Examples from our research and what to learn from them for your candidate experience.
Over the past year, my colleagues at Potentialpark and I have been monitoring career websites, application processes and social media around the world.
We have seen a lot over the years. Lots of "same same". But more and more often we are surprised.
Here are the 9 craziest new examples of what employers do online in 2024.
Which of these do you find hot or not? Which are crazy, applaudable, commendable, or too risky?
No. 1: Loving Your Job
It all starts with love: for HR, the love of the candidate, a good experience, and helping people find their match. And for candidates, loving their work. So what would be more obvious than meeting on Tinder?
You may have heard of Truffls, the "Tinder for jobs". But why go the scenic route when you can go straight to the source, the actual Tinder, and avertise your jobs there?
Gothaer and Witron are examples of German employers who have done it. But it's location-dependent. Have you checked out who's talent hunting in your area? Swipe right to find your new colleague. (Hiring via Tinder may boost your demographics towards singles, but maybe finding a new job helps them finding a partner, too!)
Two questions I'd have to the companies: how did the casting go? And why is he fully clothed?
No. 2: TikTok career playlist
As recently as December 2023, TikTok started piloting a new feature that could be interesting for employers: playlists.
It was only made available to selected accounts with 10k+ followers. The Red Cross (ICRC) was among the lucky ones who got to try it:
I think this could help employers bundle their content for candidates in one place so candidates can scroll and experience the content easily. Even if the account is shared with other departments such as corporate comms.
No. 3: Career Website Landing Pages
Amazin what's happening at Amazon: one of the most valuable brand in the world no longer relies on applications coming in by themselves. They present and explain themselves in more detail than ever:
What you see here are links placed on Amazon's career website that lead to 30 (!) individual landing pages. Each landing page - such as Amazon Entertainment - again displays content: an overview of the different functions, career videos and the open jobs within that specific department.
I think it makes a lot of sense for candidates and for creating more targeted marketing journeys. Personalization was named the key trend in Potentialpark's 2024 Talent Comm study, and I mentioned it as no. 3 of my trends for 2024.
By the way, Meta does the same. So when some of the most popular employers start boosting their career websites, you know skills shortage has hit hard.
And when they do so even in the midst of economic turbulence and layoffs (at least in the US), they probably don't expect the competition for talent to go away any time soon.
No. 4: Benefits Previously Unheard of
When it comes to benefits, most companies go with the usual, like selected from a catalog.
Spain and Germany show us different kinds of benefits:
Benefits can be personalization, too: perks not for everyone, but a part of your workforce who are in that personal situation. Of course it requires an understanding of what different people need that may not be part of the standard catalog of benefits.
No. 5: Your Salaries are Public
Salaries are the most important benefit, the hygenic factor. Now if you like it or not, the days where you could keep it a secret who earns what are probably over.
Not only because more candidates use Glassdoor (20% of students and graduates in Europe, 38% in the US, 23% in Asia). But also because it's talk of the town on Instagram and TikTok, like here:
Now if you publish salary ranges, don't do it like Netflix:
I guess they wanted to show the middle fingers to the legislators who force transparency on unwilling employers. Instead, the middle finger lands in the face of the candidates.
If salary ranges are coming, better use them for marketing purposes and make them meaningful. Like the UK Space Programme:
The range is quite large as well (40.000 - 86.000 Pounds), but slightly more realistic and understandable: the words "starter" and "experienced" make it more of a development from one to the other than a meaningless poker-face exercise.
By the way in case you wondered, look at the bottom right of the screenshot to learn that Astronauts could work "away from home". Good to know.
No. 6: Bot Apply
You know easy apply. But do you know bot apply? Deutsche Bahn, the German railway company, introduced the job application via chat in 10 questions:
Choose your way to apply: online form or chat bot
Applying by chat is not necessarily faster than filling out a form. You still need to drop your CV at some point. However, if you think of how WhatsApp, Discord and ChatGPT work, you realize this is right in line with how communication is changing towards conversation.
Note applicants are not obliged to go that route, they can fill out the form as well. But even if a few percent do it, at a certain hiring volume that can lead to a considerable relief.
No. 7: Nudging
Nudging is the idea to give customers a final nudge from "maybe" to "action" by using psychological hacks.
Hotel booking sites famously do so by telling you "17 people are looking at this room right now" or "book within the next 2 hours to secure the genius discount". They are not waiting but rather pushing you.
I have rarely ever seen nudging on career and job sites and it strikes me as one of the most underused potentials in HR Marketing: being more explicit with calls to action.
German IT consulting firm zeb is one of the few who are experimenting with it:
Besides the rather pleasant design - see the yellow stripe at the bottom saying "APPLY NOW - in 5 minutes". It's not hard to visibly encourage users a bit more than your competitors when hardly anyone does it.
The German version of their jobs even goes a few steps further:
Two things happen: the chat bot pops up called zebra (the company is called zeb...), offering you assistance, and a video testimonial automatically starts, telling you more about the job, with subtitles so you can follow it without sound.
Click through zeb's website, jobs and ATS and you will find many more smart ideas for UX, branding and marketing-driven user guidance.
No. 8: Botnapping
Not an Employer Branding example, but relevant for employers: if you do bots with AI, don't do it like DPD. In an apparent attempt to serve more users smarter with less staff, they went with a rather quick and dirty implementation.
And they got their fair punishment when people on social media published what they had done to exploit and expose it:
Users made it write a poem about a useless parcel delivery chatbot (interestingly it just assumed they meant DPD), made it swear with the f word despite having been told by its programmers not to, and got it to actively dissuade everyone from using DPD.
And it goes on:
It ends up telling a story of how bad DPD is and ends with a haiku calling itself useless.
So again, cherish new tech, but don't just dump it on users for more efficiency. But test it and make it work for your audience, while testing it against potential abuse.
(Also what might happen is that people no longer need to subscribe to the premium version of ChatGPT and pay for their own tokens when they can simply use your bot for their everyday AI questions.)
No. 9: Only One Employer Could Pull This Off
Quiz question: which employer posted this image?
Hint: has nothing to do with chess, nor with pizza delivery.
For the solution, mark the white text behind this: German Custom service. <--
No other employer could have done it. And it relates job purpose.
Be unique, stand out and leave an imprint. I hope you have found some inspiration today. If I can give you one final piece of advice: brains run on fun, so have fun, and so will your candidates!
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