I interviewed a design professor at school and asked him questions particularly about website development, presentation style, and marketing tactics as it is relevant to the BAYWORK objective. According to my research and findings, the internet is a very effective tool and resource to use in information outreach, and many of the questions I asked him revolved around these few topics. One of the key points he mentioned and a central theme to remember throughout this project is to keep your target audience in mind. As we are focusing particularly on high school and college students, a significant factor would attribute to what resources and materials we would use to engage the viewer, particularly through the content and in organizing the structure of the website. One of the important things he mentioned was the fact that since we are working to recruit candidates on several different mission-critical classifications of the water industry, it may be necessary that we think of an approach to integrate these different areas of focus within our website to create a unifying presentation that would appeal to all types of individuals with various backgrounds and preferences. Apparently, we still have different audiences within the same demographic.
That would then rely heavily on a content driven website with the adequate resources and materials of outreach for everyone so it would fulfill our purpose of appealing to a variety of individuals within the demographic. Creating suitable content is therefore crucial. Design-wise, some further study could be done to determine how the website should be structured in such a way that it's user and navigational friendly for those who want to quickly access the information that is relevant to them. For instance, engineering is one of the mission-critical classifications in the water industry that needs to be filled by potential and qualified candidates. A position like that would more so appeal to individuals with a science background than those looking for a vocational position such as a machinist which requires manual training to master (this is what I'm assuming for the moment). How then can we develop a website that integrates all these different interests of these individuals and plop them all into one site?
Interview with Communications Specialist
I recently talked to a communications specialist working at the SFPUC. This time, our topic of focus revolved particularly around integrating Web 2.0 technology with the website. She pointed out a variety of content we could include such as site interactivity, videos, photo slideshows, and of the like. Facebook and Twitter are popular social media applications that can serve as informational hubs and would eventually lead people to find out more information about water industry careers. The use of such applications could contribute to SEO, search engine optimization, a method that would increase visibility to a website and help it to establish a stronger online presence on the internet. She mentioned meta-tags, keywords embedded within the coding of a website that would allow the site to be accessed through search engines according to the keywords entered. In this case, to increase our website visibility, it is recommended that we use as many relevant tags as we can. She also suggested increasing our site visibility through smart phone applications. Nowadays, technology has enabled us to surf the web on our phones, and smart phones are no exception to students and our current generation who are constantly relying on our iPhones, Blackberries, and Droids for news, entertainment, and immediate information access to all sorts of things.
The following are some things I've considered while conducting research and developing a plan for the website:
a) Keywords
Keywords are a crucial component of getting the word out there in relaying information. Since working on the survey, I have discovered that there are some common preferences of individuals in regard to attributes of a website that they find engaging. There is also a general consensus of what people thought were important aspects of a job or career, most prominently "opportunities for professional and career development," "challenging and interesting work," "job security," and "flexibility in work hours/locations." These are attributes we need to HIGHLIGHT in our website - within our content, photos, and videos that we use - if we were to establish an appeal to our audience and display to them what are important aspects of the water industry they should know. Salary level for each position would also be important to include.
Other resources such as job profiles and worker testimonials would allow viewers to learn more about the day-to-day activities involved in a particular position. Anything that individuals would be able to relate to and associate with would induce more interest on their part.
b) Educational Resources
There are a variety of educational resources and links to other water industry sites and career/job databases. As I've observed from my research, some of the effective websites out there provide links to external sites that would be both relevant and beneficial for viewers in order for them to find out more information and to do further research on their own if they choose to.
The interactive wastewater treatment map that I was referring to in our last meeting is this one here. Instead of using straightforward text content to provide an overview of the water treatment process, the information is presented in a visual, interactive manner with a text description beside each animated image. A page like this may be a good resource to link externally to from our own website: http://www.wef.org/flash/
c) Government/public or private sector?
I think this is something worthy to mention within our website. Water industry careers are part of the government sector, so to include a section about government based occupations and the benefits that arise from working within that industry is essential. It is also a way to establish the sense that the work that water industry professionals perform are helpful contributions to the local community and environment, and workers are entitled to a wide range of benefits. We can also provide external links to official government-endorsed sites that contain information about employee benefits involved in working for the city, state, and federal sectors. With our current economic recession and a competitive job market, an effective method would be to stress the abundant supply and availability of these positions to job-seekers and to emphasize the demand for the water industry to recruit new qualified candidates.
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