Finance and accounting firms are bolstering their online recruitment efforts -- revamping career websites, entering the social media space and putting a human face on a corporate entity.
According to The Wall Street Journal, this might indicate that more hiring is on the horizon. Companies that make investments on their career sites may be trying to get a head start on attracting talent. Career site makeovers might also be a part of an employer branding effort aimed at younger prospective employees to show firms' more interesting and dynamic sides.
But it could also be a question of appearance: Career portals are an extension of a company's public image, according to Bjorn Wigeman of PotentialPark Communications, an online recruitment research firm that ranks career portals based on attributes that job seekers find important, like innovation and emotional appeal.
So how do they stack up? Finance and accounting firms ranked high on PotentialPark's list, probably because these are the companies that attract a high caliber of job seekers, according to Wigeman. He also said that these companies invest more effort into their career portals because that is the best way to showcase their "softer side," offer inspiration, appeal to visitors' emotional centers, and showcase the names and faces of happily employed workers. "All the things the investor relations site won't tell you," he said.
According to PotentialPark's research, 80% of candidates go to the company's own Web site to find information.
Here's an in-depth look at the very different online recruitment efforts of three finance firms, all of which were ranked highly in the PotentialPark study.
Deloitte and Its Social Strategy
Deloitte's online outreach mission is to brand themselves as a place where you can have a career and a life, according to Missy Babcock, who leads the recruiting and branding strategy for the accounting and professional services organization. The firm, which ranked 18 on the PotentialPark list, launched a brand new recruiting campaign in late February, with a new micro-site, Facebook page, Twitter account and a YouTube channel.
The micro-site includes goodies like the favorite TV shows of their employees, what schools they went to, what majors they took, and whether they like Jay-Z better than Coldplay. The Twitter feed has a different employee every week tweeting about how their day is going. Sample tweet from Audit partner Bennett Shuldman last week: "In the office working on a proposal for 8 subs of client holding co."
"Our only product is our people; we don't make anything else," said Babcock. "So we have to show them off."
Deloitte also has a dedicated Facebook page for potential hires. According to Babcock, candidates need not worry about recruiters snooping around their profiles. "Everything we do on Facebook is passive -- we're not going to go and look at your profile and see what you're doing Friday night," she said.
Rob Whittier, a Chicago-based manager, is one of the "human faces" touting Deloitte's accomplishments -- in a video about sustainability, in an employee profile showcasing his love for mountaineering and in a recruiting ad for MBA applicants. Since being on the site, he said he receives about one email a day from interested applicants, many of whom also add him on Facebook. "They're all questions about work-life balance," he said. "That's what people want to know about."
What if a featured employee leaves the firm? Whittier said that they would be in "no rush to pull down the profile, because a degree of attrition is expected at a consulting firm." What matters, he added, is that they were people with amazing experiences and they used to, at some point, work at Deloitte.
UBS's Members Only Approach
Second on PotentialPark's list and first among finance companies is UBS, which developed an interactive password-protected Web portal, where potential employees looking for experienced positions can log in to watch videos of both the leadership and employees.
But not everybody is able to take advantage of this: Ron Ransom, head of business acquisition and integration at UBS, said that only those who are given the password to the portal by headhunters or recruiters are able to access it. Positions for experienced hires are never done through job sites, he said. Instead, a branch manager may "court" an advisor working elsewhere for months, and sometimes years, developing a relationship that, if successful, leads to a commitment to join the firm.
UBS's approach doesn't spotlight social media: The firm's recruiting side has no presence on Facebook or Twitter, and concentrates on maintaining the exclusivity of its Web portal.
E&Y's Open Access
Ernst & Young's online recruitment strategies have a more open approach. Unlike Deloitte's Facebook page, E&Y's Facebook page allows anybody to post on the wall, with someone from the firm replying to queries and comments personally.
Dan Black, director of campus recruiting for the firm, said that the point is to show that E&Y is more than a big accounting firm, and to do this, it has to go to where recruits hang out -- on Facebook. "We found that 82% of people spent 30 minutes a day on social networking sites," he said. "There was a space where up to four years ago we weren't doing anything."
Deborah Compagner, who leads the firm's social networking campaign, said that the company wants to reach recruits at "their convenience, not ours." The tone on Facebook is "more personal and casual, but never unprofessional," she said. "And we don't take it down if someone puts something negative out there."
Ernst & Young's career portal was ranked third in the PotentialPark report, and has a dizzying array of information. The portal has two separate tools for entry-level applicants and experienced hires: EY Insight, and EY Experience, respectively. Both have what the firm calls 360-degree views of life at the firm, including the video testimonials and audio clips from employees and articles about career paths. Both were revamped recently.
Write to Shareen Pathak