What do job seekers think about your department?

Just as organisations can use social network sites to judge the relative merits of potential staff (per my post Locating and learning about future public employees), websites are allowing people to judge the relative merits of potential employers.

How does your department rate?

There's no doubt that people research potential employers online, and in a 'seller's market' for skilled labour it's critical for employers to put their best foot forward.

There are some fantastic job seeker/careers sections in organisational websites - with IBM, Microsoft and Intel having always stood out for me as offering exceptionally good information for job seekers - not surprising given the calibre of the people they wish to attract.

My agency is progressively improving its job section for a similar reason. There's a limited pool of talented people and we need to present them with good reasons as to why they should choose us over other organisations - whether public or private.

What should be in a jobs section
Some of the features I consider important in a jobs section include;

Procedural information

• Complete job information - everything a job seeker needs to apply online
• Support tools to make it easier to apply for jobs - particularly for those who are not good at expressing themselves on paper (but shine in interviews) or are unfamiliar with the documentation required by your organisation (such as public sector selection criteria)
• Explanation of the process and timeframes for recruitment (so they don't take another job when they've heard nothing for four weeks) - even better is to provide a 'package delivery' model whereby they can log in to see where their job application is up to in your process at any time (like Fed Express and DHL)

Organisational selling

• Information helping employees to understand your organisation's purpose and goals
• Details on why your organisation is a good place to work (pay is rarely the top reason!)
  
• Social aspects of your organisation - how do the strangers you employ become part of your organisational family
• Developmental opportunities, training and challenges
• Community initiatives - how does your organisation participate with the broader community and 'give back' effort, time and support

Locational information

• Information (profiles) on your locations (what it's like to work in particular offices)
• Support for people who may be relocating (particularly for Canberra or country town locations)
  

Career profiling

• Profiles of different career tracks and jobs in your organisation, based on people doing those roles and why they like them
• Career selector tools which support people in finding the jobs in your organisation which best match their disposition and skills (such as at DEEWR's Jobjuice site) 

Beyond your own website
It's also important to consider factors beyond your own website.

Job seekers are influenced by their peers, by news and community sites, social networking sites, online encyclopedias, by recruitment websites and by specialist employer rating sites such as Glassdoor (discussed in the Sydney Morning Herald article, In good company).

Personally I keep a eye out on highly influential sites for Australians, such as LinkedIn, Wikipedia and Facebook, as well as the job sites and popular forums discussing child support topics.

I also monitor where people go when entering and exiting our websites, which provides an indication of other sites which may influence job seeker preferences.

What does your organisation do online to help attract the best applicants?

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Participative budget edemocracy initiative in Brazil provides insights into the future

Brought to my attention by a reader, the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais, has begun using evoting to support it's participatory budget setting process.

Documented in the research report, e-Participatory Budgeting: e-Democracy from theory to success? (PDF), the experience is a very interesting example of the use of evoting in increasing direct democratic participation by the public.

Belo Horizonte is a city of 2.3 million people and 1.7 million voters.

It has used a participatory budget setting process since 1993 to prioritise spending across a range of public works, with the budget directly allocated by voters growing to US$43. This works on the basis of voting in each of the city's districts for specific works within that district.

In 2006, the city launched a Digital Participatory Budgeting (e-PB) involving a fund of US$11 million in addition to the existing participatory budget.

The e-PB allowed registered voters to exclusively vote online for one out of four potential public works for each of the nine districts of the city.

Based on the research report,

According to the administration, the launching of the initiative had three main drivers: i) to modernize its PB through the use of ICTs; ii) to increase citizens’ participation in the PB process and iii) to broaden the scope of public works that are submitted to voting.

The approach seems to have worked. While the traditional PB approach attracted around 1.5 percent of voter participation, the e-PB attracted close to 10%, greatly increasing the direct democratic involvement of citizens with the running of the city. It also allowed the PB process to consider public works of interest to all city citizens, rather than those only of interest to the inhabitants of a specific district.

As part of the e-voting process the city adinistration's website featured a forum where citizens could discuss the potential public works initiatives in a moderated environment.

