How to improve your careers site: 5 practical tips
Company careers sites are important, but more often than not they end up being bland and corporate. Dated news, inconsistent messaging, and a poor user experience won’t be doing your candidate experience any favours.
Read on for five expert tips on how you can improve your recruitment pages using a simple strategy that encompasses everything from chatbots to creative copywriting.
1. Make getting to know you (really) easy
The most important task your recruitment page has to achieve is to help people really get a feel for your organization as an employer. This is your chance to talk freely about your brand and showcase the best of your organization! Use clear language and consider accessibility when writing your career page copy.
Get more passive candidates interested in your company by including industry keywords and terms.
One pro tip is to lift the lid on your company’s onboarding process.
Why?
Increases the candidate’s confidence in the future
Takes the applicant’s thoughts further into the future with your company: helps them envision what the next steps would look like
Gives a real taste of what “coexistence” might look and feel like.
2. Lower the threshold to starting conversations
You want to encourage people to really get those career conversations going, so lower the threshold of getting in touch with you.
A simple user-friendly way to do this is by using a career page chatbot on your website. (A great guide on chatbots here). Use the chatbot to warm up the discussion and use it as a tool for mapping out the motives of a potential candidate.
Remember that not everyone is immediately ready to make decisions! Be ready to signpost some of your website visitors: they might want further advice, or they could be looking for someone to connect with. Candidates like to be able to get in touch with someone who can lift the lid on everyday company life before they go through the effort of applying.
3. Make an (emotional) impression
Personalize, let loose, know your target audience, and be proud of what you do…. and show it!
People use their emotions to make decisions online. Creating an emotional impression on your careers site should be approached on several different levels.
Think about how you can forge emotional connections:
With a candidate in the beginning of the recruitment process
Build trust through your career and recruitment communications
During the recruitment process
Invest in micro-moments and encounters that are relevant to both your company and the candidate. These really uplift the candidate experience
Think about how your recruitment process impacts the candidate’s emotional state and reflects it. E.g. If they are very nervous, you can reassure them that there will be support and mentors along the way
The ‘wow’ effect: driving real change and meaning
Bring the candidate along on a bigger journey: how can they have a positive impact on the world around them? What bigger mission can they be part of? Paint a picture that goes beyond their career. Remember, the further along a person gets in their thought process about where they’ll end up with your company, the better!
4. Integrate your career page with your ongoing recruitment strategy
Ensure that your careers site is in sync with your ongoing recruitment strategy. Integrate it with your wider recruitment processes.
Include a wide range of content that goes into details about everyday life at your company on your careers page. Make sure that the content is regularly updated so it always reflects your current situation.
It will reflect badly on you if the site is bogged down by old content, e.g. posts or career stories from two years ago. Analyze your career site content: is it still relevant (do those people even work here anymore??).
Always go for relevant and fresh content!
Pro tip: involve other teams and departments in content production for maximum authenticity.
5. Get creative with your career page
Creative copywriting is an especially fruitful way to be playful with your recruitment content and tone of voice.
In order to get more creative with your copy, create cross-organizational teams and get them involved in brainstorming to create your own creative copy gangs!
Empower people within your organization to get involved in creative ideation. Evoke feelings, be distinctive: you honestly can’t go wrong here.
Keep coming back to how are you making your target talent audience feel?
Remember, context is everything. What might seem wacky to doctors could be banal for IT talent. Being playful works across the board, even in traditional organizations, but keep the context in mind. Empower and involve stakeholders and you can’t go too wrong.
💡 Hungry for more? Want to find out more about the ways in which your communication strategy dovetails with your recruitment strategy? Speak to our EB team today!
👉 Reach out to Vivi, +358 50 572 9470 or email vivi@findersseekers.io