9 Things The Best Career Sites Have in 2026

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Latest posts by Laurenzo Overee (see all)

9 Things The Best Career Sites Have in 2026 - January 29, 2026
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Your company’s career site provides job seekers with a trusted space for discovering new jobs. The best career sites usually include landing pages that showcase new opportunities that engage potential hires while addressing career issues and questions.

Industry research shows that a career site attracts attention 70% faster than traditional hiring methods, offering greater control over recruitment. As such, your career site is the ideal spot to promote your company branding and unique culture. For starters, your hiring managers can turn to these sites to upload job postings and connect with candidates without delay.

Although the layouts of the best career sites differ according to industry, company culture, and size, they share some key features. So, we have identified the essential elements to include (and how to enhance them) in the best career sites for optimized hiring outcomes.

Recognizing The Must-Haves of The Best Career Sites

A quality career site should optimize the user experience for hiring professionals and job seekers. On that note, your company career pages should give candidates all the information to convince them in accepting a job offer. Therefore, you need to keep the information on these sites regularly updated to maintain the quality of hire through the most volatile job markets.

Basic career site information should include job descriptions that highlight salary range, employee perks, DEIB efforts, career progression pathways, and contact information.

Your career site should also include exclusive details beyond what is found on your company’s LinkedIn or Indeed pages. A talent board survey showed that 53% of candidates listed career sites as the most valuable channel in their job hunt.

A great career site should work well with other programs involved in a company’s hiring process. For example, hiring teams should make sure the career site integrates well with their application tracking system (ATS) and social media channels. The features listed below helps you transform a good career site into a great tool for attracting star candidates.

#1 – The Best Career Sites Have Structured Job Postings

Your job listing is the most important element of your career site. Ultimately, it is the posting that prospective employers use to engage candidates on the site. So, you should keep your job posting well-organized for optimal readability to increase application rates. The basic structure of a job description (JD) or listing should include:

1. Job Summary

A concise description of the open position with a compelling hook on why candidates should apply.

2. Job Title

The official title of the offered role. It is important to ensure your job title is non-biased (e.g., gender neutral) and includes relevant search keywords to attract quality hires. Words like “ninja” and “rockstar” are some examples of subtly gender-biased terms to avoid. It’s also best to keep away from confusing or vague job titles since candidates would probably pass on them for a clearer job ad.

3. Responsibilities and Duties

This section of the JD outlines your company’s expectations of a hire’s contributions. It is important to keep this section transparent to prevent HR conflicts and miscommunications down the road.

If you’re using bullet points for clarity, try to limit them to 5-7 points. Only keep the core requirements that are necessary for candidates to perform in their roles.

And also, update your bullet points regularly if you’re reusing the section for similar jobs in future ads. Ongig’s automated smart templating feature enables you to achieve this effortlessly with cloud-based JD storage and AI-empowered editing.

4. Qualification/skills

When shortlisting candidates, it is strategic to categorize required, preferred, and nice-to-have skills. Hiring parties should determine the core competencies for fulfilling a role and avoid discouraging applications with a lengthy checklist.

As with the Responsibilities and Duties section, keep this section concise. Research shows that better-defined ads with clearer qualifications attracted more women applicants for expert positions. As such, these slight tweaks could drive your company’s inclusive hiring efforts.

5. Salary range

Recent research indicates that workforce professionals still value salary information despite a trending shift toward career purpose and work-life balance. Surveys indicate that including a salary range on a job listing influences 91% of candidates’ decisions to apply for a position.

6. Employee perks and other remunerations

Your JDs should consider the latest job seeker priorities. Remote career opportunities, vacations, paid time-offs, childcare support, and insurance have become important in driving employee satisfaction and positive work culture.

7. Contact us/application instructions

A quality listing should include a prominent call to action (CTA) for submitting a job application. The section should also list the official documents required and application deadlines.

8. Company information/ About Us

Here, you can introduce your company’s history, culture, and accreditations (e.g., employer of choice awards). An effective About Us section can help gain the trust and interest of job seekers. Ideally, You should position the About Us at the end of your JD because job seekers usually want to know about the job opportunity before learning about your company.

