REA: Best Career Web Site? (#1 of 4)

Last week’s Recruiting Excellence Awards (REA) recognized four web sites as finalists for Best Corporate Careers Website:
* Citigroup
* FedEx
* Rackspace Managed Hosting
* Starbucks WINNER

I hope to visit and critique each site nominated. I’ll look at some standard areas, and then point out the good, the bad and the ugly. I encourage you to visit and share your thoughts in the comments.

Update 03-MAY-07: Welcome to all who linked in from Jason Whitman’s site. The Starbucks review is below. You can check out my REA rankings here, a comparison to the CEA winners here, and a my CEA award rankings here.

---

Starbucks

Starbucks Coffee was awarded the “Best Corporate Careers Website” this year. A visit to their site left me with some distinct impressions about what “Best” might be. Here are my impressions (standard disclaimers apply).

SITE DETAILS
+ Direct Link on Front Page? No
+ Career Entry Point: About Us
+ Using www.starbucks.jobs domain? No – but splash page is available on HotJobs
+ Present benefits information? Yes
+ Present Company Culture Information? Yes
+ Present Job Preview Information? Yes
+ Response sent to applicant? Yes

JOB POSTINGS:
+ ATS Engine: Taleo
+ Postings Dated? Yes
+ Show Specific Work Site? No
+ Show Explicit Travel Amount? No
+ Show Salary Information? No
+ Consistent posting formats? Mostly
+ Steps to apply: 6

IMPRESSIONS, THOUGHTS AND WHINING:
+ OVERALL IMPRESSION: Hip, cool and eco-conscious with a focus on giving back to the community. Navigation is a problem on the site.
+ GOOD: They have tons of jobs, and have organized them well.
+ BAD: Asks if you want to search US jobs, then makes you complete a second step of choosing what country to search.
+ BAD: Their location engine requires way too many clicks to get where I want. This is awkward and requires extra clicks. Most of their hiring looks to tied to local retail outlets. Can’t they grab my IP address and ask if I want to look nearby?
+ BAD: First job splash screen shows lots of jobs in Washington State. I’m nowhere near Washington State.
+ BAD: Have sliced up Colorado to make it hard to look in neighboring locales.
+ BAD: They don’t have a category for Retail.

---

On to the rest.