Jody Elliott – The Resource Channel
ONE OFF THE WOOD: The Roadhouse was paid a visit this week by Resource Channel director and Human Resources guru Jody Elliott to tell us the latest regarding her resources employment foucused website.
What is The Resource Channel?
The Resource Channel is an employment news website and job board for the Australian resource sector – covering mining, oil and gas, and construction.
What differentiates us from mainstream media is that where it reports on a project and the number of jobs generated, we break that down to the next level for the job market. We communicate what jobs will be generated, where those jobs will be generated, what companies they’re with and when they will come on line.
Would there be any specific project you could use as an example of what The Resource Channel does differently?
The Gorgon project is a perfect example. It was, of course, all over the media at the time of its announcement with speculation of around 10,000 jobs to be created.
To the uninitiated, it would be easy to assume all of those jobs would be with the main company involved in the project, in this case Chevron.
We tracked which companies were awarded which work contracts, the type of jobs and timeframes and delivered this information to the job market.
The site has expanded to be operating in that space since you launched but it is more one dimensional than that isn’t it?
The reason why we originally launched the site was to create a platform to enable employers to communicate directly with the job market themselves.
So who would your customers be: the employers or the employees?
Both, but from a paying perspective it is the employers.
We enable employers to utilise the site as their communication platform to broadcast their employee and candidate value proposition, the positive elements of their culture, employee achievements, project progress…essentially anything and everything that helps to better educate and engage the job market about who they are and why they should be considered a potential employer.
That is useful information, which is not readily accessible for people when they’re looking for it.
Our aim is to make it as easy as possible for the job seeker to find information about employers that is not readily accessible elsewhere. Most company career websites are very ‘vanilla’ and do not or cannot feature dynamic content. The Resource Channel enables employers to provide information online that they may already generate for candidates, or even internally for current employees, in other forms like magazines or brochures. It allows them to bypass the complexity of trying to change their own careers web page.
The other important point to make is that the information provided for the job seeker is free and does not require a log in or subscription to access.
So, for a job seeker your site is a very valuable tool as it allows them to check out what jobs are available and which companies are offering them?
Whether you are actively looking for a new role, looking to enter the industry for the first time or simply wanting to keep informed about what is happening across the industry in the employment space, the site offers a simple one go-to location.
What is the value for a junior company?
Most companies have a careers website, or at least a company website, but being found and being known in the job market remains a challenge, particularly if you are not well known in the industry.
For junior companies working their way through the development phase of a project, their challenge is generating awareness ahead of their labour needs.
We have examples of organisations like CiticPacific Mining who actively educated the job market ahead of project approval about who they were, what jobs they anticipated and project timelines.
They continued to do this during the construction phase and posted videos and photos to illustrate the site progress. This was an outstanding approach to engaging the job market well ahead of company needs.
When it came to posting actual vacancies with CiticPacific Mining, they were well known.
In this market, it’s dangerous to be not engaging with the job market during pre-feasibility or at least the construction phase, and prior to the bulk of operational roles coming online.
All too often we see this happen, where the project is approved and 500 jobs are advertised but the market has no idea who you are.
There is a bit of myth surrounding the industry that you can just catch a plane up north walk into any mining company’s office and be handed a job on the spot.
That’s one of the advantages of the site.
There are some discussions we blog about that are pretty brutal in their honesty in regard to why some job seekers aren’t getting where they want to be.
That way, job seekers can be better informed about what it is they need to do and how. This is one of the key reasons why industry has embraced our site; because we are providing that up-front reality in a way that they really cannot but would like to.
You have launched a couple of new features lately but the one I find most interesting is the company profiling.
The company profile enables our subscribers to follow a particular company.
If a subscriber just wants to know what Inpex is doing for example, they can nominate to follow that organisation.
This means that every time that organisation posts information, they receive an alert to let them know.
It also enables the company to see how many followers they have across different categories, including ‘blue collar’, ‘professional’, ‘trainee’, ‘managerial’ etc.
And you have also launched a Q&A forum.
We field hundreds of emails every week. We wanted industry to see both the frustration and the questions the job market has.
We also felt that publishing questions will further guide companies on the sort of content they should be providing on the site.
You must be doing something right because you have already won a number of awards.
We won the best national blog website in 2010 and then last year we were awarded best industry website by Reuters International.
So The Resource Channel is obviously one people should be tuning into?
Even if you are not an active job seeker, the site will keep you abreast of movements across the industry.
We had more than 330,000 visitors in 2011 and in January 2012, had our highest number of visitors at 44,500.
This demonstrates a growing interest by the job market for authentic, transparent employment news and information direct from the source – the employer.
Importantly, nearly 30 per cent of our visitors return at least monthly for updates.
This suggests those not actively looking are opting in regularly and for employers, this is exactly the market you are looking to communicate with.