According to LinkedIn, an estimated 30% of the workforce actively search for jobs. However, having your career sites attract passive job seekers is advantageous. The same LinkedIn study also reveals that 87% of passive job seekers seek better employment opportunities.

Hiring experts prioritize passive job seekers because:

Since passive candidates are not hurrying to fill vacancies, they make more career-oriented decisions. This could significantly increase engagement and performance and reduce turnover rates.

They have relevant industry skills and expertise to fulfill the latest job expectations, improving your quality of hire. As such, your company can reduce the time, money, and effort on reskilling initiatives.

Access to a broader talent pool, significantly improving the chances of a job and culture fit.

Optimized job listings could entice and secure top hires via passive candidates. You can fine-tune your job listings by implementing the latest SEO practices and eliminating inherent biases. So, these concerted efforts increase engagement with potential hires and improve search engine rankings.

You should also categorize your job listings based on specifications like location and types of work. Keywords, including the name of your city and city, industry, and job category (e.g., part-time positions), can help connect you to top talent profiles.

The best job sites can also streamline job searches by directing applicants to remote digital marketing vacancies, part-time positions, and other opportunities.

Think about adding these important keywords to your career site’s URL, titles, and tags to make it easier to find. So, using the right keywords can help show your job openings to candidates based on popular job search terms (like common words found in cover letters).

#2 – The Best Career Sites Have Site Navigation and Accessibility Components

User experience is critical when developing an effective career site. It is important to ensure that candidates from all backgrounds can comfortably navigate your career pages without frustration.

You want site visitors to easily find and apply for jobs that match their preferences and qualifications without confusion. So, position essential elements like the job search bar and career links at the top of your career site page so they’re one of the first things that your candidates see.

Your career sites can greatly enhance candidate navigation by adhering to the latest accessibility standards.

The web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) state that an accessible website should meet four principles:

Perceivable – Your website content should remain perceivable to visitors regardless of physical impediments or barriers. Perceivable measures include adding alternative images that contextualize on-page visuals and providing transcripts for audio-only content.

Operable – Your career site page’s operability ensures applicants can access website features without disruption. For instance, site visitors should not encounter issues playing an embedded video or navigating in-line links.

Understandable – By making your site content understandable, you’re supporting neurodiversity. You can maintain understandability by creating an organized and readable website that delivers clear content to every cognitive style.

Robust – A robust website complements the perceivable elements of your pages. For example, a robust page design should support assistive technologies like screen readers if needed. As such, your HTML (e.g., codes and relevant tags) should be valid and readable on various devices. Note: You might also consider using ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Application). These are invisible digital labels to inform assistive readers about complex features of custom site elements that are not covered by standard semantic HTML. For example, making sense of interactive salary sliders.

While the job scope, job title, job description, and other standard JD content matter, optimizing site technicalities is equally important. Your hiring team should also review your web pages against WCAG guidelines and use a web accessibility solution.

A trusted web accessibility solution ensures your career site’s design accommodates every qualified candidate. So, this includes necessary UX adjustments made for individuals with visual and cognitive disabilities.

For instance, the Audioeye platform offers an accessible dashboard that identifies and reports the severity of a web page’s accessibility. Audioeye automatically fixes standard issues while providing recommended steps to improve overall user experience.

#3 – The Best Career Sites Have Resume Builders

An on-site resume builder empowers candidates to apply for job openings even if they lack a CV (or have an outdated one). Thus, the best career sites use these automated tools to expedite job applications by generating CVs based on fields in a preset format. Advanced resume builders usually include vetting for CV structure, formatting, and spelling for optimized ATS integration.

You could also support resume builders with cover letter builders like Resume.io. These AI-driven solutions enable job seekers to generate professional cover letters based on industry-approved templates.

These dynamic tools guide candidates in presenting their strengths and competencies in a polished and systematic format. Like resume generation tools, cover letter builders include spelling checkers that drive quality job applications. These enable TA managers to efficiently review large volumes of CVs in an organized manner while minimizing typos, format errors, and biases that may affect the hiring decision.

#4 – The Best Career Sites Have Social Media Widgets

Social media has become a vital force in successful recruitment campaigns. In fact, an estimated 91% of recruiters use social media as a tool in their hiring process. Integrating your company’s social accounts with your career site could boost site traffic and candidate engagement.

