It takes companies 43 days on average to fill an employee opening. That’s 43 days where someone is having to juggle extra responsibilities left undone by the vacancy.
When you’re running a company, you know how important each team member is to getting everything done correctly and on time. No one has time for extra tasks, which is why it’s so important to have a helpful career page.
Here are the top 15 things you should do to make your career page as helpful as possible.
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Have a Personality
The most important thing you can do to make your company desirable for potential applicants is to have some personality!
When you’re marketing to potential customers, you try to show them how relatable and awesome your brand is. The same rules apply to potential employees.
Make sure your job descriptions, company history, and other content don’t sound like a robot wrote them. Allow the applicant to see the soul of the group to find out if their personality will be a good fit with the rest.
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Create a Target Candidate
Just like marketing, you need to cater to your specific desired candidate. The entire career page should be focused on reeling in that type of visitor.
A bunch of applications from people who won’t fit in your company is just a huge waste of time. Create a target candidate and make sure everyone knows what they look like so the whole page will appeal to them.
This exercise will also help you filter through applications as they come in as well. You can check them against your ideal list and look for the best match.
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Be Crystal Clear
There’s nothing worse than getting to the interview stage of the hiring process only to realize there was a miscommunication somewhere along the line.
Even worse would be to hire someone that doesn’t have a clear view of what’s expected of them. It’s super important to be as specific and clear as possible from the very beginning to make sure everyone is on the same page.
This applies to everything they might find on the career site and in the job application.
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Grab Their Attention
When we think of the hiring process, we generally think about how the applicant wants to grab the company’s attention. But it works the other way as well.
You need a good employee just as much as they need a good job.
Making the page visually appealing will do wonders for grabbing job seekers’ attention. It’s important to highlight the biggest benefits and draws of the job right away so the applicant wants to learn more and becomes more invested.
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Add in Recruitment
Sometimes it’s just not enough to have a great main careers page and easy job application process. You may need to bring in a recruitment element to push your opening into the right hands.
Roivant Sciences has developed an outstanding example of recruitment for exceptional team-building.
They focus on finding candidates that will add something special to each of their teams and who have the necessary qualifications. This allows them to widen their net and bring in more options to their application pool.
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Make It Attractive
If you want people to stay on your career site (or any web page for that matter), you have to make it attractive.
No one wants to spend their time staring at an ugly webpage trying to read the too-small text or figure out what a blurry picture is supposed to be. The quality of your page depends largely on the design elements.
The focus shouldn’t be on the copy alone, even though that’s extremely important. You need to make a good first impression to draw people in to read that copy.
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Easy Navigation
It’s likely that if someone is interested in a job posting you have, they’ll want to look around at your whole website.
This is a great research tool for potential employees to get a better feel for the company overall. It will help them learn the product or service and what might be expected of them.
And that’s why it’s so important to make the navigation around your website as simple and easy to use as possible. The applicant should be able to look around and come back to the posting without difficulty.
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Give an Inside View
People love behind the scenes and inside looks into companies. It makes the company feel more relatable and interesting.
Focus your copy and job listing on the exciting things your company has to offer. Share what sets you apart from others and how working for you benefits employees’ lives.
Starting a new job can be scary. But having a peek into how things are run can help ease nerves and encourage applications.
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Build a Community
Qualifications, education, and work history are very important parts of finding the right candidate for the job. You definitely need to pay attention to these.
But you also want someone who fits in with the existing community you have.
Happy employees are productive, efficient employees. So you want to find those that will fit in with the team and feel at home there. Your careers page should be a place where people can feel the community they’ve built.
You can do this by sharing about team members and other community aspects of the job.
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Keep Up with New Trends
The job market is continually changing, it can be difficult to keep up. But it’s a key component to a successful career page.
Demographics for potential employees differ greatly from area to area and year to year.
When you have a clear understanding of those demographics for your target candidate, you can cater to the trends that are popular with them. This is just another way to make your company and career page stand out.
No one wants to sign on to work for a company for several years if they’re already outdated.
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Add More Media
Job searching is exhausting. It takes so much mental energy to go through all of the possible options making sure it’s something you’re actually interred in and qualified for. Honestly, it can be quite overwhelming.
If you can add a variety of media types to your career page, you’re more likely to get all the information you need for the potential candidate.
A great way to do that is to make a video explaining your company or a specific job.
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Keep it Simple
While an applicant will want to know many details about the company and the specific job, you don’t need to share every last thing.
There are some things that aren’t important to know before you begin a new job, leave those things out. Let there be a little mystery!
It’s a fine line to walk between giving the background story and information and making the applicant drink from a firehose and not retain anything. Stick to the most crucial information and a few fun details for the best results.
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Connect to Social Media
Chances are your dream applicant isn’t going to type in your company first thing when they hit the job market.
It will probably take a third party for them to locate you. This is why it’s absolutely crucial to link your career pages to your social media platforms and improve your Google rating.
Utilizing these tools is a great way to bring in a wider audience and give yourself more options to choose from.
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Consider a Mobile Application
More than 50% of internet traffic is from mobile devices rather than desktop computers.
That means the probability that your potential applicants are searching on their phones is pretty high. So your website needs to be completely mobile-friendly and optimized for that type of view.
The functionality will be basically the same but the design elements will likely need to be tweaked for the smaller screen size.
It doesn’t take a lot of effort but the attention to detail and making the experience as easy as possible for every visitor won’t go unnoticed.
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Share the Whole Process
One of the most difficult aspects of going through a job search is that every company has a different hiring process.
Without expectations, it’s hard to manage the whole experience. Not to mention the difficulty it adds for the applicant to make sure they’ve done everything necessary for your specific company.
You can ease some of their anxiety and overwhelm by giving them a clear outline of how your hiring process typically goes.
Boost Your Careers Page
When your company is looking to hire, you want to find the exact right fit. A helpful, engaging careers page can be just the tool to scout out that person.
A good career page will help weed out ineligible candidates, make qualified candidates excited about the position, and help everyone have realistic expectations for the whole process. It’s a great tool when done correctly.
If you’re interested in learning more tips and tricks for running a successful business, check out our other articles!
