1 - If you don't have a careers website - get one!
2 - Show off your company culture
3 - Show off images and videos in your job adverts
4 - Make your candidate experience mobile-friendly!
5 - Don't treat job adverts like job descriptions
6 - Provide a dedicated FAQ section
Today we all live in a world of connection, personalisation, clear expectation, and instant fulfilment. Candidates are looking for these things when they apply for a job, and in today’s market, we need to evolve and adapt to meet this need.
Sadly, in many cases today’s candidate experience falls short of the expectations jobseekers have. In some situations they’re nowhere near the basic candidate needs of clear setting of expectations setting, consideration, consistency, communication, and feedback.
The careers site serves as your shop window for showcasing your employer brand, culture, and job opportunities. It still surprises me how so few people miss the opportunity to show potential hires what it’s like to work at an organisation, the opportunities available, the benefits to them.
Content and cost are sometimes seen as a barrier but you don’t have to have a fully bespoke site with all the bells and whistles. Just a simple page covering the basics on your main site will be a good first step. Jobtrain offers an included careers site builder as part of the package, giving you the freedom and flexibility to create and manage your own content.
If content is a challenge, engage with your marketing team and ask for their help. The same content can be reused on social media too.
The adage ‘people buy from people’ is just as true in recruitment. A quick video (and it doesn’t have to be polished) on your career site (or even your advert) will drive 8x more engagement from potential hires – it’s real, authentic, and relatable for job seekers.
A well-designed career site can significantly impact the candidate experience and inform and influence a jobseekers decision to apply for roles or accept offers.
Add stories from your team of what it means to work there. Show off your culture and what you do to help your local community. If you have a diverse workforce, take pride in that. Over 90% of candidates believe a company’s ED&I policy is important when looking for a new workplace.
These are the things that will really stand you out from competitors and make you memorable and ultimately help to reinforce your EVP.
One simple, inarguable fact is that candidates want to see videos of your colleagues! If you have a careers site, make the most of it with content that will drive excitement for prospective employees.
These are:
According to a 2015 study from Microsoft, consumer attention spans had dropped to 8 seconds (less than that of a goldfish!) We have developed finely tuned filtering skills when we view content online – we are now much more selective. This behaviour extends to jobs adverts too – but a picture or video can say a thousand words. They can instantly trigger a reaction such as recognition, emotion or identity that text will never achieve.
Make sure that your careers site is made for mobile. A Glassdoor study revealed that 58% of job seekers use their mobile devices to search for jobs. Ensure that your career site is mobile-friendly and easy to navigate on various devices, as more and more candidates want to search and apply for vacancies using their mobile phones, tablet, or another device.
During our 2022 webinar with Andrea Garvey at Talent.com, she showed us the difference between a good job advert and a bad job advert. The key differentiator was that the bad advert read like a job description.
A well-written job advert could increase your candidate reach by up to 200%!
Two-or-three-sentence job specifications aren’t going to pique anybody’s interest, but that doesn’t mean you should over-stuff your ad and waffle! You need to educate your internal team on what a great job advert looks like so you can increase your clickthrough rate – thinking about recruitment the same way a marketeer would think about writing for a website.
Answer common candidate questions and concerns in a dedicated FAQ section on your career site. This can help reduce candidate uncertainty, reduce the queries your hiring team handle, and improve the quality of candidates that apply.