-
3 Steps to an Agile Career Site
Posted by Charles Kapec on June 9th, 2021 Only seconds are needed to make a solid first impression with a job candidate, and most often, it’s your website that is your company’s introduction to a potential new employee. It is your handshake moment. Don’t waste those seconds and possibly lose top talent with an outdated or clumsy career page. NAS Recruitment knows better than anyone how to optimize candidate attraction on your career site through storytelling, technology and strategy.
Why you need an agile career site
Studies reveal that 71% of job candidates begin with a Google search that may drive them to your career site and 35% go there directly. When candidates do get there, 65% unfortunately have a negative experience.
When candidates seek a new job, they want potential employers to present a clear timeline of the hiring process. They want to work for a company whose values match theirs. And they want to know if the company offers flexibility in a work schedule. They’ll turn away if they detect a long application process, experience technical issues or can’t view any benefits information.
Maybe it’s time you updated the career page on your website.
You should especially make mobile searching your priority because 70% of job candidates search for jobs from their mobile devices, and half end up applying on their phones (well over 70% for nurses and candidates in the restaurant and retail industries). Surveys reveal that 53% will leave a mobile site if they wait longer than 3 seconds for the site to load.
Meet your job candidates where they are, and consider these three steps in the process of making your company’s website career page more engaging, more user-friendly and more agile:
Step #1: Keep your career page content and message fresh and authentic.
- Swap out older testimonials and videos with new names and faces regularly, especially to reflect your company’s diversity.
- Highlight recent accomplishments of current employees at all levels.
- Share a great story involving an employee or department.
- Bring in social media content through a social media feed that can incorporate employee-generated content from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
- Use a drop-in blog to add fresh content on a regular basis.
Hopefully, you already have a robust webpage addressing diversity and inclusion in your company. If not, join the trend. Keep this page updated with images of your employees across a wide spectrum of roles, ages, race, culture and ethnicity that reflects your workforce. This is a quick win for today’s job candidates who recognize the importance of diversity and inclusion.
In addition, add a Community Involvement page. Candidates enjoy reading the stories of your company’s contributions to your local community and your employees’ volunteerism. Acknowledge special days – like Earth Day – or special events. The content here should capture the moment, especially with photos and graphics. Today’s top talent wants to work for an organization that is making a sincere, positive and ongoing impact on the community.
Step #2: Be flexible when urgent or changing hiring needs emerge.
Add and remove landing pages based on hiring needs, which could be immediate or seasonal. Your banner should drive people to your most pressing jobs – e.g., “If you could use a job, we could use your help!”
If possible, add landing pages for seasonal or urgent hiring needs. Our ACTIVATE platform allows for this functionality, which creates the agility you require to quickly set up, implement and then take down pages based on actual hiring initiatives. You can then utilize digital and social marketing to bring traffic to those pages and get the hires you require.
It’s always important to find ways to showcase the latest news and new initiatives at your company. Examples here could be an award you received, a new hiring event or an educational webinar series. Include drivers to content you want to highlight and do this monthly.
Step #3: Use analytics to enhance your site based on candidate behavior.
You cannot overestimate the importance of analytics as part of the learning process for enhancing and evolving your career site. You want to learn where people go on the page and how they progress through the application process.
We use a number of methods to track career site performance, including:
- Click-thru and application rates
- Popular pages
- Candidate pathing and behavior
- Device access
This data can tell us a lot about candidate behavior on your site and where we need to make changes to provide them with the experience they expect. Depending on the data being tracked and the story it conveys, it can lead to a variety of tactical changes that might include:
- Repositioning buttons or content to better meet candidate needs
- Adding or removing content based on engagement
- Adding quick-apply forms to address application drop-off
- Adjusting mobile design to increase response
That’s just a brief recap of how important career site analytics can be to your agility. NAS helps track and monitor all of these and more – ultimately allowing us to make strategic recommendations and improve our clients’ career sites.
Summary
Take ownership of your website and audit it on a regular basis. Review your career page from the candidates’ point of view to see what they are actually experiencing. Schedule quarterly reviews of your website content and analytics.
Your career page should serve as a tool to help you acquire the best talent and reach your recruitment goals. You can partner with NAS Recruitment who can assess your site and offer suggestions. In fact, NAS can manage the entire program for you!
Contact NAS to learn how we can help you improve your website.
Charles Kapec
With NAS since 1993,Charles Kapec oversees all creative activities for an NAS team that includes copywriters/creative strategists, designer/developers and production. He provides creative direction for employment branding and career sites for all of the agency’s accounts, while serving as the main creative contact for many agency accounts.
-
