Today, with an unemployment rate near “full employment" the onus is on employers for competing in a tightened labor market. Study after study has shown that, as the #1 source for interviews and hires, your career site is the best place to share your story with job seekers.
So, it’s time to craft your best pitch and share it with the world. Here’s our best tips for writing a career site that drives recruiting results in a competitive job market.
Finding a job is a very personal decision, but the experience of finding a job doesn’t usually feel personal at all. It’s easy for job seekers to feel unappreciated and undervalued when so many systems and processes stand between them and the company. The more authentic, personal and relevant you can make your career site experience, the more likely you are to convert job seekers into new hires.
Tune into WIIFM. Candidates want to know “What’s in it for me?” Clearly state your employee value proposition and help your job seekers understand why they should want to work for your company. Most job seekers, especially the most sought-after, are applying and interviewing at multiple companies, so give them reasons to choose you. Humble bragging about what you offer to employees is encouraged.
Speak their language. Use their words. Ask your employees why they love their job and their workplace. Then share those as testimonials, allowing candidates to connect with those employees and their stories. Talk with employees to identify what is important to them about working at your company, then incorporate those elements into your career site content. When choosing words, think about them from your job seekers’ perspective. For example, will they search for “client success” or “customer service”?
Are you talking to me? Ever read a job posting and think, "This job was made for me"? That’s what the career site experience should feel like for your target candidates. Sure, the requirements and experience should match theirs, but they should also feel a connection to the job and the company through the words they read.
Overcome their doubts. As much as potential candidates may want to work for your company or get the job, they have questions and concerns. Changing or taking a new job is a big step. Think about what questions your candidates have and do your best to address them on your corporate career site. You don’t need a form FAQ, but be sure to address the most typical questions that you hear during interviews while writing the content for your career site. Answer their questions and help them feel confident that you’ll support them in the recruiting process and beyond.
Honesty really is the best policy. Candidates want to know what’s behind the curtain. Introduce them to your employees, show them what a typical day is like and help them see a typical career path at your company. These are all areas you can and should consider including on your career site, especially for key roles, such as high volume or hard-to-fill positions. The more transparent you are on your career site, the better able your job seekers will be able to accurately self-screen for company and position fit.
Talk to any of your candidates and they’ll tell you that actively looking for a new job is a full-time job. Job seekers are faced with the daunting task of sifting through thousands of jobs, researching each prospective company and, of course, the much-dreaded, time-consuming applications. And most job seekers do it in their spare time. For these reasons and others, it should come as no surprise that candidates spend seconds on a job posting and mere minutes researching a company before choosing to apply.
Give your home page a diet. The homepage is the primary landing place when people come to your website. It’s the introduction. Just like when you meet someone in person, you don’t want to share your entire life story in the first 10 seconds. Use your homepage to capture their attention and help them find “common ground” or the information on your career site that is most relevant to them.
Encourage “scanning.” Focus on getting people the most important information quickly and easily. That's why we recommend content blocks of light copy with headlines. Plus, it’s more digestible for people on smaller screens (read: 65 percent of people using their mobile devices to look for a job). Remember that being clear is more important than being “cute” when it comes to headlines. People and search engines appreciate knowing what the information following is really about.
Everything in moderation. Often more is less. Resist the urge to have more pages on your career site unless those pages and content serve a unique and relevant purpose. Don't create multiple copies of a page under different URLs or repeat content unnecessarily. Incorporating keywords into your copy is important, but too much and you risk that search engines will penalize your site for “keyword stuffing.”
Show me, don’t tell me. Sometimes showing can be more powerful than telling, especially when it comes to setting expectations. As an example, visually showing employees in their workspace and wearing work attire sets clear expectations for candidates. If they aren’t keen on what they see, save yourself and the candidates time and effort by parting ways before they ever apply.
The job search is not only time consuming, sometimes it’s downright confusing. With every company putting their careers link in different places and different job search options, the process can be tedious. So make it easy and give your job seekers a great experience that leads the right potential hires on a clear and compelling path to apply.
Prepare them for what’s ahead. Help job seekers know what to expect and they will be more likely to meet or exceed your expectations both as applicants and employees. Frustrated that candidates are coming in dressed casually for interviews? Tell them to dress to impress. You’ll quickly find out who can and will follow directions.
Include Calls To Action. Enable your candidates to get to where they need to go by making it easy to navigate around your website. That means incorporating buttons or speed bumps with important links to relevant places on your website. Make sure your site navigation and footer use clear language, and make pages easy to access, especially on mobile devices.
Don’t Leave Any Dead Ends. Think about your candidates’ journey on each page of your corporate career site. What happens when they reach the end of the page? Do you lead them to another page, do you show available jobs or does the page end without a clear next step? Take job seekers where you want them to go…and usually that’s to the jobs!
Still not sure where to start? Start by writing down the questions candidates ask in an interview and documenting how you respond. After 10-15 interviews look for repetition in the type of information people want to know and what you share with them. Then talk to your employees about the deciding factors in their choice to work for your company. If you don’t have enough information to write most of the content for your career site, you’ll at least be inspired to begin.
