Starbucks UK Career site - what do you know!

As you may know I am a BIG fan of Starbucks and have been waiting with anticipation to see their new UK career site. It is now of course as to be expected - in my opinion very nice aesthetically and engaging. But, already there have been comments on the ATS (Taleo) integration and how "ugly" it is. But, does it actually matter?

I agree that it is hardly a seamless, nicely branded transition but to be honest very few if any ATS integrations are. Of course some will bleat on about how THEIR integration is seamless but that is not the point. Unless of course you have evidence to prove otherwise.

The proof is in the analytics. Whilst the Starbucks or Tesco or Boots or many other career site transitions to their ATS may not be perfect what you actually need to know is the conversion rates. For example, you may have 100 people click apply, 60 register but only 12 actually complete an application form. So what you really need to be looking at is where people are dropping out of the process.

So taking the new Starbucks site, if they follow the entire process where will they see applicants drop off the most? How does traffic vary? Do job board applicants convert more highly than casual browsers? Does the Taleo branding/process have any impact on conversion rates? Again, there may be much opinion on this but as long as Starbucks can measure and improve based on their site analytics then they can ignore opinion. If however they have NOT got the measures in place, all the way through to the process end, well they'll be working on opinion like the rest.

So I'll just stick to my Grande latte and classic cake donut to go!