What’s the first place potential candidates land on after discovering your job listing?
You’re right — it’s your company’s careers page.
We can’t stress this enough: your careers page deserves A LOT of attention. Because in getting the right talent in, your company’s careers page does a lot of heavy lifting.
So to help you match your careers page with the expectations of your potential candidates, here are 24 easy-to-implement tips.
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1. Make a mark with a strong employer brand
Employer branding helps you position your company as the ‘ideal employer’ or the ‘employer of choice’ for the people you’d like to hire.
A 2016 Glassdoor survey found that 69% of candidates are likely to apply for a job “if the employer actively manages its employer brand.”
Here are a few things you can do to make your employer branding shine on your careers page:
- Create an ‘Employee Value Proposition’
- List the benefits and perks of working at your company
- Add any workplace awards you might have received from portals like Glassdoor
- Link to your updated company profiles across all professional networks like LinkedIn, AngelList, Glassdoor, etc.
- Share information on your company culture and work values and environment
2. Add employee reviews
Candidates reportedly read about 7 company reviews when considering applying for a job.
Since your company’s careers page is where you ‘sell’ your jobs to potential candidates, social proof in the form of employee testimonials is a great addition to it.
If you’re already on Glassdoor, grab your best testimonials and add them to your page. If you don’t have any employee reviews yet, email your staff requesting them to share their feedback on working with you.
Next, plug some of the best reviews you collect on your careers page.
3. Put your mission statement on your careers page
50% of candidates check out a company’s mission statement while considering applying for a job. Not only that, the mission statement is one of three top things a potential candidate checks out about an employer.
A mission statement on your careers page gives you the chance to inspire like-minded individuals to apply to join you.
Paypal communicates it’s mission statement on the career page. A nice reminder
for applicants why they should (or should not) apply.
4. List the top perks and benefits of working for you
Employee benefits (or perks) are one of the top five information pieces an applicant seeks.
So your careers website must clearly list the benefits of working for your company, especially if you offer the following perks (as they’re known to have the highest correlation with employee satisfaction):
- Health insurance
- Vacation/PTO
- Retirement planning options like 401(k)s and pensions
Perks and Benefits of working at Buffer
5. Add an email-to-a-friend feature
The Trends in Fortune 500 Careers Web Site Recruiting report states that the ability to email a job to a friend gets a 117% growth of applications in.
If your ATS provider supports this feature, add it to your careers page.
6. Ensure mobile-friendliness
A Jobvite study found that about 33% of millennials want to be able to apply for jobs right from their phones.
Which means, your careers page must be optimized for mobile devices.
Lots of times, when companies think about mobile-friendliness, they don’t think beyond a responsive design. But a good mobile website experience goes deeper than that. For example, in addition to showing up well on mobile and tablet devices, a mobile-friendly page’s content also renders well on the small screen. Which means you should:
- Write short paragraphs
- Maintain short sentences
- Add a lot of white space
- Use light images
- Add shorter videos
Also, try applying for one of your jobs on a mobile device and see if you find any anomalies.
7. Find the right content mix (images, videos, text)
To avoid a bland and monotonous careers page, use the right mix of content types.
For example, to share what’s expected of a candidate, use a bunch of expectation management videos.
To showcase a happy working environment, add a picture of your canteen area or maybe of a meeting room.
8. Add an FAQ
FAQs help address some of the most common questions potential candidates might have.
FAQs on your careers website won’t just save the candidates the effort of contacting you, but will also save your HR team from answering the same questions over and over.
9. Keep the job listings updated
One of the most frustrating things to happen to an applicant is to get an email saying that the job they had applied for is already filled.
Imagine the experience of a candidate who takes the time to craft a meaningful application only to hear this! To avoid such experiences, always keep your careers site’s listings updated.
10. Add a job alerts feature
Candidates who are actively searching for jobs could land on your careers website from various sources. Even if you aren’t looking to fill any positions or advertising any jobs.
In such cases, it’s best to collect the emails of such candidates for future vacancies. A lot of ATS providers offer the job alerts feature. Implement it on your website’s careers page if your ATS provider supports it.
The state of diversity recruiting in 2020
11. Jazz up your job descriptions
Your job descriptions are essential content pieces you share on your company’s careers page.
After a candidate has reviewed your company for its overall work culture, benefits, and values, your job description will determine if this person actually applies for a job.
You’ll be surprised to know that 27% of candidates don’t understand what’s expected of a role.
Here’s where crafting a good, clear job description comes in handy.
In our detailed guide on how to write winning job descriptions, you can learn everything right from using a meaningful job title to listing your ‘deal-breaker’ requirements.
