Deloitte: Accounting for localised preferences

A combination of customisation and localisation reflects a remarkable effort to individualise content.

The Site

Deloitte, the international accountancy firm, has offices around the world and reflects this in a doubly localised Careers section on its global website. Visitors can view information on any of 137 countries and in any of nine languages – including Czech and Polish – via two ‘Visit Preferences’ dropdown menus.

The feature uses a standard ‘welcome’ page but the chosen viewing combination determines the language and content. For example, choosing Croatia as the country and English as the language generates a list of local offices and featured vacancies plus staff profiles as well as a general introduction to the firm. The same information is provided if switching language to anything from French to Chinese – but not Croatian.

Staff profiles are drawn from a mix of countries and job disciplines and may include someone from the selected country – though the list is different for each of the languages with a given country.

The Takeaway

Both customisation and localisation in Deloitte’s Careers section are advanced in their own right, but the combination reflects a remarkable effort to individualise content. Careers sections that do attempt to provide a multi-lingual information service for potential recruits often do so through country sites or in limited depth. Job finders or samplers are usually separate and local vacancies are not highlighted.

Deloitte does not use local sites but manages to provide a lot of language-based background and country-specific content from a central site. For the visitor this provides a smoother experience – no transitions to country sites, for example – while allowing Deloitte to police the quality and consistency of Careers material across the organisation.

An oddity is that information is provided in a standard set of languages, which for many countries does not necessarily include the local one. This may be because Deloitte recruits most of its staff from these language groups (including the Czech Republic and Poland) or because it is still rolling out new language versions.

First published on 21 June, 2005