Social media is great for spreading the word about your brand because of its easy accessibility. These platforms offer social proof of your company’s professionalism and positive work culture.

As such, recruiters and HR teams can create compelling recruitment campaigns by collaborating with social media marketers, thought leaders, like external marketing and advertising agencies.

These multi-disciplinary teams can help align branding initiatives with hiring objectives. Adding social media widgets on your career sites can reduce the number of clicks on your page (a metric affecting your recruitment campaigns’ performance).

For instance, these widgets offer quick navigation to your organization’s LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn offers candidates additional information like employee profiles and client/partner testimonials that enhance your company’s reputation.

At this point, it is important to emphasize that social media integration goes beyond displaying a link to your social profiles. Social media widgets offer multiple functions that could significantly improve job applications by:

Logging in and applying for open positions by synching with social media (e.g., LinkedIn) information.

Following your company’s social media profiles directly from the career page.

Sharing job ads/ listings across their social media accounts. These measures could boost your referral campaigns. These encourage employee advocacy that validates testimonials and credibility (i.e., it’s not just a corporate promo). After all, 76% of people trust employee feedback/testimonials more than company-written content!

Accessing your organization’s updated social media feeds, tapping on your team’s professional insights and organizational updates.

#5 – The Best Career Sites Have Recruitment Videos

The best job search websites often use engaging videos to connect with potential hires, leaving a lasting impression. So, your career site is a strategic place to showcase recruitment videos that encourage candidates to hit apply.

These videos can visually convey important community messages like behind-the-scenes DEIB campaigns that support inclusive hiring. Particularly, employee-generated videos (EGVs) have become well-received for building a genuine connection with job seekers with a “day in the life” narrative.

Embedding recruitment videos on your career site shares company culture in a compelling narrative with a human touch. Recruitment videos can also boost the SEO of your indexed career site pages, driving as much as 157% more organic traffic from search engine results pages (SERPs).

Particularly, employee-generated videos (EGVs) have become well-received for building a genuine connection with job seekers with a “day in the life” narrative.

For instance, Nike’s The Future is in The Air video campaign exemplifies authentic employee testimonials. The short video visually encapsulated the business’s USP in each frame, showing the interplay between employee passion, purpose, and organizational vision.

#6 – The Best Career Sites are Mobile Friendly

Pro tip: 39% of marketers report that short videos have the highest ROI and plan to continue investing in this medium. Also, try to make your recruitment videos interactive (so the audience has an active role in the narrative), which are known to boost engagement by 1000% compared to passive videos. For example, you could guide candidates through clickable assessments during the video, leading them to recommended career pathways.

A growing number of candidates use mobile devices for job searches. Workforce surveys reveal that 67% of applicants completed their submissions on a mobile device. Keeping your career site mobile-friendly improves candidate interaction by facilitating real-time responses and updates between potential hires and employers.

Consider optimizing your career sites with a responsive and adaptable design compatible with various screen dimensions. You could boost the mobile-friendliness of your career site by:

Using suitably sized buttons and other interaction points for easy access without zooming. These considerations are especially important for promoting your call to action.

Simplifying your site menu and scrolling layouts in response to space constraints on smaller mobile screens. You could declutter UI elements from desktop mode designs to provide a clearer and faster mobile experience.

Compressing embedded videos and graphics to preserve quality while optimizing loading speed on mobile browsers.

Testing and improving functionalities with a specialized assessment tool like Google PageSpeed Insights. The platform scans your career site’s URL and assesses mobile compatibility, reporting on key metrics summarized with a performance score.

#7 – The Best Career Sites Have Career-Supporting Resources

The best career sites should provide all the information needed to ease candidates into their new roles. Presenting additional features on your career site gives prospective hires the essential information and confidence to follow through with their applications. Including the following resources on your career site could help prepare hires for their roles.

Career and personal growth opportunities

A clear career path helps new hires feel their time with the company is well spent. Therefore, a visual chart for each role can show what to expect, the skills needed, and training opportunities to help grow a career. Positive employee reviews from sites like Glassdoor can also show that your company has a great work environment.

