Hachem Ramki September 28, 2020 The career page is one of the most powerful recruitment tools in a company’s arsenal. While shaping the workforce lays the groundwork for the challenges to come, creating and nurturing the company’s brand in the eyes of potential candidates can go a long way to building a team of superstars.
Career pages come with great potential for traffic generation and growth. Furthermore, it gives the company an opportunity to create good content, a highly intuitive experience, and source talent at the same time.
The quality of the career page itself can be the difference between a surge of eager applicants and an inconclusive recruitment strategy. When a career page is created, it should be done with the purpose of providing candidates with all the stories, information, and guidance required to make an informed decision.
Keep in mind that this isn’t exclusive to the job and its details, but also the company culture, its morals, and what it stands for. These elements entice candidates and make the company even more desirable.
The career page, company culture, and employer brand go hand in hand. Each has a different effect on the others and to develop one, you must develop them all.
What is the career page?
The career page is a section of a company’s website that outlines open positions and allows candidates to submit applications or refer others. This is the most direct recruitment channel for both candidates and employers. These sections can be created directly on the website or through dedicated third-party applications.
Over time, career pages have evolved beyond the basic model. Now, there’s a variety of designs and templates available online, from single-page designs to intricate models that are for all intents and purposes a website of their own. A lot of companies take advantage of these sections to boost their brand, improve their SEO and go above and beyond with quality content.
At its core, a career page must have the singular focus to inform candidates about the company, its values, its culture, and what makes it a good place to work. All the pros of joining the company must be conveyed in a manner consistent with the employer brand.
How your message is formulated and conveyed is extremely important. Generally, job seekers would shift multiple companies and open positions before deciding to apply. When they encounter your career page, it’s down to your content to convince potential talent to apply.
What can a career page do for you?
There are many benefits to creating a good career page.
Your story and how it’s told, are yours to control.
This is the first point of contact with job-seeking talent. You’re in control of the narrative as well as the candidate’s experience. Designing a good career page sets the tone for future recruitment conversations.
Great potential for organic traffic.
The first step to finding a job begins with search engines. This makes SEO very promising in this particular section of your website. Employers can leverage specific search terms relevant to their industry, the position itself, and their company to increase incoming organic traffic. The right strategy can turn your career page into a gold mine.
Career pages engage talent.
Though it isn’t initially a conversation, your career page is a great way to engage candidates. Curiosity surrounding the position ultimately becomes curiosity regarding the company. Quality content is key here, as well as user experience. The two elements can convey your story as well as your website if not better.
Revolutionizing hiring metrics.
Recruitment metrics such as cost per hire, time to hire, and the like are best improved through the career page. Although active efforts to source talent are the norm, the career page allows for a more passive talent acquisition approach. The more candidates are able to locate your career page and experience its user-friendliness organically, the less you have to pay for sponsored efforts.
Traffic tracking
Traffic statistics are somewhat elusive most of the time. But given the nature of the career page, it’s possible to track important traffic details such as volumes, locations, demographics, and even click journeys. With these metrics in mind, employers can reorient their targeting and refine their message.
Coordinating the message on the career page with that conveyed on your website and social media can be a great start to a stellar recruitment campaign. Once this channel is refined, leveraging other tools such as applicant tracking systems (ATS) and HR solutions can lead to a well-rounded software ecosystem, where the career page works concurrently with other solutions for the best hiring strategy.
Elements of a great career page
The design
The design you choose for your career page should be optimized for user experience and web search. Focus should be placed on providing a positive message on an easy-to-navigate design. It’s important not to skip brand-specific elements as well.
A good career page would consist of:
An enticing or appealing visual display
A user-friendly platform
Simple user experience
Brand elements: (colors, fonts, message).
Well-placed content and decluttered display.
The content
Content is the most effective aspect of a career page. In fact, our digital world places more emphasis on content than design. It is the vessel that carries and spreads your message. They are one of the major reasons pushing exceptional talent to submit an application.
The content itself and the form in which you deliver it, are entirely up to you. However, target talent profile, local demographics, and talent market details should all be taken into account when the content is created. This makes it more effective, as it speaks the language of the individuals that you are hoping to reach.
Solid career page content would convey:
Brand values and company culture
Employee reviews and satisfaction
Images and videos
Compact explanation of “what we do”
History
Benefits and perks
Open positions
Though there’s a lot more than can be conveyed through the career page, the points listed above constitute the very basic set of elements required. At the end of the day, employers must consider the questions that job seekers would inevitably ask themselves as they browse your career page.
Who are they?
What do they do?
What makes them a good employer?
What’s the benefit?
The career page is a powerful tool in your arsenal, but it’s not the only one. Employers should remain focused on the bigger picture, and consider this section as an element of a more exhaustive recruitment process. The candidate experience from start to finish should be consistent in its ease of use, tone of delivered message, and overall brand details.
Every company has a story to tell, and its employees are part of that story. The combined benefits of an excellent career page and unique company brand are invaluable. It’s the authentic portrayal of who you are that makes it the asset that it is.
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