10 Signs your career site needs an upgrade
If your career site is tacked on to your company website as an afterthought, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to share your employee value proposition and information about your employee experience with candidates. This is important because this type of information helps candidates to identify if your organization is the right fit for them and persuades talent who would thrive in your environment to submit an application.
Further, your career site is even more important today due to the impact that COVID-19 has had on the way we work and hire new employees. Candidates can no longer walk into an office and meet their prospective team, visit the office space, or pick up on other in-office cues to determine if it’s a right fit. Rather, your company site and your digital touchpoints need to be the place that delivers this information to them.
So, given all this info, it might be time to audit your site and make some updates to ensure your organization’s career site isn’t repelling qualified candidates.
Here are some signs that it might be time to update your career site:
1) Your career site only lists your organizations perks and benefits but doesn’t describe your company culture
Don’t just tell potential candidates what you will give them, show them what their experience will be like by sharing your company culture through stories that also align with your company's mission, values, and employee value proposition so you can begin to attract candidates who share similar values and who are likely to thrive inside your unique working environment.
Airbnb's career page is a perfect example of a company showcasing their unique culture. Their career site features their mission statement front and center, and explicitly defines the type of employees they’re seeking, while also capturing candidate interest with quotes and stories from current employees.
2) You’re not sharing employee stories
Glassdoor states that 67% of employers believe retention rates would be higher if candidates had a clearer picture of what to expect about working at a company before taking the job. By allowing employees to drive a narrative and share their unique stories, you’re allowing potential candidates to decide if your organization is a place they’d be happy working.
Formlabs does a great job of sharing their employee stories through featured blog posts that showcase their employees as individuals. The “Our People” section of their career site links to full interviews with employees describing their interests, work style, and other unique details. This content is an authentic way for candidates to understand Formlabs' culture and decide whether they would be a good fit.
3) Your content doesn’t accurately reflect the current working environment
Your career site should show an accurate reflection of your current working environment. This means if your company is now working remotely, this should be reflected on your career site. Similarly, if your employees are back in office or never went remote in the first place due to the nature of their roles, your site should offer details on what lengths you’re going to in order to protect employee health and safety at work.
Here are a few examples of how you can show candidates what your current working environment looks like:
Include a section on remote work benefits (are you giving employees money for office furniture, etc.?)
Upload a slideshow of current employees working in their home offices
Describe some of the tools and technologies you’re using to collaborate and stay connected while being physically apart
Showcase some of the different events and activities your organization is participating in to stay connected, including virtual happy hours, team workouts and any other activities your company or employees are organizing
4) Your employee value proposition isn’t clearly communicated
Your employee value proposition tagline and supporting pillars should be clearly communicated and easy to identify as soon as candidates land on your career site. Visuals should be well thought out and should support and communicate your brand messaging. Avoid using a wall of text to illustrate your EVP, but rather use copy concisely and rely on visuals to help communicate your unique messaging.
If you’re unsure of how to uncover your organization’s employee value proposition, we’ve put together a blog that walks you through how to do so. You can take a look here — How to uncover your organization’s EVP in 7 steps.
Axonify does a great job of showcasing the EVP that we developed for them on their career site. The team does a great job of balancing strong visual elements alongside their concise copy to engage candidates to learn more.
5) Your career site isn’t mobile friendly
Did you know that 89% of candidates believe that mobile devices are a critical tool to use when looking for a job? In today’s mobile-first world, it is essential to provide a candidate experience that works well across multiple devices. If you’re not providing candidates with a mobile-friendly experience (at the least - mobile-optimized is even better), candidates will drop off and move over to a hiring competitor’s site that provides a better experience instead.
So what makes a good mobile experience? Here are a few things to consider when updating your career site:
Ensure your career site is easy to navigate and your call to actions (search for jobs, join our team) are easy to find. Candidates don’t have a lot of time or patience for poor experiences. They want to open your career site and find what they are looking for immediately.
Remove any unnecessary clutter. Less is more when it comes to smartphones. You may want to reduce your graphics so they don’t interrupt the quest for critical information, such as looking for open roles or information about your company culture.
Design your career site for touch screens. Provide candidates with simplified navigation that is “thumb” friendly to avoid frustrations that will cause candidates to bounce from your site. Include large navigation buttons for critical contact information.
