REA: Best Career Web Site? (#2 of 4)

Citigroup

Citigroup was nominated for “Best Corporate Careers Website” in this year’s REA. They didn’t win, losing out to Starbucks. A visit to their site today made clear why they didn’t get the glass award.

SITE DETAILS
+ Direct Link on Front Page? Yes
+ Using www.citigroup.jobs domain? No
+ Present benefits information? No
+ Present Company Culture Information? Yes
+ Present Job Preview Information? Not really.
+ Response sent to applicant? Yes
+ Steps to apply: 7

JOB POSTINGS:
+ ATS Engine: Taleo
+ Postings Dated? Yes
+ Show Specific Work Site? Sometimes. Retail sites are shown, professional sites are not.
+ Show Explicit Travel Amount? Yes
+ Show Salary Information? No
+ Consistent posting formats? No – obviously not a priority

IMPRESSIONS, THOUGHTS AND WHINING:
+ OVERALL: Not as good a site as Starbucks. Main impression is of a huge bureaucracy that demands very careful wording on everything. They have just the right number of stock photos of diverse models who don’t work at Citigroup.
+ BAD: Navigation through cultural section is only through the tiny drop-down menu. Why not have arrows to move through all screens?
+ BAD: Navigation tools overall suck. The arrows for the rest of the job lists are tiny. They must assume that I’m surfing this page on my cell phone.
+ BAD: No back arrow to return to the job list. They buried a link at the bottom.
+ BAD: Job search screen is split, and can’t be resized in a full window. (“Go ahead, waste one half of my screen!”)
+ BAD: List of sources doesn’t have the Internet.
+ UGLY: I have to complete a stupid profiler in order to apply.

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I’m really getting to hate the Taleo application engine.