The voting process took place over 42 days with voters able to vote separately for each district's public works - allowing them to vote up to nine times, once per district.

The security of the vote was managed by using unique voter IDs, termed electoral title numbers, which Brazil issues as part of a compulsory identification document to all voters.

Public voting points were established at 187 points across the city to avoid disenfranchising people without internet access. A mobile internet bus was also used, moving from place to place to between areas with the lowest internet access and those with the highest voter concentration (city centre).

While the IT involved in the initiative was significant, the research paper points out that significant factors in the success of the initiative were the communications campaign and ability for voters to interact online to discuss the public works.

The e-PB attracted 503,266 votes by 172,938 voters, or 9.98% of eligible voters.

While this might seem low by Australia's compulsory voting standards, it was seven times greater than the number of participants in the traditional participatory budgeting process, which only received 1.46% of voter participation in the same year.

Interestingly, the research report found that there was no correlation between socio-economic status and propensity to vote, meaning that the e-PB was not weighted towards more highly educated or richer voters (who are more likely to be internet users).

Also a minimum of 30% of votes were recorded from outside the city's limits. Given that only citizens of the city were eligible to vote, the research report found that the internet approach provided an effective avenue for residents who were not present in the city at the time to vote.

The research report has a lot of additional information on the IT systems and communications approaches used, as well as the use of the online forum.

It is an excellent read for any administration looking at introducing a level of electronic voting, either for offices or for policy or budget measures.

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Red tape reduction via smarter online forms

There's a lot of activity in the online forms space across Australian government at present and it is proving to be an area of real cost savings and environmental benefits for public sector organisations at all levels.

Business.gov.au has supported a centralised whole-of-government approach to business focused forms for several years now and its forms section has grown significantly, particularly in the last twelve months, as agencies have recognised the potential, geared up and invested in the area.

This has been recognised in an Australia article looking at initiatives by councils, Online forms cut council red tape.

The AGOSP (Australian Government Online Services Portal) initiative at AGIMO is also implementing a forms capacity, via business.gov.au, for citizen forms, and this offers significant benefits for any agencies looking to leap into the realm of 'smart forms' - online forms that can be prepopulated or adjust in response to customer answers and then send the data back in a secure format (as email or directly into agency systems).

If you're an Australian public sector organisation at any level who needs to collect data from customers, it's worth checking this out and viewing the presentation given by Anthony Steve of business.gov.au.

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Intranet Innovation Award winners for 2008 announced

The Intranet Innovation Award winners for 2008 have been announced, and their details, together with an executive summary (PDF) containing two case studies of award winners is available at Step Two's website.

The case studies feature an example of collaborative information sharing via a wiki used by staff of one organisation to track competitors and an innovative intranet people finder that improves staff networking and discovery by combining elements of both Twitter and Facebook.

I was inspired by both of the case studies, but a little disappointed to see only one government site mentioned in the awards this year - the Department of Human Services (South Australia) was commended for their CEO blog.

I hope there will be a greater public sector presence next year.

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Locating and learning about future public employees using social networks

I am a reasonably active LinkedIn user (view my profile here).

It's one of my professional networking tools for keeping track of 'people of interest' to me - from business contacts to potential employees and employers.

It, and similar social and professional networks, are also useful recruiting tools for managers and HR professionals seeking to find or screen job applicants.

This isn't news to US HR teams. A recent survey by Careerbuilders.com, as reported in Reuters, found that 22 percent of hiring managers screened applicants via social networks.

From the article, One in five bosses screen applicants' Web lives: poll, of the managers screening applicants, 24 percent found information that solidified their decision to hire, while 34 percent found information that made them drop the candidate from the short list.

I also tend to Google people before making short-listing or hiring decisions (or when hearing about or meeting them professionally). It helps me build context and understanding and it draws on publicly available information (provided by the person in question), so there are no privacy considerations.

In terms of the full hiring process, for HR professionals and managers the online channel doesn't replace resumes, selection criteria and interviews, but it can certainly supplement this process by adding depth.

And for anyone seeking a new job, it is worth reviewing what you've said about yourself online - to ensure that you are representing yourself professionally.

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