I had an email earlier from an IT recruitment agency asking for advice on "redesigning and rearchitecting our web site." This was not a personal request; it was a questionnaire that looks like it was sent to all the contacts in their database. I find mailshots from agencies that are not specific to particular jobs annoying - and actually I get a lot of mailshots from agencies that are so wide of the mark that I instantly add them to my "Do Not Contact" list and the email blacklist.
What bugs me about this particular email is not so much that it is spam. I presumably have contacted these people in the past about some job or other, so we have the obligatory "business relationship." No, it is the slightly misguided "crappy website in the making" nature of the questions that makes me want to address it.
Everyone thinks their website is going to gleam when in fact it will just glisten briefly until the dust sticks to it. Still, everyone loves pontificating on questionnaires, so here are my thoughts out in the open. This way literally people (rather than person) get the benefits of my "wisdom."
What in your opinion makes a good recruitment web site?
Search. It is all about search. And, duh, the jobs. If you haven't got all the jobs, I'm not interested. When I'm looking for contract work I use one of the big job specific search engines. I only visit your site if the information I need is not in the advert - in which case you should have put it there.
What persuades you to use/visit a website?
Content. Content. Content!
If you haven't got content that is interesting to me, then I won't visit you. Jobs aren't sufficient - I can get those from all of your competitors or aggregated on JobServe and the like. If you want to get, and keep, my attention you need lots of high quality content on subjects that I am interested in.
If the web site had a blog feature would you read it?
Would you contribute to it?
These two questions together are just astonishingly clueless.
No. The fact that you are asking if I would contribute to your blog suggests a fundamental misconception of how blogs work. People write blogs for a variety of reasons, but in order to get people to visit your website isn't one of them. Why would I use your blog software to write my blog? Here's why I might:
Because I like your blog software. Not going to happen. You are a recruitment agency. Why would your software be better than, say, the software provided by a Blogging Software Company ?
Because I like your site. You are going to have to offer me something that I can get an emotional attachment to before I will think about doing free work to promote your company. Communities require community participation. You can't bootstrap that without giving away something that the community wants.
Because the content is good and I want to be associated with that. This could work, but if you are asking me to write content for you, you are clearly not planning to provide the content yourself. So we have a bootstrap issue. Who exactly is the first blogger comparing themselves to?
Because I don't have a blog and this is as good as any. Ok, firstly see the earlier point about the software - still, you could install wordpress and have something adequate, so why not? Well, the good bloggers are already taken. So you are looking for the guys who are technical, literate, competent, don't have a blog, but want one. That sounds like slim pickings to me. The non-technical illiterate incompetents aren't going to reflect well on your company.
Because we are going to aggregate your blog into our site. Well and good, but the way you ask the question doesn't suggest that. If you do, though, you will have to go and find the good bloggers in order to keep the quality and throughput high. Worse, if I am reasonably au fait with the industry I will already be subscribed to the good ones, so I will see a lot of redundant content in your aggreblog. The guys who are not au fait with the industry? Well, are you sure you want to be selling those guys to your clients?
So. If you want a decent blog, you're going to have to write it yourself. That means you have to hire an interesting writer to produce content. If you publish press releases disguised as blog entries, nobody will read them. If you publish adverts disguised as product reviews, nobody will read them.
The best advice I can give you is to hire someone who already writes an interesting and well subscribed blog and bribe them to divert some of their content exclusively to your website. I'll bet you a dollar you don't do this though.
What features of recruitment web sites do you dislike?
Well, I certainly never apply for jobs where I am required to provide all my details through the agency website. I have a CV, and I will submit that or nothing.
Other than that, unless I'm actually on contract through you, your website is somewhere I visit as a desperate last measure.
Is there anything that you would like to see on the site?
Content. Content. Content.
Competently written articles about running a small business. Technical articles. Articles about managing your finances as a contractor. Articles about issues related to IR35. Articles about ethical issues. Articles about the professional organisations open to us. As soon as you post a single boring article that is obviously paid for by an advertiser, however, you lose all your credibility. Don't even think about doing that.
Forums with interesting, eloquent posts about topics that relate to me. Discussion forums about the articles. Long rambling threads about dreadful mistakes we made earlier in our careers. All managed with a deft hand of moderation so that off-topic discussions abound but illiterate or offensive tirades do not.
Frankly, if you want to create a community, it's going to be a lot of work. In my opinion it will be worth it, but I have serious doubts that you're prepared to invest the kind of time and effort that is required. But then, if you don't put that kind of effort in the people arriving at your website will tend to be there through serendipity or misfortune.
Take my advice or leave it. Hey, I publish my blog in black text on a blue-grey background; what do I know? Still, please don't produce another cookie-cutter "community" website with five contributors and three readers (one of whom is staff) and kid yourselves that it's what you wanted.