Customized job alerts

The best career sites often provide talent opt-in programs that help candidates stay up to speed with the latest job posting updates. Signing up for these programs provides candidates with timely job alerts that could boost your campaign’s application rates. These alerts get delivered straight to an applicant’s inbox, which generally has higher open and engagement rates than text messages and social network posts.

Blog posts

Publishing blog posts on your career site helps candidates learn more about your company’s expertise. Interesting articles can make candidates more excited about joining your team and culture. You can also include stories from current employees about their experiences in their roles to show what it’s like to work at your company.

Career advice

Feedback and tips from HR and business leaders help new hires get ready for their jobs. So, a career advice section could have interview tips, career development advice, a networking platform, and videos to help them understand your company’s work culture.

FAQ section

A list of concise answers to the most common questions posed by job seekers can save your HR and recruitment team valuable time.

#8 – The Best Career Sites Have Generative Engine Optimization

A growing number of candidates are turning to AI software like ChatGPT (and Google’s built-in Gemini) for their initial job searches. With the job market being a challenge, companies have seen higher volumes of resumes for open roles. Talent could increasingly rely on automated solutions such as agentic AI to broaden their opportunities.

Your TA team could gain an advantage from this trend by restructuring your career sites to complement AI agent searches. In other words, make them citable. For example, you could make your Q&A sections more conversational “answer blocks.”

These may be 2-3 sentence answers to questions like “Are there work-from-anywhere positions available?” Such formats may make it easier for AI to pick up information and engage candidates according to job seeker query trends.

AI agents would be able to retrieve relevant information based on keywords. For enhanced results, use Schema.org /JobPosting markups that inform AI about critical information such as salary range and qualifications. As such, the automated programs can sieve through walls of text (where AI might misinterpret or omit details).

#9 – The Best Career Sites Have Personalized Candidate Journeys

Predictive analytics has become a cornerstone of hiring and recruitment. With 25% of the current workforce likely to seek new jobs, it’s become a growing concern for companies to prioritize the employee journey.

Quality career sites leverage these breakthroughs to provide personalized career growth and development paths that improve engagement and retention. As such, applying these smart hiring decisions reduces burnout and turnover.

Your career site can implement predictive analytics through embedded personality assessments and gamified evaluations that identify a talent’s soft skills and culture fit. These add-on features eliminate biases while matching talent to positions best suited to their unique working style and strengths.

Closing Thoughts – Elevating Your Candidate Experience With AI

The best job search websites should open doors to qualified candidates and connect them with their dream jobs. Due to its data-backed capabilities, artificial intelligence has become integral to modern recruitment and hiring practices. Enterprises could manage complex career site content by leveraging AI to minimize human error, like subconscious bias.

Implementing Ongig tools empowers your hiring team to guide job candidates toward the right job via AI support. Ongig partners with Google, presenting a centralized hub for establishing quality career sites.

Our tools help you create high-performing sites for various industries. Hiring teams and job seekers can conveniently browse and manage postings from the comfort of their mobile devices. AI-based job searches have proven to increase job search traffic by 73%, leading potential hires to the best places for work.

Facilitating Immersive Job Searches

The Career Site Builder’s user-friendly interface offers an intuitive approach to candidate engagement with auto-generated landing pages. These customized pages boost webpage SEO and promote specific roles of all experience levels across customer service, federal government jobs, or healthcare industry openings.

Ongig’s Career Site Builder also includes the advanced Text Analyzer program, which eliminates dull and biased JDs that deter applicants. The Builder offers a plethora of website widgets, including live chats and Google Maps, to assist your on-site visitors. So, the advanced candidate experience solution lets you monitor site traffic sources to plan the most impactful recruitment strategy.

With the Career Site Builder in your corner, your company can boost application rates at scale with API-driven insights and dynamic career pages that connect with your next top hire.

Why I Wrote This:

Ongig optimizes JDs and helps you create the best career sites. Our AI-driven solutions support inclusive and engaging postings that guide the success of your recruitment campaigns. Request a demo with Ongig to discover a transformational way to publish efficient JDs and career sites.

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January 29, 2026 by Laurenzo Overee in Company Career Site