Why must the CV conversion rate be your main focus?
The aim of your Career Page is to collect as many CVs as possible – for an immediate or future use. Having your own substantial talent pool means becoming independent in your talent search. You can then redirect your 3rd party budget (i.e., for recruitment agencies, headhunters, and job portals) to support your own employer branding activities, thus building your talent pool even more. For instance, the most successful companies can fill up to 50 % of vacancies with candidates from their own databases.
What is CV conversion rate?
The conversion rate represents how efficient you Career Page is. Having a higher conversion rate means being more successful – you are collecting more CVs, thus building your talent pool faster.
How to calculate the CV conversion rate?
Set a time frame (e.g., a certain recruitment campaign) and divide the number of collected CVs by the number of Career Page visitors and convert to percentages.
For example, 500 people visited your Career Page and you received 10 CVs in the last month. Your conversion rate is 2% (10/500 = 0,02 x 100).
When Numbers Speak
The employer-centric approach
Leaves the “burden of search” up to the candidates. They must sort, filter, create profiles, fill-in forms, etc., all in the hope of finding the suitable position. If they do not find the right role and abandon their search, you are left with no contact details for this talent that was already motivated enough to search for a job within your company. Whereas you might post the perfect job role just after they have left your website!
The CV conversion rate is the lowest. The traditional Career Page usually delivers just a 2-5% conversion rate.
The candidate-centric approach
The candidates are prompted to upload their CV first, and instantly see the job listings sorted by relevance. The energy consuming manual search and time are omitted, and you INCREASE THE CV CONVERSION RATE 3-5 TIMES! With this simple switch you establish a lasting relationship with the candidates. Even if the candidate decides not to apply for a job at that point.
This CV conversion rate is the highest. The candidate-centric approach can increase your CV conversion rate up to 25%.
The hybrid approach
You might think that candidates could get intimidated by having to upload the CV first. The numbers prove otherwise, but you can still opt-in to display both the “CV Upload” button and the “See Open Positions” button. Now imagine that up to 25% of candidates who browsed the open positions and left without applying would have uploaded their CV if prompted to (with the candidate-centric approach), simply because they were already interested enough to visit your career page, being intrigued by working for you.
The CV conversion rate is medium with the CV conversion rate stagnating at 10%.
So, when it comes to your career page efficiency always answer this question first: Do I prefer to gain a high number of anonymous users browsing the open positions or real people contacts and CVs?
