Know that feeling you get when you visit a website that impresses you? When you come across an awesome website, you stay on the site and have a look around.
Millions of websites compete for our attention every day. And the average job hunter typically looks at hundreds of websites as part of their job search. Their experience on a company websites influences whether or not they will apply for a role. How does your website hold up when it comes to creating an exceptional candidate experience?
Attracting top talent should be a key priority from your company. And your website plays an important role in creating either a positive or negative candidate experience. If your website doesn’t create an exceptional candidate experience, you won’t be able to attract top talent.
Commit to periodic reviews of your Careers page
It is very important to proactively and periodically review your website, especially your Careers page to attract the very best candidates to consider roles with your company.
Whilst the term “candidate experience” is seen by some as the latest buzzword, the concept itself is extremely important and will set you apart from your competitors when executed well.
The focus of this article is on reviewing the Careers page of your company website as it relates to creating an exceptional candidate experience. You will learn the importance of auditing your current Careers page, bench marking your page against your competitors and creating an action implementation plan for Career page improvements.
Both active and passive candidates visit your Careers page. You need to make sure every candidate experience is positive so that top talent considers roles with your company.
Auditing your current website
Reviewing the content of your Careers page is an important first step in determining whether you are creating an exceptional candidate experience. So put on your “candidate hat” and imagine navigating your website as a job applicant.
Your audit should include:
- Literally walking through your website as though you are a candidate looking to find out more about your company and the roles available in it
- Opening links to roles posted on your website. Do the documents contained in the links open in an easy to read format? Have you accidentally provided dead links?
- Checking to see what your Careers page looks like on a mobile device. Is the content easy to read? Are the quality of any images used clear?
- From your company home page, seeing how easy it is to navigate to your Careers page and open roles
- Editing – make sure links to emails work, change contact names if that information needs refreshing, ensure there are no spelling or grammatical errors on your Careers page
Best practice considerations
You do not need to spend a lot of money to create an exceptional candidate experience on your website. If your company does not have a lot of money to spend on your Careers page, keep things simple.
Make sure that the language used on your website reflects your company’s voice and values. And where possible use images of your workplace and your own staff rather than using stock images. This builds a more authentic employer brand.
Where once you could get away with just listing your open jobs on your Careers page, this is no longer the case. Careers pages that create the best candidate experience include some of the following features:
Short video content
This video content might include the physical space or office new hires will work in, the people who work within your company or the CEO sharing a welcome message.
The sky is the limit when it comes to creating video content that will resonate with candidates. Once again, you don’t need to spend a fortune on video production and editing to create an authentic short video that reflects your company’s culture and values
Chat Bots
Love them or hate them, chat bots are becoming more common on Careers pages as employers look to become more responsive to candidate needs.
If you are going to install a chat bot, make sure you do your research first. The first priority should always be to install chat bot technology that improves the candidate experience. It shouldn’t be used as an efficiency and time saving mechanism for people and culture teams.
Links to company social media accounts
If your company is active on social media accounts, create a link to those accounts on your Careers page. These channels will give candidates a first hand look at how your company ticks. It is a great way to bring your brand to life.
Of course you should only create links to content on your company social media accounts if you consistently post quality content that you think will resonate with job seekers.
Improved candidate experience = better applications
Be ready for the uplift in clicks on the Careers page of your website once you have spent some time improving the candidate experience.
Talented individuals add significant value to your company. So your Careers page needs to attract the very best people to work with you.
Improve your Careers page and you should see an uplift in both the quantity and quality of job applications. Your company’s bottom line will thank you for it.