Improve your Career Page and Gain More Applicants

How important is your career page for Recruitment Marketing?  According to Hireology’s 2021 State of hiring report, just 7% of respondents said that the company career site was the most helpful. Just 7%, it hardly seems worth the effort to maintain your career page, so why bother.  Today we will discuss the benefits of your career page, what features to include to make it an effective recruiting tool for you, and what steps are needed to help your page rank.

Benefits of Your Career Page

One of the key benefits of your career page is in building your Employer Brand.  According to research by LinkedIn, 75% of applicants are influenced by employer brand.  Applicants today do not just see your ad on one of the job boards and hit apply. Instead, they often spend hours researching your company, checking your career page, your social media presence, former employee reviews, and comments.  Applicants can learn about your company culture, your mission, and your ideals.  To gain the edge into today’s competitive hiring atmosphere, you must take the time to ensure that your career page accurately reflects your Employer Brand.

Beyond just branding, your career page, if done correctly, can be a vehicle for reaching potential applicants where they are searching.  Job searches for most candidates start with Google.  Over 300 million, roughly 30% of Google searches per month, are job-related.  Google For Jobs is a key to getting noticed by candidates today.  Don’t believe me? Go Google any job, and the first thing you will see pop up is the blue jobs box listing job options that match your query in your local area.  Google pulls these jobs directly from your career site. Make sure your career page is user and SEO-friendly, and you open your position up to millions of people who are searching for jobs like yours in your local area.

Career Page Content

Your career page is more than just a mechanism to list the jobs you currently have open.   Even when you're not hiring, your career page should be updated year-round with engaging and informative content that boosts your employer brand.  Here are a few suggestions for content that applicants are looking for on your career page:

1. Videos featuring your employees’ stories.  Hearing about what it is like to work for your company directly from your staff builds trust.  Applicants want to know from those that work there what it is really like.
2. Your Branding Story.  This is your chance to lay out who your company is.  What are your goals and values?  What sets you apart from your competitors? In essence, why should they choose your company with whom to share their talents?
3. Your safety procedures.  Concerns over Covid-19 are impacting which companies people are willing to work for.  List clearly what steps you are taking, if any, to protect your staff. 
4. Behind the scenes.  Show your company culture with a behind the scenes look at the daily life of your team. 
5. Benefits.  The benefits you offer, both big and small, set you apart from your competition. From health insurance to flexible schedules to parking to free lunch, be sure to lay out all the benefits, both common and unique to your company. 
6. Chat Bots.  Any opportunity to be engaging on your career page should not be passed up.  Chatbots can be a helpful tool for your career site. They can take work off your recruiters by answering common candidate questions and improving the candidate experience. Chatbots can increase conversions on your site by guiding job seekers to openings that match their qualifications by screening candidates with pre-qualifying questions and even setting up interviews.
7. Mobile-Friendly applications.  Of course, the most important piece of any career page is your application. More than ever, people are using their phones to apply for jobs; your application must be easy to complete on a mobile device. Keep the application short and sweet; if it takes more than 5 minutes to finish, you will see a higher drop-off rate. 
8. Job Descriptions. Keep your job descriptions short and easy to read.  Use bullet points to aid you in laying out the responsibilities, requirements, salary, and benefits. Be sure to include the compensation. Jobs without wages listed get significantly fewer applicants than those that do give this information. 

SEO for Your Career Page

Like any website, to have a chance at ranking on Google, you must ensure that your SEO is up to Google’s latest standards.  On top of standard SEO, for career pages, you must ensure that your job descriptions are properly structured for Google For Jobs. 

To improve your site’s SEO, we recommend:

1. A universally appealing and accessible design
2. A mobile-first structure (meaning it is designed specifically for mobile use)
3. On-point content that your customers need
4. Core web vitals that meet current Google standards:
   • Load time - reducing load time reduces bounce rate and has increased sales with many companies.
   • Interactivity - today, people expect more out of their web experience; ensuring that your page is engaging and interactive is crucial to success.
   • Visual stability - it is important that you do not have any unnecessary movement on your web pages when loading -- one of the main culprits in this area is banners and ads.
   • Mobile friendly - being mobile friendly is no longer just nice to have; it is required. Google is now only indexing via the mobile version of your site.
   • Security - if you don't have an SSL certificate on your site, get one today!

SEO: What to Really Expect

Your career page is an important tool in your recruitment marketing strategy.  The content you provide on this site can make or break your chances with the perfect candidate.  For branding and search visibility, there is no greater tool than a solid career site. 

Here it is! You have been expecting it- the sales pitch. As I am sure you have discovered, this blog is created by Lionzone Digital Marketing, which means that we would be more than happy to assist your company with their Recruitment Marketing needs; for more information about our services, please see https://lionzone.com/recruitment-marketing. My favorite feature of our services, no long-term contracts!  If we don't earn your business every day, we don't deserve to keep you!