A good career website is key to successfully recruiting people. But they don't get as much attention as they should. At the same time, they are the alpha and omega of successful recruitment. Let's give employer websites a bit of context and how to view them in order to use their full potential in employer branding and recruitment.
Various sources report that up to 80 percent of all candidate job applications take place on corporate career websites. You hear well. In the environment of career websites, not on job portals. The number itself is actually not that important, and above all, it shouldn't surprise us at all.
At least in our latitudes, the norm is that recruitment is primarily about passive candidates. There is a minimum of unemployed people, and getting a new employee means pulling him from another company, convincing him that the grass is greener here.
The advantage, at least for those who are looking for new employees, is the fact that up to 40 percent of employees do not enjoy their work - they are dissatisfied, unmotivated, willing to consider a change. So it can be said that they are in the labor market. But barely a third of them are actively looking for work. The others, who make up the majority, are waiting for someone to address them, interest them, convince them. Therefore, the activity must be on the side of the employer if he wants to succeed in recruitment - he needs to build his name, reputation, strive to create certain unique associations that will help him to enter the "preferred employer" column in the minds of candidates. That's what employer branding is all about.
Advertising on job portals is therefore not enough today to build a strong employer brand and successful recruitment. We are talking about systematic communication on social networks, campaigns, organizing events such as meet-ups and conferences, cooperation with schools, professional associations and communities. We want to logically lead people approached in this way, potential candidates, to conversion, that is, to the fact that they will apply for a job in our company. And where else should this happen than on our careers website? So it's only logical that when it comes to recruitment, it's career websites that dominate this world of passive candidates.
Although it may sound absurd, many employers invest a lot of effort and resources in employer branding and recruitment activities and finally bring the approached candidates to some of their profiles on a platform that they share with other companies, their competitors. I mean all those company profiles (pages with the introduction of the company on the platform operator's domain) on well-known job portals. As a result, they bring candidates into an environment where other employers are waiting for them, not to mention providing valuable candidate data to the operators of such a portal.
So, my advice is: If you are serious about employer branding and recruitment and are ready to invest in it, always and only bring your audience/candidates to your own career website that is all about you and under your full control.
Let's say that as an employer we do active employer branding, invest in recruitment campaigns and have our own career website to which we drive the acquired audience. Then the site should really be worth it.
When a career website is mentioned, 4 things automatically come to mind - content, functionality (UE), data and traffic.
Content: It is said that content is the king of communication and this is also true for a career website. What the candidate finds on the website should be relevant to him, it should help him understand what he can participate in in our company, what it is like to work for us and what he will get when he wears our jersey. Of course, he should find opportunities here that he can apply for - be it positions or internships.
Form is no less important. Candidates today are interested in authentic content - they want to know what it really looks like here, they are interested in the opinions and stories of our people, it would help if they could get to know specific job roles up close. And we shouldn't forget that a large part of a candidate's final decision has an emotional basis. Emotions are more important than facts when choosing an employer. After all, who among us puts employers' offers into an Excel spreadsheet in order to compare them with a clear head and purely pragmatically? No one.
Functionality (UE): Sure, the website should load quickly, work great on all types of devices, videos should be subtitled… This is an absolute must-have. However, what is no longer completely obvious and is often forgotten is the user/candidate journey through the website. In order to get a conversion, we need to get the user to it as quickly as possible. As soon as possible on the HomePage website, they should understand where to go to learn what they are interested in. The correct structure of the website and individual landing pages with regard to the key target groups of candidates is therefore absolutely essential.
Imagine a manufacturing company looking for production workers, engineers and people for administrative roles in offices that are often located outside of production. We are talking about three worlds - three different types of candidates who are interested in different information and undoubtedly the offer we have for them as an employer is also different. Bringing a representative of a specific target group to the environment intended for him and convincing him there is something that a good website should be able to do.
The key is therefore to think about the correct structure of the website and the related relevance of the content, the CTA button.
Data: Common analytical tools today provide us with information about where users come to our website, how many there are, how they behave here, how much time they spend here, what they watch the most and for the longest time, and where they most often get lost. Such data are important as feedback for the employer branding activities and campaigns implemented by us, and last but not least, they help us continuously improve our website and increase its effectiveness.
Of course, it is also extremely important what data of candidates and potential candidates the website generates in our database, our ATS. In addition to the data of candidates applying for the offered positions, we should also not forget about undecided candidates - those who have not yet chosen from our offer of positions and those who have not yet reached a decision to apply for a job with us.
Many people hear about the possibility of providing their data with the idea that we will contact them with an offer of positions suitable for them, others would easily sign up for a meet-up or open day organized by us, or subscribe to our newsletter with interesting information from the industry. Let's face it and make it possible for them right on our career site.
After all, every lead, every contact of a potential candidate is worth its weight in gold today, and a good career website should generate such contacts.
Traffic: The best career website is useless if people don't visit it. Here I would just repeat what was said at the beginning of the article, however it is essential to have a clear idea of what, typically in the field of online communication, we will implement with the aim of bringing in representatives of our target groups already at the moment of launching the career website candidates to this career site of ours.
It is not atomic science. It is a craft that has its own rules that it is good to follow and its own pitfalls that we should watch out for. We are playing for a lot here as companies and employers - for talents, people who will develop our business together with us and help us defeat the competition. And the role of the career website is crucial.
Author: Jiří Landa, managing partner of BrandBakers Communications in cooperation with dream.jobs