Human beings are social and creative creatures and when these individuals trade their time for money we all call that work. Most of us have had to or will need to look for work at some point in our lives. Finding the right job can be a difficult process and many company websites do not make it any easier. Many HR Departments have given up and focused on Monster or Career Builder as their solution. As a prospective employee your frustration level will be high searching through multiple Human Resources websites only to be consistently challenged by the interfaces you umm… face.

It’s obvious that if there is one area that is usually overlooked in the grand scheme of things it is the Jobs, Careers or Employment pages of a businesses website. The usability factor of the forms alone can be enough to scare off would-be recruits. From my personal experience you must use Windows XP and IE6 as your web delivery device or head for the bread line. Some searches simply won’t work in anything but. The HR sections of a large company website are typically built by programmers all by themselves since they usually aren’t “sexy” enough for the web designers to pay close attention to. I labored through a handful of unforgiving and unattractive (but some really nice ones too) HR pages to bring you this study of a few random, but popular, Human Resources pages.

The New York Times

Plain as Newsprint

Really?

The New York Times is considered “the paper of record” and I assumed they would have considered their career page. Alas, that is not the case. The NYTimes, founded in 1851, seems convinced that using the most ugly and difficult interface ever is the best way to attract future Pulitzer Prize winners to their staff. True, this is an off the shelf solution used by many other companies that could also care less about their image to potential employees. Even the page title is labeled “Applicant Home”. Yuck. To be honest, I just expected better.

Wells Fargo

Clean but Many Many Choices to be made.

Wells Fargo is the 4th largest bank in the U.S. and their careers page shows it! If I had to give a prize to this web page it would be respectable fourth place. The focus on India on the careers page is a little off putting but if you have been looking for a reason to move to Hyderabad and work for one of the world’s last largest bank then your search is over!

Adobe Systems Incorporated

Moody but Good

In the Fortune 100? Sign me Up!

Mysterious and lovely, just like their software updates. Nice navigation with a touch of Flash content to remind you where you’ll be working. I never understood the reason to slam the entire site left but to each his own. Extreme negative space may be the new hotness. Adobe constantly redesigns their site to improve the navigation and make content easier to access. And why shouldn’t they? It’s not like they have to pay for the software right?

Target Corporation

Shiny Happy People

Hmmmm… What does she know that we don’t?

Target has always had one of the strongest brands in this country and their career page reflects their commitment to creating a great atmosphere for their employees. But Target also has long suffered from the design disease “Website That’s Fractured” (or WTF?) leaving the poor user to try and remember where they are within the site. I understand it’s probably rare that a visitor would shop the main site and then look for a job all in one go but I’m sure it’s not unheard of. The navigation and its location changes often as you surf through the entire Target site. I can’t fault the great minimalistic design and professional layout but it would be easier if the navigation had more consistency as a whole.

Best Buy

Nice and Easy

Two thumbs up! Best Buy has a great career site now but the glaring problem used to be is that it opened in a new window from their main site. I’m glad the retail giant figured out that forcing open a new window goes against Web Usability 101 and tends to confuse.

I like the shiny happy people on the site and the easy navigation. I know what to do and where to go when I land here. Best Buy has made strides in employee communication and retention thanks in part to Blue Shirt Nation, a dedicated social site to all of Best Buy’s 140,000 employees. The recession has taken it’s toll on the electronics store but their HR Department still trys to put on a happy face. I like that.

Starbucks Coffee

Low Energy, High Carb and Easy to Read Design

The Fortune 100 Best badge says it all doesn’t it? Nice and easy layout with some great call-to-action content. The Starbucks job search engine is also fine piece of work. You can easily search and find current jobs quicker than you can say “Raspberry Mocha Chip Frappuccino”! I also like the slogan “Our success depends on your success” right up front and the photojournalist style pictures throughout the site. No stock photography here. A great site design and informative content. Fill’er up!

General Motors

Great Call to Action

Wonderful Attention to Detail. Video is a Great Tool for HR.

The Problem Starts Here.

Sheer beauty! GM has put some serious planning and horsepower behind their Human Resources site design. Not only is it easy to access from anywhere on GM’s company site, but also it’s structured in a way that easy to find content and learn about the company. The true problem is that this is all a cover to the older database search. The back-end is still fairly easy to use so I can’t fault them completely for that.  This is a wonderful site design with some real thought put into User Experience and call to action.

Google Inc.

Simple and to the Point. Typical Google.

Fountains!

What does the HR site for the company voted the best place to work for? Like this obviously! What else can you say about it? It’s a Google search for careers within Google. ‘Nuff said.
In summary Human Resources, Job Listings, Career Centers, etc. need to take a closer look at whom they are trying to attract. Designing for the user of your site should be your number one goal and especially in the HR section of your website. College graduates are using your website to grade your company before they ever submit a resume.

