Career site

What is a career website?

A career website is a source of information for job seekers about open positions, terms and conditions, job benefits, test jobs, employee reviews, the company as an HR brand, etc. It can be an entire website, or a page or a subdomain of the corporate website.

In fact, 64% of job seekers confirm that a detailed job page on the employer's website is a valuable resource when looking for a job. As for the company, it's an opportunity to answer in detail any questions a job seeker may have at first, as well as:

• Strengthening the image of the employer. A well-designed and detailed career site is one indicator of a company's seriousness and reliability. An organization that invests time and effort in filling the site and is attentive to recruiting demonstrates its promise, values, capabilities, and stability.
• Reducing the routine burden on the HR department. Most of the questions from job seekers that are posed to recruiters in the early stages of hiring are standard: Work schedules, training opportunities, corporate benefits, etc. You can answer them on a career website.
• Building a strong candidate base. A career site allows you to gather contacts of professionals interested in your company, even if you don't currently have any openings.
• Creating future opportunities. Think long-term. Those who come to your company's careers section may not be looking for a job at that moment, but they may learn something new about the company that will encourage them to come back to you when they are.
• Filling job vacancies quicker. A job posting can get lost on job sites among nearly identical listings. A career site allows you to pitch the job in your own way so that it's memorable, and proper SEO optimization allows it to be one of the first to come up during an online search.
• Informing job seekers. On a career site you can post news items that relate to the job vacancy you posted. That way they won't get lost among other corporate event announcements and articles. You can also keep a calendar of events. For example, you're planning an open house or the company is represented at a career conference.
• Defining target audiences. Career website analytics will tell you traffic volumes, location, demographics, and interaction information. This will help you set up proper targeting so that your ads are only shown to the target audience.

How do you create an effective career website?

A company has about eight seconds to get a job seeker on its side. That's how long it takes for most people to make a decision. To make sure you don't miss your chance you should follow some simple guidelines when designing your website:

Follow the AIDA formula

AIDA ( Attention-Interest-Desire-Action ) is a principle that consists of four steps a company must walk a job seeker through to successfully encourage them to become a candidate.

Attention

Sophisticated corporate design and text will enhance the candidate's experience and set you apart as an potential employer.

Interest

A well structured, clear and accurate ad generates interest in job seekers. The content you create should focus on possible questions the job seeker may have, rather than reflecting your company's interests. In general, try to answer the following questions in your job ad:

• Who exactly is the company looking for?

• In what department, division, team, city, country is the position open?

• What are the job requirements?

• What are the job responsibilities? If possible, not only describe, but also show what tasks your employee will perform.

• What does the employer offer?

Example

Companies often present this information in solid text which is difficult to read. Try to make this important block more catchy. For example, in Admixer, the benefits of working for the company are depicted in an infographic that is quick to read and easy to remember.

Desire

According to multiple studies, 85% of all job seekers look for information about your organization's corporate culture, motives and values during the online orientation process. These are important factors for the candidate when choosing their new employer. Make this information available and visible to job seekers on your career website. Images and videos, as well as employee voices, further enhance the emotional impact of the ad.

Example

At Rakuten, employees share their work experiences and thus help job seekers understand why they should choose this company. The information is presented as short quotes with pictures of employees and job titles.

Action

The last step of the AIDA model encourages applicants to send a resume or CV. Many prospective candidates, unfortunately, leave at the last minute and do not respond. The reasons for this are varied. Here are a few possible explanations:

• Complicated or incomprehensible application forms.
• Mandatory fields requiring the applicant to provide possibly obscure information that interrupt the application process.
• Technical deficiencies. Nearly 3 out of 5 job seekers leave a career site because of bugs.

Avoiding these bugs and creating an easy candidate pathway should be on every HR professional's agenda.

Example

AJAX makes it as easy as possible to respond by using LinkedIn, Indeed or by directly downloading the job seeker's current resume.

Pro-tips

Regularly update the blog with new articles

This is where the future candidate can learn about your successes, organizational changes, values, corporate features, and keep up with internal corporate events. For example, you can post information about new appointments in the company, victories, vacations together, plans and results. This allows the job seeker to understand what the company is all about.

Optimize your career site

All in all, 31.1% of job seekers search for jobs using search browsers, so don't forget to SEO-optimize your content and adapt pages for different devices.

Get a chatbot.

This will not only reduce the burden on the HR department but it also allows you to stay in touch with job seekers 24/7.

Add a search bar

For maximum ease of site navigation, add a search bar so that job seekers can quickly find the job they need without having to scroll through numerous listings.

Add engaging content

Interactive videos, tests, games related to the position, duties, requirements help not only to weed out unnecessary candidates but also to make going through the stages of selection more unique and memorable.

Create a modern website

Include a beautiful design that matches your corporate identity and a clear user path will help lead the job seeker to the job response button. Try to update your career site with new content and add special features.

Example

Instead of boring bullet points, NetGame used visual elements of games to separate jobs which correspond to the stylistics of the product.

An up-to-date, modern career website with quality content is an effective tool for strengthening your company's HR brand and a reliable mechanism for attracting candidates. So create one if you don't have one, and regularly develop your career site. We hope our recommendations will help you do this quickly and efficiently - especially with the PeopleForce career website tool. Book a demo if you want to learn more about this and our system’s other features.