Military Sealift Command

The hiring website for the U.S. Navy's civilian fleet

My role

Interactive Art Director

Client
Military Sealift Command
Agency
MediaCross, St. Louis
Launched
January 8, 2010
Award
W3 Silver, Best Government Website, 2010
  1. Designed the relaunch of sealiftcommand.com from the ground up, around the four kinds of candidate the command recruits.
  2. Built it on an enterprise content system on WordPress, an unusual choice for a federal command in 2009.
  3. Put the perishable content on schedules: job postings and career fairs with publish and expiry dates, so nothing stale stayed up.
  4. Rounded out the recruitment funnel with hiring feeds, RSS, information requests, event sign-ups, email and HTML5 video.
  • W3 Silver award, Best Government Website, 2010
  • 25% more return visits and conversions, recorded in a 2012 write-up of the project
  • 4 audiences with their own entry points: current mariners, departing military, maritime school graduates, entry-level and skilled laborers
  • 3 homepage panels answering three questions: what jobs exist, what is open now, where to start

Summary

Military Sealift Command operates the U.S. Navy's civilian-crewed fleet and recruits the mariners who run it. I worked from the ground up on the relaunch of sealiftcommand.com, which went live on January 8, 2010. The site ran an enterprise content management system built on WordPress, an unusual choice for a federal command at the time. It was the primary recruitment channel, so the brief was blunt: help MSC meet and exceed its hiring levels each year.

Maritime recruiting does not address one audience, and the content that drives hiring goes stale by the week. The relaunch gave each kind of candidate its own way in and put job postings and career fairs on schedules, so the site kept itself current. It won a W3 Silver award as the best government website of 2010.

Who was involved

  • Military Sealift Command The Navy command that operates the civilian-crewed fleet and recruits the mariners who run it.
  • MediaCross MSC's recruitment agency since 2002, by its own public account.
  • Me The design and the build of the 2010 site.
The 2010 Military Sealift Command homepage: the MSC logo and four-item navigation above a News and Announcements column, three panels headed Let's Talk Jobs, Now Hiring and Getting Started, over a photograph of a supply ship at sea with the tagline Take Command of Your Career. The archive could not replay the embedded panel at top right, so an error box stands in its place.
The homepage, May 2010. sealiftcommand.com as the Internet Archive captured it: three panels and four ways in.
Read the record 5 sections, about 1 min

Where it started

Maritime recruitment does not address one audience. A licensed mariner already at sea, an officer leaving military service, a maritime academy graduate and an entry-level laborer arrive with different credentials and different next steps. The previous site asked all of them to find the path themselves. Worse, the content that drives hiring is perishable. Job postings open and close. Career fairs happen on fixed dates in specific cities. Stale listings actively cost applications.

Four audiences, four ways in

The homepage resolves to three panels answering three different questions: what jobs exist, what is open right now, and where do I start. That last panel is explicit audience segmentation: Current Mariners, Departing Military, Maritime School Graduates, and Entry Level or Skilled Laborers each get a separate entry point, with the credentials and next steps that apply to them.

Content that keeps itself current

Behind the homepage, the perishable content runs on schedules, so no one has to remember updates. Job postings and career fairs both have publish and expiry dates. Career fair listings use the Google Maps API for location detail. Hiring feeds and an RSS subscription push openings out to subscribers between visits. Information request forms, event RSVPs, email marketing and HTML5 video round out the recruitment funnel, all on an enterprise content system built on WordPress.

Outcomes

A W3 Silver statuette: three stacked silver cubes on a black base marked W3, with a blank silver plate. A product photograph of the award, not the statuette sent in 2010.
W3 Silver, 2010. Best Government Website, for sealiftcommand.com.

The site launched on January 8, 2010 and stayed in service for years. It won a W3 Silver award, Best Government Website, in 2010. A 2012 write-up of the project records a 25% increase in return visits and conversion, and first-page search placement for nearly all relevant terms through SEO, paid placement and organic link building; no analytics export survives to check those figures against.

If I did it again

I would keep the analytics export with the write-up. The 2012 figures are the only numbers this study has, and a reader has to take them on the write-up's word.

Questions about this project?