Yes, you've read it correctly. I hate to love you!

I'm referring to recruitment websites and the use of Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). Hated by applicants, loved by recruiters, at least that's how it looks like from the outside. Don't get me wrong here, I do understand why companies use ATS. They literally get hammered with 100's of applicants each day and they need a way to streamline the whole process so that they don't have to go through all these resumes and applications themselves. Applicants have the feeling that their resume is 'sent into the big black recruitment hole' and end-users never know for sure if the presented applicant by the system is the best one. There is just no way to track this due to the automated process. There are plenty of people who just leave the application process as soon as they see the words "powered by …..".

8 years

Can you blame those people? No you can't! Do I understand them? Yes! About 8 years ago I applied for a position at one of the largest hotel chains in the world through their recruitment website which is "powered by ….". After I pressed the 'send' button I received an e-mail thanking me for my application. For 8(!!) years I haven't heard from them until about 3 weeks ago. I received an e-mail stating "thank you for your application but your experience and background doesn't fit the role you've applied for". Probably somebody got the noble task of cleaning up the system….you must be hated by your boss to get assigned that task!

How hard can it be?

There are so many hotels and chains and so many hotel career pages. Recently I've developed a rather unhealthy tick which is checking every career page I run into. Unhealthy because in so many cases I get frustrated from the user-friendliness, or rather lack of. And I'm not even in the process of applying for a position, I just want to see how they do it. To give you a couple of examples:

  1. Worldwide hotel chain: First it's really hard to find the search button for their vacancies and second; when you've found the button and click it, nothing happens. Oh, wait, they use pop-ups to show their vacancies… (I'm using a pop-up blocker and I'm not the only one)
  2. Ultra-luxury hotel chain: Most beautiful and user-friendly guest website, but the career page looks like it's build in the '80's
  3. Luxury hotel chain: Career page can't even be found….
  4. Ultra-luxury hotel: the career page is transferring an applicant to a generic job board
  5. Luxury hotel chain: ability to search within parameters, multiple vacancies are loaded, click on one to read the job profile, click on "go back" and…what?!?! all search parameters are reset and you can start all over again..

Service, service, service

As you can see, there is a lot to gain for hospitality companies and their career pages. Especially in our service industry where our staff are our most important asset. It's key to have a good, functioning and appealing website to attract the best, biggest and brightest talents and professionals. You can't deliver the best service, which your guests are expecting and paying for, if you don't have the best professionals.

Then why is it so hard for hospitality companies to have an appealing and functioning career page? Probably because a career page is a specialism while the general idea is that a 'guest' website is for internal & external guests. Or it's just that there a lack of knowledge on how to develop, create and maintain a great career page.