The purpose of a corporate career site is to serve as a vital ingredient in your recruiting mix, helping to draw in talent, reduce time-to-fill and boost your employer brand. But is your career page delivering on these goals? Moritz Kothe, CEO of kununu, an employer-review site that’s been popular in Europe for quite some time and has recently entered the U.S. market, has some tips for ensuring your organization’s career site is an asset and not a liability to your brand.
The site should be visually appealing; easy to use and navigate; it should share your company’s mission, vision and values; feature real photos of the workplace and your people; and should be informative for job candidates.
Below are five tips from Kothe (taken from a free e-book recently published by the company, 10 Ways to Attract More Candidates with Your Career Page) for HR and talent-acquisition leaders to ensure their career site is up to the job.
1. Showcase your core values
Decades ago, job-seekers were seeking security, in hours and in pay. Today, job seekers are more interested instead in meaningful work, so much so that they’re often willing pass up roles with better compensation or other traditionally attractive perks to get it.
This isn’t just conjecture either: More than 8 in 10 millennials (81 percent) expect companies to make a public commitment to good corporate citizenship, and 62 percent of millennials are willing to take a pay cut to work for a responsible company (vs. 56 percent U.S. average)
So, your task is to highlight your core values (and overall commitment to doing good) throughout your career site. This gives applicants an opportunity to evaluate their fit in the company – and in turn, the company’s fit in their lives – before they throw their name in the hat.
This results in more candidates who are better suited to your company and the work you do, fewer applicants who aren’t suited to it, and a more authentic employer brand that’s centered around your core values.
2. Highlight perks and benefits
Whether you want to accept it or not, perks and benefits are one of the top ways candidates set you apart from other employers. This is especially true if the industry you’re hiring in is very competitive.
If your perks and benefits are currently lacking, this might be your opportunity to reimagine them and implement some new ones. Some ideas:
- An attractive health and wellness program
- “Bring your dog to work day,” doggy daycare or pet insurance benefits
- Early dismissal days when the temperature exceeds a certain threshold
- Flexible time off
Note: You should first establish standard perks and benefits that employees actually really want. From there, work to incorporate fun, unique perks alongside them – and then make all of these perks and benefits available for candidates to learn about on your career page.
3. Add unbiased third-party content
Find a place for unbiased third-party content to your website, such as links to your employee reviews on a third-party platform, awards and certifications from independent sites like “Great Place to Work,” or direct quotes from employees or other organizations that have a perspective about your company as an employer.
Doing this validates your authority in the industry and builds trust in your employer brand, since candidates crave a variety of different perspectives rather than just you essentially saying “we’re a great company!”
4. Make it mobile-friendly
You already know that tons of applicants are doing their job search from their mobile phone. So naturally, the quickest way to lose a candidate today? A career site that’s impossible to view on a mobile device.
Enlist the help of internal engineering resources or hire a web developer to make your site is mobile-friendly, or consider a mobile-friendly career page alternative.
5. Maximize visual appeal
Colors, the use of high quality images and video, composition, and the fonts on your career site all impact the way it attracts candidates. It’s in our human nature, actually: 90 percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual and our brains process images 60,000 faster than text.
By incorporating images and video of real employees hard at work (and play) and choosing colors throughout your career site that are calming and persuasive yet on-brand, you can maximize your visual appeal to draw in more candidates.
