In this Issue:
Topic of the Month: "Extra! Extra! Read All About It!"
Announcing the ConstructionJobs.com Scholarship
Article: A Chocolate on Their Pillow Isn't Enough
This Issue's Cartoon!
Extra! Extra! Read All About It!
When I was a kid, I loved getting the Sunday paper. I couldn’t wait to see the comics in their full-color splendor or pore at leisure through the giant sports section, reading the summaries of the college football games or scanning every baseball box score.
But a few weekends ago, I got in late on a Saturday evening and wanted to know who was leading the U.S. Open at Oakmont and whether or not the Yankees had gained any ground on the Red Sox. Without thinking, I opened the internet at my home computer and knew, within about thirty seconds, the golf leaderboard and the AL East standings.
It’s 2007. I wasn’t going to wait until a newspaper arrived on my driveway the following morning to find out what I wanted to know. Truth is, I don’t get a newspaper anymore.
That little vignette might be something to remember the next time you’re deciding how best to use your money to advertise a position your company needs to fill with the best candidate. I’m not equating sports with the efficient running of your company, but I am reminding you that the best candidates today are smart, eager, and efficient (all excellent traits!), and they’re coming to websites like ConstructionJobs.com by the hundreds and thousands to find the positions that are most attractive, current, and challenging.
So, if yours is a company which has always sought to fill positions by listing it in the local newspaper, take a second to reconsider that policy: newspaper charge you more for larger ads with greater content. That is not the case at ConstructionJobs.com; your posting on our site can be as long and detailed as you like, and the fee doesn’t budge.
A newspaper reaches a finite group of people and is limited by geography; a website is accessible from anywhere. We’re a mobile society, and the ideal candidate for a job in Boston might be in Dallas, Denver, or Durham.
Finding the exact right position in a newspaper is extremely daunting for a candidate: he has to patiently work through hundreds of listings that might say “construction” but are, in fact, not remotely connected to his specialty. On the other hand, a website allows for very specific searches, so a candidate can slot himself into proper channels: “Construction” is narrowed down to “HVAC,” then to “Superintendent,” and so on.
If you suddenly need to edit your position, a website allows that, as quickly as you can type the changes. A newspaper can get those changes made in a day or two. In that time, the best candidate, the one you want, may have found something else, somewhere else.
In fact, it is the extreme competitiveness of the modern construction market that demands that you consider posting your urgent jobs on websites like ConstructionJobs.com. Candidates these days know they need to move quickly to get a job ahead of their competition, and they are going to turn to the internet to see what the best companies are offering.
And a candidate who is eager to tackle the next challenge in his career isn’t going to wait until that huge Sunday paper lands on his driveway. He’s not going to plow through columns of tiny black-and-white print in hopes of getting lucky. He’s going to check the Internet now, and an hour from now, and later tonight, at an ever-growing and ever-changing landscape of positions and possibilities.
Your ad can be the one he sees, but he’s much more likely to see it, in full detail and in color, on ConstructionJobs.com.
Michael Connell
Sales Executive
Construction Jobs, Inc.
Announcing the ConstructionJobs.com Scholarship
The Sales Executives at ConstructionJobs.com spend all day every day talking to leaders in the field of construction and the men and women who fill the vital construction roles of project manager, foreman, superintendent, laborer, estimator, and so on. Those discussions have allowed us to understand the growing gap between the demanding positions and careers available in construction on the one hand … and the dwindling number of young people entering the field to accept those positions and become the next generation of ambitious and distinguished builders.
The younger people being drawn into the field are, in fact, of great promise and possessive of the work ethic and skill that has always defined construction in America. But it’s simply that the numbers of young people entering the field is not sufficient to meet the needs that are arising.
With that dilemma in mind, ConstructionJobs.com is very excited to announce the ConstructionJobs.com Scholarship for Students in Construction, a $1000 award which we will present to 10 students a year, 5 per semester. This is a cause to which we are dedicated, and we invite you to take advantage of it!
The Scholarship is up and running, and we have, in fact, already awarded $1000 to five students who are enrolled in school for the Fall 2007 semester in programs such as construction management, civil engineering, and electrical engineering from all around the country: in fact, the first five recipients are enrolled in colleges in Florida, Nebraska, Arizona, Georgia, and New Mexico. Those students were selected from the applications we received at our website, and you can access that application at ConstructionJobs.com or BuildingFutureBuilders.org.
It was quite a thrill to read through the applications we received and select the winners, for they are an impressive cross-section of future leaders and bright minds. We hope the $1000 we contribute to their education will encourage them and perhaps spur others on to apply for future semesters.
Who can apply? We accept scholarship applications from anyone who is in school for a construction-related field and who has is also working in the field or has been working in the field (through internships or past employment). Who can win? Anyone who is bright, eager, hard-working and committed to the proud industry we’re trying to support.
We look forward to seeing your application for the Spring 2008 semester!
