Career sites – just a job board landing page or the satiating centrepiece for your employer branding strategy?
Let’s lock in B), Eddie.
Your company’s career site connects employer with potential employees.
It is owned media (yours – you’re not at the mercy of social media algorithms)
It is your company’s ‘employer shopfront’
It presents your tantalising employer brand, because it can answer all the questions job seekers may have about working with you.
All in one place.
And exactly what are job seekers looking for in a career site?
Your career site should give potential employees all the information they need to make an informed decision about applying for your opportunities. If it’s really good, it’ll make job seekers keen as spiked punch for the chance to be working with you.
But to be that good, your career site’ll need to be helpful, present a consistent consumer and employer brand, and it’ll need to show visitors a great time.
Here’s how to make yours stand out.
10 key ingredients for a really good career site that impresses job seekers
Your career site forms part of the early candidate experience and sets expectations for what follows. You’ll want to:
#1 Give job seekers what they want
According to LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends report:
66% of candidates want to know about your company’s culture and values
54% of candidates want to know about perks and benefits
50% of candidates want to know about your company’s mission and vision.
Which means you’ll want to clearly articulate your USP / EVP / give-get in 50 words or less, and demonstrate it throughout the site.
Why should job seekers choose you and not your competitor? What do they get out of working for you / giving a large portion of their life to you?
Identify ways you can show them a realistic preview of what to expect from the very first moment they interact with you:
your working environment – office location and work arrangements
perks and benefits, demonstrated through employee stories
financial, emotional and physical health and wellbeing.
Now, you obviously don’t want to lay on thick all your undesirable traits, but you can’t oversell it and sound all prestige and happy families either. To get around this, be specific: you’re trying to appeal to your special someones, and deter those who aren’t.
#2 Share employee stories
Genuine employee stories are the best way to demonstrate a realistic (and trustworthy) preview of life working in your organisation. But which stories to tell?
Share compelling stories about your company; how it started and why, and showcase your employees with profiles and testimonials. Why did they join, and what’s been their experience relating to colleagues, development and progression, inclusion, work purpose, quality of work, and career pathways?
#3 Map out common career / discipline paths
For most people, they don’t know what they don’t know.
In my graduate recruitment days, we’d go to the universities and talk to law students about opportunities to design government policies and laws. Because law grads are mostly taught to pursue prestigious courtroom careers as the only pathway, until a different path is lit for them.
I saw a job post for a Bank Branch Manager on LinkedIn recently. The internal recruiter specifically requested people outside of banking, who come from baristas, trade, or retail, due to the strong customer service qualities and fresh perspectives they bring.
Light up the paths. Most people don’t want to apply for a dead-end job with no progression or learning pathways.
Clearly state how career paths are varied and supported, using role profiles and ‘case studies’, ‘Day in the life of’ video stories, and exceptional job ad copy.
#4 Amplify the visual content
One of the best ways to convey your story and your offer in a way that brings the best people to you is through authentic team photos and videos. Which means you gotta dump that cheesy stock library where everyone’s wearing white and cornflour blue collared button up dress shirts!
Get your people involved in your EVP branding and communication process.
Celebrate their stories and achievements and showcase your diversity by using real employees in your videos and images. Visual content also helps to break up the text on your webpage and communicate key messages in different mediums to suit different needs.
#5 Share your recruitment process
AKA Managing Expectations. Consider the use of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) or a Chatbot to help candidates navigate your process and fill them with warm n fuzzy feelings of being supported and in control.
Step candidates through a standard application process, including timelines:
What’s involved?
What can they expect and when?
How can they prepare for each stage to perform at their best?
One unexpected bonus of this is, providing clear timelines up front can help minimise the number of application follow ups throughout shortlisting.
#6 State clear calls to action on each page
All career site pages should have clear calls to action so visitors know what the next step is – where they need to go from here. This is how you optimise your career site’s conversion (whatever your conversion metric may be).
So, where to next for your visitors?
Examples are: Register your interest, join our talent community, read our blog, apply now, view our vacancies, subscribe to our email list, follow us on social, explore our perks, join our mission…
Do not leave them hanging. Every page must serve a clear purpose and direct audiences to continue their journey with you until they reach your desired result ^^^
#7 Publish career-related blogs
Often missed opportunities. An employee + career blog is yet another valuable opportunity to share application and recruitment tips as well as employee stories. In addition to your recruitment experts jumping in with their professional titbits to help job seekers navigate your recruitment process, you can also invite your employees to contribute stories, experiences and professional insights to advance your employer branding messaging.
#8 Write clear and compelling website copy
Finding and applying for roles with ‘ideal’ employers is a very personal experience for most people, and yet, career site copy tends to be overly formal and bureaucratic. Long, garbled sentences that overwhelm and jar in the third person are no good for anyone. Ever.
Write to the individual in the second person perspective (You, We), framing all copy to meet the job seeker’s desire to know, ‘What’s In It For Me?’ (WIIFM). This is why having candidate avatars are super valuable, because when you understand the specifics of who you’re talking to, you can write better copy in their language, leaving them with no doubt, “This is my work home.”
Some specific ways you can jazz up your career site copy:
Ensure a distinct employer brand personality is present.
Use a personal, conversational tone.
Use small, punchy words and sentences, so it’s easy to digest.
Use clear and valuable headings to encourage skimming.
Make sure it’s Search Engine Optimised (but not keyword stuffed – it must first be user friendly).
Use FAQs for ease of reference.
Take care of your micro copy – chatbot scripts, enquiry forms, CTAs, 404.
#9 Use a clean design that’s easy to navigate
The most user-friendly websites have a clean design that’s free of clutter. Try using copy blocks with clear, intuitive headings and calls to action. Embrace whitespace and simple colour schemes and fonts.
You want to make your career site as easy to read and use as possible.
AND you must make sure it is mobile optimised. That is, when you view it from a mobile device, the format and sizing automatically adjust to fit the smaller screen size. Super duper important, folks.
#10 Integrate / direct to your social media profiles
Not every visitor to your site is ready to apply for your opportunities that very second. For some, your career site may be the start of their ‘getting to know you’ journey. They may want to stay in touch with you to hear the latest goings on or check out more employee stories for a better feel for what life’s like behind closed doors.
Your social media profiles should always be included, whether your Instagram grid is integrated into your site, or you just include links to your profiles via the relevant logos (standard). You want to make it easy for visitors to stay in touch with you!
Bonus points if you have a high-touch email list or talent community.
Need help nailing your career site copy?
Obviously, there are fun and creative things you can do to make a bigger impression on your future employees (e.g. Heineken). But these 10 key ingredients will help you create a valuable employer branded career site that gives them what they most want.
If your writing style is more convoluted than conversational and you need help tszujing, get in touch about my career site copywriting service.