Creating, or even just revamping, a careers site can seem like a daunting task. In all fairness, it doesn’t just seem like a daunting task—it is a daunting task. In order to create a careers site the right way (because there are right and wrong ways), there are many factors that you have to consider. While it’s easy to get muddled down in all the details that go into a careers site, in reality, there are five major “must-haves” for any careers site that is looking to garner as much candidate interest as possible.
So, if it’s time for a revamp or a first edition build for your company’s careers site, here are the five must-haves that you should use as checkboxes:
1. You’re looking beyond posting jobs. A list of jobs is the most basic element to any careers site, but you need so much more than that in order to have an effective and engaging site. Think stories that show off your company culture, videos that have your employees sharing what they love about working for your company, pictures of the most recent company event you hosted. Anything that gives your site a little TLC (tender, lovin’ content, that is).
2. You’re showing off your employees. Speaking of content, here’s where you give that big bucket some direction. Most of the content on your site should be employee focused. Candidates care about awards and snippets from the leadership team, but they care more about what their future co-workers have to say. As a side note, any and every picture on your site should be real people who work for you.
3. You’re hitting all the highest areas of hiring needs. Your content isn’t just random with employees talking about company values and other vague topics—it’s organized into content tracks with blog posts and videos that focus on specific topics your candidates would be most interested in. Your content should be segmented in some way (we recommend by job families) and it should focus mostly on your areas of highest recruiting needs. Need more salespeople? Have a section on the site dedicated to stories from your current sales team.
4. You’re giving candidates other ways to engage with you. Whether you have careers-specific social channels or not (which, by the way, you should), you should make it clear to candidates on your careers site how they can engage with your brand on social. Icons that link to your social channels should be at either the top or bottom of every page (if not both) and consider a social widget, such as a feed that displays your latest Instagram posts.
5. You’re making it easy for candidates to find jobs. Amidst all the content and attractions you should have on your careers site, there’s one thing to never lose focus on: everything that’s on the site should either be suggesting a candidate apply or should be leading a candidate directly to apply. For that reason, every page on your site should have a button that very clearly says “Apply Now” or “Apply Here” or anything along those lines. It should be the equivalent of a big red button—something that the candidate could never miss.
There are countless details within each of those five items, but in a broad sense, these are the must-haves. If you’re unsure of where you fall on this list, our team of experts at Kinetix can help. For a ranking on each of these items (as well as your social media presence), request an employer branding audit. We’ll help you see where your shortcomings are, and how you can make the candidate experience better.