Take notice! Don’t even get me started on the usability and design horrors within mega-job sites such as Monster, Career Builder or Yahoo! HotJobs. These black holes are where humans are viewed as digital capital to be consumed by spammers and ill-informed headhunters with the occasional job offer. Those are for another posting…

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Image via CrunchBase

Micheal Durwin has a great rant here about the importance of embracing mobile websites. When I first read this I thought that you could easily remove the word “mobile” and you would see a blog post that would resemble something from years ago explaining the vitures of being online!

40% of mobile users have Internet access (likely to triple in the next 3 years). That’s 546 MILLION people! If you’re in charge of marketing for a retailer and a mobile website is not part of your IMMEDIATE strategy, you should be fired. You just cost your company 546 million potential customers. A mobile site is not complicated, as a matter of fact it is a much less complicated site than a regular website. SInce you’re limited in the amount of information you can show, and bandwidth is limited, it’s easier to narrow your offerings down to basics like contact, store finder, etc. Good God man, my site even has a mobile version!

In recent weeks I’ve  been doing last minute baby and house shopping. I’ll often find myself wondering if something is in stock at another branch of Lowe’s, where the closest Office Max is, are there specials on diapers, etc. How often do you think I’ve been able to access a mobile site? Right, never. I’ll admit that I’m an early adopter, cash permitting, but I’ve had an iPhone for over a year now. But that also makes me a more frequent user AND proponent to my sphere of influence. Do you really want to ignore me?

• Half of iPhone users responded to a mobile ad in some way
• iPhone users call an 800 number, the most common call-to-action, twice as often as non-iPhon users
• 20% of iPhone users visit a mobile website compared to 14% of non-iPhone users
• 25% of iPhone users purchased a product or visited the store of a mobile marketer

So, for those retailers out there without a mobile site, next time you don’t make your quarterly numbers, look to the marketing guy. After all, what better way to differentiate yourself from your competitor than to be more accessible to your customers.

Via: MDurwin.com

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Eden Prairie: Home of Rastopia; Rasmussen College recruiting goes high-tech: By CHRIS OLWELL – Sun Newspapers

A dozen Eden Prairie college students had the opportunity to be stars for the day last summer, and some are now being featured on a new Rasmussen College website.

It’s not really a website. Rasmussen already has a website.

“This is a web module, which is meant to be a standalone experience to drive people to want to contact Rasmussen,” said Patrick Seagrist, the executive producer of the Rastopia project for DreamWorld Studios, the Eden Prairie company that designed and built the site … or module.

It was a big project. DreamWorld interviewed 80 students from four Rasmussen campuses to represent their academic programs on the site, which is designed like a city. Someone interested in a degree in the medical field goes to the hospital. Want to be a paralegal? Check out the courthouse.

Charles Rice is a pharmacy technician student at the Eden Prairie Rasmussen campus, and he’s featured in the pharmacy of the hospital building in Rastopia. He volunteered to be filmed for the site when he saw a flyer offering numerous perks.

“It was something like, be a star for the day,” Rice said. He said he had a good time, but he was heavily medicated that day and he thinks it shows in his performance.

“Be a star for the day” was the theme of the ad campaign, and that meant DreamWorld had to put on a show for volunteers. They picked up all the students from their campuses and drove them in limos to their studio, where they were treated to food and drinks and makeup for the ladies.

“[The flyer] said free lunch, so I was like I’ll do it,” said business management student Brian Olson, who appears on the site in the board room of the business center. “It was really fun. Everybody was a blast to work with.”

The students weren’t sure when they finished shooting if they would actually appear on the site. Those who appear were notified with an email containing a link to their visages on the site.

“It blew my mind when they sent me an email saying, hey click here,” Olson said.

Kurt Schmidt works at DreamWorld and built the Rastopia site.

“Our goal was to make it appealing to a younger generation and make it sticky,” Schmidt said. “Sticky” is an industry term that means visitors to the site will find enough interesting content to stick around for a while.

DreamWorld and Rasmussen can use an analysis tool to find out all kinds of information about the people who visit the site. They can find out which rooms are most popular and update the site so only the most effective content stays on the site.

“It’s kind of in perpetual beta. You’re never finished,” Schmidt said. “If you look at a site like foodtv.com, that site’s changed every six to eight months.

“[Rastopia] is all modular. We can take pieces and swap them out whenever we want. It’s kind of like Legos.”

While working with the Rasmussen representatives, Schmidt found out they were looking for digital media instructors. Now he teaches a night class at Rasmussen.

Visit www.rastopia.com.

DreamWorld and Rasmussen can use an analysis tool to find out all kinds of information about the people who visit the site. They can find out which rooms are most popular and update the site so only the most effective content stays on the site.

“It’s kind of in perpetual beta. You’re never finished,” Schmidt said. “If you look at a site like foodtv.com, that site’s changed every six to eight months.

“[Rastopia] is all modular. We can take pieces and swap them out whenever we want. It’s kind of like Legos.”

While working with the Rasmussen representatives, Schmidt found out they were looking for digital media instructors. Now he teaches a night class at Rasmussen.

Visit www.rastopia.com.

Visit DreamWorld Studios