Branding an Employer through the Career Website - Case Company Dassault Systemes

This research was conducted in cooperation with the company Dassault Systemes. The objective was to reveal the preferences of German and French higher education students and young professionals on career website content and features. The results of the thesis are supposed to help the company with the development and launch of a new website in 2020. The investigative questions focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the current career website of the company, on website content, visuals and usability, on the reasons for visiting a career website and the importance of them. The results were used to give recommendations to the case company. The theoretical part of the thesis covers employer branding and breaks it down into external employer brand and employee value proposition. The content, design and usability possibilities of career websites are also discussed. The thesis uses qualitative research to reveal the current state of the career website of the case company with the help of an actual state analysis and a competitor analysis. The results reveal the importance of a new career website for the company, as the website performs worse than all others in comparison. The quantitative research method was an online survey. The target group were 18 to 29- year olds living in Germany or France and the survey was filled out by 221 respondents. The results of the survey reveal that the most common reasons for respondents to visit career websites are looking for a job and doing research before a job interview. When it comes to content, there is a preference tendency towards facts and helpful information instead of marketing content that do not add value. The target group also seems to lay focus on efficiency and saving time by consuming content with the help of visuals, a clear website navigation and an easy application process. The study confirmed the importance of career pages as an employer branding tool in terms of informing and convincing a potential applicant of the company and as the number one tool for applying to jobs