In typical we’re-a-newspaper-online mentality, visitors to Cleveland.com – and I assume its brethren – are greeted with the following before getting to the meat of the site:
Here’s the funny part: After talking to a company exec recently, guess what the No. 1 zip code is? If you guessed a Cleveland-area number, you’d be wrong. If you guessed, however, 90210 of Beverly Hills, Calif. fame, you’d be right.
Lord only knows how dishonest visitors are when it comes to age and sex. Is it really worth spoiling the user experience just for some basic data that’s obviously pretty crappy anyway?
If you’re looking for an Internet recruiting angle here, for applicant tracking solutions that think a drop-down option asking where a job seeker found a posting is anywhere near correct, guess again. It’s probably not. Luckily, employers can’t ask for sex and age.
Popularity: 7% [?]
May 30th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Plus the fact that their little questionaire isn’t very accurate at remembering if you already entered your information… So you have to fill it out almost everytime you hit up Cleveland.com.
May 30th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
On the recruitment side, you’re looking at more than 80 percent inaccurate.
http://www.allretailjobs.com/html/ats-sourcing.pdf
Jason
May 30th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Almost all resume parsing software gets an F- and is the same thing something that destroys a companies brand when you use it.
The best ones ask for an email, a phone number and a Word resume attachment. It requires qualified people to read it – maybe even a hiring manager. Imagine that, relevant people actually reading resumes for competencies. You might actually interview and hire the best candidates.
May 30th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
Those ATS dropdowns have always been a complete waste of time yet still they persist! Why the ATS vendors don’t add a bit more to the URL I do not know…..Jason highlights some valid points in the report he links to but it is a little simplistic to purely blame the ATS. Yes, the ATS can quite easily track this, we built the only UK ATS that has done this from day one. However, in light of the ATS vendors not doing this, then the job board should devise a method to deal with this, not difficult and yes, we have already done it by reversing the tracking process.
But, and this is the key; you cannot rely on the ATS vendor to work with you so you need to make the data independent of the ATS so the customer comes calling for it!
June 1st, 2007 at 8:42 am
Newspaper Web sites ask for demographic information in order to use it to get advertisers. As a former journalist, I understand the need for it, although I agree with everyone here that it’s annoying to answer the questions.
It’s a question of profitability. If newspapers could make their Web sites profitable, then there wouldn’t be a need for the demographic information collection that annoys readers. Or if people still read newspapers in hard copy, then newspapers wouldn’t have to work so hard to try and make the Web profitable. This issue has plagued newspapers for about 10 years and it isn’t going anywhere, so get used to the drop-down screens and be thankful that few newspapers require paid subscriptions to read online content.
June 1st, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Hi Joel,
Whenever that customer friendly little pop up comes up, the first thing I WANT to do is put in 1902 for my year of birth. that pop-up-pop-under is Idiotic and a huge turnoff to say the least. thanx for writing what I was thinking.
June 10th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Same thing here in New Jersey with the Star Ledger’s NJ.com. Must be an Advance Internet company as well (http://www.advance.net/). I wonder how many job seekers browse off the website as soon as they see that popup?