Dec. 1, 2006

Case study: Merck and .jobs - how a .jobs domain substantially contributed to the success of the Merck Group's international career portal.

The task is deceptively simple - create an international career portal for the Merck Group. Of course, the Merck Group is a global employer of 29,000 people spread over 166 companies in 54 countries. That's where things get complicated.

How did they do it?

One critical element - they got a .jobs domain name: www.merck.jobs

"Since April 2006, the international career portal of the Merck Group has been operating under the name www.merck.jobs," says Jonas Koelle of Merck KGaA. "The platform itself is still very novel."

The aim of the portal is twofold, according to Mr. Koelle: address the needs of both job applicants and human resource managers.

For job applicants, the portal allows searching easily for job vacancies in all subsidiaries of the Merck Group worldwide. It also facilitates getting all information about attractive job opportunities, including relevant contacts, by visiting only one web site.

For Merck human resource managers, the portal helps win suitable employees on an international level. It also simplifies the human resource manager's job by using one platform for international recruiting as well as for regional recruiting. "www.merck.jobs is a job posting alternative to a subsidiary's own web site with a mainly local focus," according to Mr. Koelle.

According to the company, the "novel job portal is well established and making constant progress," and "is particularly well established in Europe, in the United States and in Australia" with a worldwide roll-out scheduled for 2007.

"The new domain [www.merck.jobs] has been well accepted by our colleagues of the Merck Group," says Mr. Koelle, "the name itself surely contributed to the success of our new global recruiting portal."

In the next calendar year Merck will roll-out the portal worldwide and encourage all of its subsidiaries to use the portal. Merck plans to increase the name recognition of www.merck.jobs through marketing activities, such as this exemplary standardized layout for HR advertisements: