Nottingham City Council Online : Bringing information closer

A smooth experience for job seekers navigating between relevant bits of information about a vacancy.

The Site

Nottingham City Council Online is the services and information site for this English East Midlands local government authority. In the Jobs section, Jobs Online gives details for each council vacancy, providing title, department, grade, salary, hours, closing date and published date.

Clicking on the job title opens the advertisement for that vacancy on its own page. Beneath the vacancy reference in the page’s left-hand panel are six links to additional information, some of it job specific, some general. Following most links – advert, job description, person specification, guidance materials, apply – loads new copy into the main text area of the screen but leaves the customised menu panel unaltered. This means it is easy to retrieve the chosen job details when checking out general information.

The Takeaway

Navigating online between the relevant bits of information about a vacancy can be a fragmented and time-consuming business. Nottingham City Council Online presents its job seekers with a smooth experience that remains focused on the task in hand.

Most employers who display vacancies on their sites send potential recruits off to different pages to find information such as recruitment policy or application guidelines. They may then find it difficult to get back to the vacancy details. By orienting its system round the individual vacancy, Nottingham brings information to the user rather them sending them to it. Anything that keeps the central information – here the vacancy details – within visible reach relaxes users and lets them give their full attention to the matter in hand, making for a quicker ‘transaction’ and reduced drop-out rate.

First published on 25 November, 2004