s one Merriam Webster definition of “commodity”:
“a good or service whose wide availability typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors (as brand name) other than price”
By now you’re of course asking “how did this poor Thismoment JD get so commoditized?”
We will answer that question in a future post.
