Job seekers have never had more access to make informed decisions about what businesses they apply to work with than ever before. That means that if you’re looking to capture the attention of great talent on the market you need to be upfront and coordinated about the information you are providing to help them make that decision. A great way to do that is with a branded careers website that acts as a home of all your job opportunities, and information about your organisation to help job seekers make the decision to apply.
If you’re considering building a careers site or are wanting to make sure yours is up to scratch here are 5 essential things you should check of your list.
1. SEO and Keyword Search Friendly.
Think about all the words job seekers could be using to search you – these should be all over your website. The more keywords that indexing websites and search engines are able to detect the more likely your job adverts are going to appear in the search results of their websites.
As well as keywords in the body of your job ad, it also means sticking to straight forward and plain language that people are searching - including job titles. Something like ‘marketing ninja’ or ‘director of first impressions’ is less likely to be found than ‘marketing coordinator’ or ‘receptionist’.
These are the terms people are searching for, and are universal terms for classification.
2. Real content
Visual communication has never been more crucial to capture and engage the attention of job seekers. As with job adverts, candidates can tell the difference between authentic pictures of your organisation and stock photography.
Job seekers are more likely to respond to you if you are real about what you are showing candidates.
We recommend that businesses working with us use pictures of their people as much as they possibly can. Plus, these days it isn’t hard - anyone armed with an iPhone can take candid high quality pictures of staff that can be used for advertising and on your careers website. (However if you do have the budget to bring in a photographer for an hour, you won’t regret it, as this is material you can reuse across multiple channels).
3. Tell your story – Sell yourself
With a careers website you have the opportunity to sell yourself and the different aspects of your business. This is not just the benefits that you can list on your job ad, it’s also things such as your values, the kind of roles and paths for career progression in your business. It could be having a page discussing your businesses impact on the community or efforts you make to better the environment around you.
Take us for example! Talent Propeller’s website outlines all the reasons why we are a great place to work, including our values, benefits and opportunities for growth and career progression https://talentpropeller.com.au/our-team-career
Saying to people you’re a great place to work isn’t enough, you need to show them!
4. Make sure it is consistent with your corporate website and brand
It's important that when job seekers interact with you they are met with a consistent look and feel so your messages are memeorable. One of the great features of Talent Propeller’s off the shelf careers websites is that you are able to build a website that mirrors the design and format of corporate website and brand.
These days the job search starts with a Google search. Job seekers research businesses before they apply for a job there’s a chance if they don’t land on your careers website first, they will land on your corporate site. With that in mind make sure you are maintaining a consistent message with links from and to your corporate site and careers site, allowing people to easily navigate while looking for the information they need to make an informed decision.
5. Your careers site shouldn’t just be easy – it should be smart.
People are happy to give their information to you, but to do this they need to trust the process and doing that means asking for information in a smart and intuitive way. Statistically every second click you make a candidate take in an application process, you lose half your audience. That means thinking about how many steps you are making people take to finally submit an application.
· A common mistake in the application process is doubling up on the information you are asking from a candidates.
For example providing a box to outline your education history is probably not useful if you are also asking candidates to submit a CV, where you will get this information. Questionnaires are useful for specific questions that will help you decipher who is right for the role. I.e. does that candidate hold a particular endorsement or qualification that the role requires?
Using your application process as a test of endurance is a bad idea, it may be you are missing out on a great candidate who is really just pushed for time!
At Talent Propeller We are excited to offer 3 x new careers website design options. Our new careers site designs have been created to provide more alignment options towards your corporate site, and to offer better support to your overall Employer Brand strategy. Find out more here!
