I heart Zappos

Companies that seek to build their teams are often focused on the core details like what type of people they want, what skills they need, etc.  What they often forget is that job seekers go through the same thing.  The problem is that people are so accustomed to generic jobs descriptions and company career pages that they don’t even bother to read them.  Oh yes, there are some exceptions to this.  The exceptions are the people who skim the job descriptions.  That’s right, the people who are the exception to the rule don’t even bother to read the whole job description.  This is a problem.

But that isn’t the only problem.  The process skims the surface on many different levels.  Sure, people are thorough, but they aren’t as thorough as they could be.  The odds are against thorough too.  Many employers have implemented policies that prohibit their team members from providing references.  If you are on the hiring team this presents a challenge.

So what is the solution to all of this?  I think that the answer begins with creating an engaging job description, career landing page, and company narrative.  I’m always inspired by companies that work hard to do this.  A few that I would point out are Zappos, Threadless and Viget Labs.

Threadless provides interviews of their designers.  Zappos takes you on an inside tour of their organization.  They get into some quirky details.  Pirates seem to be a big deal there.  An interesting thing that I learned about Zappos today is that they offer people going through training cash to quit.  That’s right, they pay you $1000 bucks to quit after a week or not.  Think of this as a final interview with the intention of weeding out people who figure out that they have gotten themselves into a situation that isn’t right for them.  Very clever.  And don’t forget about Viget Labs, a DC area team that goes way above and beyond the call of duty in putting together a very creative and content heavy career site.