An example of a great mobile career site is Everlane. Their site, which was created by our career site partner NextWave Hire, is streamlined so that it’s small-screen friendly, but still shares the information that candidates need to know including company values, job openings and information about the hiring process.
6) Your career site doesn’t include information for priority talent segments
Personalized content performs better than general content. In fact, 87% of consumers say that personalized content positively influences how they feel about a brand. As such, your career site should include specific pages for some of your priority hiring segments that speaks to the team value proposition and culture of that group.
Further, creating pages for different job areas (like marketing, sales, engineering) or different office locations is an effective way to help candidates quickly learn more about the experience on different teams and find the positions they’re looking for.
A great example of this are the specific pages created for students, grads, and veterans by Marriott International. These pages include information about the employee experience for each of these groups so candidates can determine if the company feels like the right choice.
7) Your job search and application process are time consuming and difficult to navigate
Candidates are looking for a seamless user experience that is streamlined and makes it easy for them to find and apply for jobs. Your job search bar should appear near the top of your careers page and should be easy to navigate, including the ability to filter down by specific criteria.
Your application process should also be quick and easy to complete. In fact, candidates are 365% more likely to abandon an application that takes more than 15 minutes to finish!
Here are a few tips to keep in mind when updating your application user experience:
Get rid of account creations and log ins! An application that requires account log ins or user registration often deters candidates from completing the application.
When going through your application process, count the number of steps candidates need to go through. Consider if any of the questions you asked are repetitive or could be restated in a more concise way.
Find ways to reduce the time it takes to finish your application process so that candidates don’t bounce off before clicking “apply.”
We love Spotify’s career site because they provide a great search and apply experience for candidates. Whether looking by location or department, the site’s navigation is simple and enjoyable, and feels familiar to anyone who has used the music streaming platform before.
8) You don’t have a talent community or it’s hard to find where to join your talent community
A talent community encourages candidates to submit their information to your company without committing to a specific position. If you don’t provide a (very visible) spot for candidates to register for your talent community, you’re missing out on the chance to capture qualified leads and nurture them over time.
Guild is a great example of a talent community done right. Guild provides a simple and easy talent community form that candidates can fill out to stay up to date on future postings or updates on the organization.
9) You’re missing information about your hiring process
Your career site should include a “what to expect” guideline on your hiring process. This should set candidate expectations around timelines and arm them with some tips to help them to succeed during your process.
In addition, it’s also a good idea to provide them with information about your interim remote hiring process, if your experience is currently virtual due to COVID-19. What does the interview process look like? Will it be conducted over Zoom? Since remote work is here to stay, it’s important to prepare potential candidates with tips on how they can succeed in light of these changes. You could also consider creating a virtual interview guide, like the team at Arcadia did, to convey this info to candidates.
Salesforce does a great job of breaking down the nuts and bolts of their hiring process in a step-by-step journey map.
10) You’re not measuring your career site performance regularly
To understand what’s converting candidates and what’s not, you should measure your career site performance by tracking these key metrics:
Number of site visitors (and site demographics if you want to learn what locations, age groups, etc. are visiting your site most)
Visitors to applicant ratio (conversion rate)
The bounce rate (the percentage of people who visit and then immediately leave your site)
Time on page (provides insight into how engaging your content is)
Source of visitor (how are they finding your career site/where are they visiting from)
By measuring these metrics, you can assess and improve your career site over time. You can also use the data as a baseline for comparison to see how your campaigns and other initiatives are performing.
A great tool for this is Google Analytics, which you can set up for free. In fact, your marketing team may already have an account that you can use to get started here so it’s worth reaching out quickly before starting your own account.
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To ensure candidates have the info they need to confidently self-identify if your organization is the right fit for them, you need a career site that delivers a strong, positive impression to potential applicants. Consider if there are ways you can upgrade your career site to meet modern candidate expectations and increase your conversion rate.
If you need help building new content or updating your career site to ensure you’re not losing out on qualified candidates, our team at The Employer Brand Shop would be happy to help. We also partner with the team at NextWave Hire to build exceptional career sites from scratch and manage these sites over time, if you’re looking to do a complete rebuild. Please get in touch with our team for more information and a personalized quote.
About The Employer Brand Shop
The Employer Brand Shop is a boutique recruitment marketing and employer brand agency located in Kitchener, Canada. Our team helps organizations around the world attract and engage talent using creative marketing strategies.