Are Popular Employer Rankings Outdated? Understanding Today's Job Seekers' Insights

The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted job hunting online, significantly altering how job seekers and companies connect. This article reviews the trends of the 2023 job hunt based on feedback from job seekers while explaining the form of corporate recruitment branding needed in the coming era.

<Table of Contents>
▼Offline Connections Outweigh Online for Job Decisions!?

▼Employee Word-of-Mouth Matters More Than Popular Company Rankings!?

▼Human Capital Disclosure and Recruitment Branding

▼Some Companies Saw Over 1.5x More Applications! Using "Job Hunting Journey Maps" for Multi-Dimensional Approaches

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Offline Over Online for Choosing Where to Work!?

With COVID-19 downgraded to a Class 5 infectious disease, offline events are increasing, yet job hunting remains primarily online. A January 2024 survey of job seekers showed over 80% of students responded that "job hunting is mostly online."

Online has many advantages. For job seekers, preparation and travel time decrease, lowering the barrier to attending information sessions. For companies, the workload for organizing and running events like information sessions decreases, allowing for more efficient student engagement. Some view the increased online options brought by COVID-19 as an optimization of the job hunting process.

However, many job seekers also emphasize the importance of offline contact with companies when deciding where to work.

During the broad research phase, like company information sessions, they prioritize the accessibility of online formats. Conversely, during the phase of narrowing down choices, such as internships or alumni visits, they seem to value offline interactions more, as they provide a better sense of the company and employee atmosphere and help form a clearer picture of what it's like to work there.

Additionally, science and engineering students often have limited time for job hunting due to demanding research schedules. Consequently, they tend to rely more heavily on information obtained through offline interactions with university seniors or recruiters.

While online job hunting is mainstream, it's crucial for companies to create offline touchpoints and convey information that helps job seekers visualize working there—such as the company and employee atmosphere.

Employee word-of-mouth is more important than job popularity rankings!?

Students seek authentic company information when considering job offers, but their information needs have distinct characteristics. While job popularity rankings provide important data for job seekers, they place greater emphasis on more authentic company information—specifically, employee reviews.

While services aggregating employee evaluations are growing in the job-hopping market, it's now standard for new graduate job seekers to also reference employee feedback.

Beyond primary sources like company websites and information sessions, obtaining corroborating information from employee reviews may provide reassurance. Going forward, companies with high employee ratings are likely to be chosen more often by job seekers. To be selected as an employer, companies will need to accurately aggregate real information from within the organization ( ) and communicate it effectively in their recruitment efforts.

Human Capital Disclosure and Recruitment Branding

Regarding authentic company information, starting with the fiscal year ending March 2023, listed companies and others will be required to disclose human capital information within their securities reports. Human capital disclosure refers to publicly sharing information related to the capabilities (human capital) of a company's workforce with external stakeholders using various data.

The disclosed information falls into two categories: mandatory disclosures and recommended disclosures. Mandatory disclosures include the childcare leave utilization rate, gender pay gap, and the ratio of female managers.

Recommended disclosures include the 19 items across 7 desirable areas outlined in the "Human Capital Visualization Guidelines" formulated by the Cabinet Secretariat. These areas are: development, diversity, health and safety, labor practices, engagement, mobility, and compliance/ethics. Companies are expected to define their own unique metrics and disclosure content for these areas from the perspective of enhancing corporate value.

Human capital disclosure impacts various stakeholders, including shareholders, customers, and employees, but it also significantly influences recruitment. As information revealing the reality of a company's working environment, it will become increasingly important for job seekers when selecting where to work.

So, how can human capital disclosure be effectively leveraged in recruitment activities? Currently, less than 10% of job seekers refer to securities reports, where human capital disclosure is mandatory.

To ensure this information reaches its intended audience, companies must implement communication strategies targeting job seekers based on human capital disclosure data. For example, information gathered for disclosure can be tailored based on insights about recruitment targets and shared via recruitment websites or company information sessions.

For instance, companies could develop recruitment messages informed by human capital disclosure data and have employees deliver these messages during alumni visits. In essence, it's crucial to effectively convey the human capital information companies have aggregated using content and methods (media) tailored to the perspective of recruitment targets. Going forward, recruitment will no longer be solely the responsibility of HR or recruitment teams. We believe it will require a unified effort involving management, frontline staff, and the entire company .

Case Study: Entry Applications Increased by Over 1.5 Times! A Multi-Dimensional Approach with the "Job Hunting Journey Map"

To support corporate recruitment branding, Dentsu Inc. developed the "Job Hunting Journey Map," utilizing a human-centric marketing methodology. This analytical framework applies the customer journey concept from marketing to effectively communicate each company's unique strengths to recruitment targets. It focuses on three perspectives: the people working there, the job content, and the work environment, conveying authentic information that resonates with job seekers.

Based on this "Job Hunting Journey Map," Dentsu Inc. analyzes insights into companies' recruitment targets using its proprietary knowledge and research on Generation Z. Subsequently, based on surveys of each company's recruiters, offer recipients, and employees, we extract realistic information that could serve as each company's strengths to communicate to job seekers. We then systematize key contact points and effective appeals across each phase of the job search process—from initial company awareness to offer acceptance—and design and execute communication strategies accordingly.

To effectively deliver the authentic information job seekers seek about companies, we believe it is crucial to design appeal content and contact points tailored to the job search phase, informed by insights into the target candidates.

Using this "Job Hunting Journey Map" has yielded various results, including: "Expanding company awareness by over 20%," "Increasing applications from targets by over 1.5 times," "Boosting traffic to the recruitment website by over 1.5 times," and "Changing job seekers' perceptions of the company, leading to an improvement of over 200 ranks in popular employer rankings."

Job hunting is evolving, with the integration of online and offline approaches and the disclosure of the authentic company information job seekers demand. If you are interested, please contact our "Recruitment Branding Expert".

Recruitment Branding Expert

Dentsu Consulting Inc.'s team supports corporate recruitment branding for new graduate hiring targeting high school and university students (Generation Z) and for hiring young professionals with work experience, such as second-time new graduates. We provide end-to-end support, from planning to implementation, for initiatives aligned with corporate recruitment challenges, utilizing key touchpoints in the job search process: new graduate recruitment websites, internships, brochures, corporate social media, and various advertising media (see release here ).

[Survey Overview]
・Source: Circle Up Survey
・Survey Period: January 22–26, 2024
・Survey Participants: University juniors and seniors registered on the "Circle Up" app for university clubs
・Total Samples: 107 students
・Survey Area: Nationwide