Case Studies & Examples

Recruitment website - a case study

A fully featured recruitment web site.

Design brief

To deliver a fully featured recruitment web site, complete with "searchable" jobs database. The site should be stylish, functional and easy to navigate. The addition of new and removal of "filled" vacancies will be performed by the Rialto staff in a secure administration area.

The target audience is computer programmers and IT professionals looking for permanent, temporary and part time vacancies.

Good design

The whole corporate look, colour schemes, logo etc. are often left in the hands of the web design company. Here at Nexus Internet Solutions we pride ourselves in coming up with innovative solutions to our clients problems.

This was the case with Rialto IT Solutions, generally we come up with a couple of ideas for the client to look at. We usually try to do this in a greyscale sketch to remove the color influence and prejudice. If your company already has a colour scheme and logo and printed literature then great. But more often these days our clients are looking for us to take this opportunity to reinvent the company look.

It is our attention to detail that often makes our sites stand out to the casual visitor. For example on the Rialto site there is a live "ticker tape" applet that always shows the last few jobs that have been added to the system, clicking on the job takes you straight to the description. When the client then clicks to apply for the job, the correct job reference is automatically included into the feedback form.

Another example is the level of error checking on the search engine console, which helps avoid unnecessary and time consuming searches, thus speeding up the site.

We have also included in this case study some of the rarely seen design elements of our web sites, such as the administration consoles which makes our client's input tasks easier.

Domain name

Rialto IT Recruitment had purchased the domain rialto-it.co.uk a long time before they came to see Nexus Solutions. Like many companies the domain was hosted on a server that did not lend itself to the more interactive features that Rialto required.

We did two things straight away:

• We arranged to get the existing domain name redirected to space on our server, whilst maintaining their e-mail as it was before. This was important because hundreds of e-mails a day travel through the business by ISDN that had only recently been installed. Leaving this undisturbed was very important.
• We purchased jobs-recruitment.com on Rialto's behalf. This is because this domain contains two of their most important key words. This can be a factor in search engine position. It is also true that some US search engines will not list .co.uk domains and some UK search engines will not list .com domains.

We obviously don't need to design the web site twice or even host the site in two separate locations we can ensure that both domain names point at the same web site, a very useful trick, this is called a web redirect (see our Internet Services for further details)

Which web space?

Unfortunately Rialto's existing service provider was unable to provide all of the necessary software access to enable a complex database to be run on their server.

We often find that this is the case which is why we have our own servers, that we are totally in control of. We can add software of our choice and keep the number of clients on each machine to a sensible amount so that page delivery to the viewer is never slow. In the case of the database work we call the purchase of this space application space. This 'application space' is costed in a price vs. performance calculation. If you are likely to take up significant server time then we charge appropriately. Details can be found in the Internet Services Section.

Searching

Searching for jobs from a client perspective was the requirement. The search engine accesses the database and searches through the:

• job title
• job description
• candidate skill set

for a "fuzzy" match. That is to say if the candidate was looking for programmer developer jobs then typing in 'dev' would be like searching on dev*. A match on dev* such as 'developer', 'development' etc. would be returned.

The search engine also allows for searches to be concentrated on geographical locations in the UK.

Search results

The results are output firstly as a short description and a link to the vacancy detail, this is to reduce demand on the server and ensure the searches are faster.

The most important phase for the business really begins here...

Collecting data

The main purpose of most web sites ought to be to improve business performance in some way.

One of the most tangible ways is to improve the turnover of the business with little or no extra effort. By providing the same information that Rialto already has in circulation on the Internet it can hope to improve its candidate placement and hence commissions. The other way would be to attract new employers to the organisation that wish to use Rialto to advertise for vacancies.

In a recruitment business CV's are often the lifeblood of the organisation. Collecting CV's and candidate details on-line is an efficient method of data harvesting.

The Rialto web site tries to attract candidates in a variety of ways but they should all be as convenient for the client as possible. The use of on-line forms means that the client does not even have to have e-mail configured, he/she could be at work using an insecure line in an inconvenient location.

Below is an example of an on-line form providing ease of contact for the client. By visiting the site at:

Security

A key part of the design brief was to create a site that would be database driven but would allow members of Rialto who were not familiar with the database system to add, delete and edit vacancies.

Firstly we set up a secure system which would allow members of staff to have their own usernames, passwords and privileges. The database can then keep a record of who added what and when, thus making mistakes easier to trace.

All of this was achieved using a normal web browser linked to an administration area.

Administration features

The system requires three main administration function- add, edit and delete data from the database.

[add to data]

New data is added via a special web based form. It is laid out to match data that Rialto supply to various other on-line job databases. This way the data only needs to be formatted once.

Above: The ADD data form with an identity stamp showing that "Andy" originated the data.

[search the data]

When an edit or deletion needs to take place the member of staff needs to FIND the correct entry. We provided three search methods:one that mimics the search on the main site, one by location and another by job reference number.

[edit the data]

Simply clicking on the EDIT link brings back a form similar to the 'add data' form but with all of the fields fully populated. By clicking the submit button the administrator reloads the data in the database, including changes, so that potential candidates can search on the site for it immediately.

Internet and intranet based database work is a specialty of Nexus Internet Solutions. See our portfolio for other examples, in particular the Bio-Rad website, and our intranet and e-commerce work demonstrates more capabilities we can offer your business.

To arrange a no-cost initial consultation to discuss an e-business strategy for your company, contact us today.