A Chocolate on Their Pillow Isn't Enough
By Peter Weddle
Jonathan Tisch, the Chairman and CEO of Loews Hotels, has a book out called "Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough." It's a study of organizational behavior from the luxury hotel perspective. Tisch believes the key to success--whether your company is a hotelier, a clothing retailer or a fast food chain--is to turn customers into guests. That involves learning "the art of welcome," a set of principles for delivering the extraordinary customer experience. It's a concept that I believe holds equally as much promise for recruiters.
Tisch profiles a number of companies in the book, but his description of clothing retailer Urban Outfitters is particularly revealing. According to Tisch, the company is better than most when it comes to harnessing "the power of welcome to attract customers" into its stores. Attraction, of course, is a challenge for us, as well. We need the Career area on our corporate sites to attract a generous stream of great talent because alternative forms of sourcing are both expensive and time-consuming.
So, what does Urban Outfitters do to transform their stores into customer magnets? Simple as it sounds, they work hard at keeping people fascinated with the look of their stores. The company changes their clothing displays every day and executes full store redesigns twice a month. They believe they must not only attract customers, but give them a reason to come back over and over and over again. In essence, the Urban Outfitters definition of a guest is a repeat visitor.
It's also the way we should define the perfect guest in the Career area on our corporate sites. Our goal should be to get the best customers--the passive, high caliber prospects we most want to "buy" our organization's value proposition as an employer--to come back to our site over and over and over again. The way to do that, Tisch explains, is to invest the time and effort necessary to make our "store" virtually irresistible by creating "a moment of unexpected satisfaction." If Urban Outfitters can do that to sell a $65 pair of jeans, we can certainly do it to sell a $65,000 high performing prospect.
How do we create an "unexpected moment of satisfaction" in our Career areas? I think it involves four discrete steps:
Step 1: Create channels of tailored content. No guest thinks of themselves as a generic visitor, so it's important that our online experience provide a way for them to identify personally with the information and features we provide. The best channels, therefore, are those that offer tailored content by career path so that sales professionals visit a separate part of the store and are sold with a different vocabulary and set of facts than finance and accounting or information technology or operations professionals. Equally as important, as the Urban Outfitters example makes clear, the content in each tailored channel must change regularly--at least monthly--if you want the best and brightest to return to your site frequently enough for you to sell them.
Step 2: Offer content that builds relationships. Active job seekers are in a hurry; they'll buy quickly. Passive prospects take their time; they want to get to know your employer. They aren't looking for a job; they're looking for a career advancement opportunity. You can't, therefore, induce them to make a purchase with a traditional transactional experience. You have to build a relationship with them. That's an over-used term, to be sure, but it accurately describes the content creation process for an effective Career area online. As we all know from our own experience in life, successful relationships take both time and hard work. Convincing top talent that they should devote their career to our employer is no less of a challenge. It requires constant creativity, sensitivity and commitment. To infuse your content with those attributes, shape it so that it always answers a passive prospect's most important question: What's in it for them?
Step 3: Communicate with a dialogue not a soliloquy. Clear and continuous communication is the foundation of successful relationships. Without it, customers simply can't be sold effectively: It's much more difficult to persuade them to buy our employer's value proposition and much more likely that a misunderstanding--what you and I call a poor person-job fit--will occur. Communication, however, is not a one-way street. And, in the best Career areas on corporate Web-sites, it's actually two two-ways streets, running in parallel. The first is the dialogue the site provides between prospects and recruiters. That two-way interaction can occur via a blog, a Q&A feature or direct e-mail. The second is the dialogue the site promotes between and among its customers. Peer-to-peer interaction can occur via a discussion forum, listserv or bulletin board. In both cases, the goal is to make visitors feel like welcomed guests by adding a personal touch to what all too frequently seems like an impersonal experience.
Step 4: Deliver evidence that matters. The best talent are savvy consumers. They take employers' claims--about their employment brand, open positions and opportunities--with a healthy dose of skepticism. As most of us do when considering any important purchase, they look for proof that their expectation about an organization will come true once they're hired. What evidence matters most to them? The words of their peers. The single most powerful element of proof a company can offer on its site is the testimonials of its employees that describe their day-to-day work experience. As with every other form of content on the site, however, these vignettes should change frequently. Once a quarter is best as that pace ensures the evidence always seems fresh and covers more of the career fields for which your company recruits.
Recruiting departments are almost always understaffed and overworked, so it's easy to fall into corner-cutting behaviors. Putting a chocolate on someone's pillow--creating a Career area that provides a small, but tasty morsel of information about your company--ought to be enough to convince a customer that they're welcome. In the War for the Best Talent, however, it's not. The competition is doing more to sell the visitors to their site, and that means we must too. We must transform our candidates into guests by providing a moment of unexpected satisfaction over and over and over again.
Since 2000, ConstructionJobs.com has been the most recognized employment resource for construction and engineering professionals online. No matter what size of company, we are committed to serving our customers so they receive the most out of their subscription. For assistance with your account
or to renew services, please contact us at (828)251-1344 or email sales@constructionjobs.com.
Happy Recruiting,
The ConstructionJobs Team