12. Keep your careers page just one click away from your homepage
A Taleo study found that 73% of multinational websites had their careers pages just one click away from the homepage.
And it makes sense because even the best careers page won’t attract the best candidates if they can’t find it at all.
To drive good traffic to your careers page, make it accessible. A great way to do so is to place it in your website’s footer.
13. Make your content SEO-friendly
A lot of companies reuse job description templates on their careers pages. Now, because these are generic templates, they don’t use any domain or niche-specific terms.
For example, let’s say you’re hiring for the post of a product manager at your fintech solution provider company.
If you use a template job description, you’ll most likely use a generic job title like “Product Manager”, whereas, you could easily use one that’s more descriptive and search engine-friendly such as a “Fintech Product Manager”.
This small tweak can help search engines understand your job better and will also make your job easier to find for a product manager candidate who’s looking for a job in the fintech niche.
So go back to your careers page content and fill it with rich niche-specific terms.
14. Add a company blog
As a business, you might already be using a blog to engage your users. After all, a blog is an effective way to educate your users on how they can make the most of your products.
Likewise, a company blog is a great means to educate potential applicants on what it’s like working for your company and for sharing your employee stories. Having a blog also lets you publish regular updates on the direction in which your company is heading – something which might interest a candidate a lot.
15. Be honest about your company culture
Beyond all the haze and hype, a company culture, as Alison Doyle beautifully puts it, is “ the personality of a company.”
She adds:
“For example, some companies have a team-based culture with employee participation on all levels, while other have a more traditional and formal management style.
A whopping 66% percent of your job applicants want to know about your company culture.
Talking about your company culture on your careers page will help you attract candidates who’ll be great cultural fits.
16. Pay special attention to your hero area
Aesthetically, the hero area (or the area visible over the fold) on your jobs page sets the tone of your page. A hero area that matches with the company’s personality, whether it’s vibrant or classy or casual, will generally be a great starting point.
Hero area of Intercom’s careers page
17. Share your company’s values
Whether it’s before making an application or considering a job offer, an applicant or a candidate thoroughly reviews a company’s values.
So talk about your company’s values on your careers page. Share your:
- Core values
- Aspirational values
- Permission-to-play values
- Accidental values
For some inspiration, check out this list compiling values of some of the most successful companies.
Facebook’s values are displayed on the careers page
18. Make your careers page searchable (or at least scannable)
If you have too many jobs to list, let users search your careers page to find the relevant listings. Also, categorize the jobs for quick access.
19. Add a “How it works” or a “Hiring timeline” section
Giving the candidates an idea of how hiring works at your company and when they can expect to hear back will improve your candidate experience a lot.
Offering this information will also save a lot of repetitive query emails to your HR team.
20. Feature your team
If you’ve a small team, try featuring it on your company’s careers page.
This will allow your potential candidates to get to know your team members virtually. And anyway, this adds a dash of a personal touch to your job page.
21. Think about your candidate experience
The candidate experience starts right at the moment they come across your job listing. And so, what you offer to these candidates on your company’s careers page can bolster your image in a certain way before these candidates apply.
Which is why you should make sure that your company’s careers page is consistent with your overall candidate experience. You can read more about what a candidate experience is and how you can improve it in this post.
22. Power your careers page with good tracking, screening, and hiring solutions
Once you’ve worked out a slick careers page for your company, your next step is to power it with the right recruitment tools.
The right ATS, screening, and interviewing tools will ensure that you pick, evaluate, and track each application you get and also update the candidates on the status of their applications.
23. Measure the performance of your careers page
Just like you’d track any other key business page on your website, monitor your jobs page as well.
To start with, look at these metrics:
- Traffic (the quarterly traffic your careers page gets)
- Conversion rate (the number of applications you receive as opposed to the total traffic the page gets)
- Job alerts opt-ins (the number of people signing up to know about future openings)
- Referral traffic (determining which job boards or channels send the maximum traffic)
The data you collect here will translate to great, actionable insights. For example, if you find very few people applying, you might want to rethink your process.
24. Don’t miss the “top 5”
If you can only implement just one of the ideas from this list, please make it this one.
On your company’s careers page, give your potential candidates the top 5 pieces of information they seek:
- Salary/compensation
- Benefits
- Basic company information
- What makes it an attractive place to work
- Company mission, vision, values
If you don’t have the time to jazz it up or make it fancy, use plain text. But do offer this information because this information will make all the difference between getting an application or a dropoff.
Wrapping it up…
There you have ‘em! 24 easy ways to optimize your company’s careers page for quick wins. Follow them on your website’s jobs page and notice how it becomes your most effective hiring tool and starts attracting the best applications for all your jobs.
The state of diversity recruiting in 2020
