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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 to optimize 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 to accept a job offer. Therefore, you need to keep the information on these sites updated and optimized to maintain the quality of hire despite the most volatile job markets.
Basic career site information should include job descriptions highlighting payment, 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 important parts of a company’s hiring process. For example, hiring teams should make sure the career site connects easily with their application tracking system (ATS) and social media. So, the features below can turn a good career site into an amazing tool for attracting 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.
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 avoid conflicts and miscommunications down the road.
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.
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 candidates easily navigate your career pages regardless of background.
You want visitors to easily find and apply for jobs that match their preferences and qualifications without getting confused. So, keep important elements like the job search bar and career links easy to find at the top of your career site page.
To achieve that, your career sites should adhere 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.
- 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 accommodate users with various cognitive abilities. You can maintain understandability by creating an organized, readable website that conveys your content.
- 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.
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 tools to expedite job applications by generating CVs based on guiding candidates through filling fields in a preset format.
Advanced resume builders also often provide vetting for CV structure, formatting, and spelling to enable seamless ATS compatibility. Having a resume builder on your career site standardizes the talent acquisition process for smoother candidate selection.
You could further streamline job applications by implementing cover letter builders. Enhancing your career site with solutions like Resume.io enables job seekers to generate professional cover letters with industry-approved templates.
These features let candidates present their strengths and unique abilities in a polished format. Like resume generation tools, cover letter builders include spelling checkers and other features that optimize the submission of quality applications.
#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 it’s easy to access. It also shows people that your company is professional and has a good culture. So, recruiters and HR teams can make interesting recruitment campaigns by working with social media marketers, like outside 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.
- 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 strong impression. So, your career site is a great place to show recruitment videos and encourage people to apply for jobs. These videos can also share important community topics like DEIB to support inclusive hiring.
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
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.
#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.
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.
Shout-Outs:
- Strategies – Top 5 Benefits of a Career Site
- LinkedIn – The Ultimate List of Hiring Statistics
- Recruiting.com – How to Write Effective Job Postings: Optimizing Your Job Ads
- ERE Media – What do your candidates think of you?
- By Madison Zoey Vettorino, Hubspot – Web Accessibility: The Ultimate Guide
- By Madison Zoey Vettorino, Hubspot – The Best 8 Web Accessibility Solutions
- Audioeye – You Deserve an Accessibility Solution That Can Do It All
- Social Talent – 7 reasons why you should include a salary range in your job postings
- By Andrew Fennell, Standout CV – Social media recruitment statistics
- By Niki Jorgensen, Forbes – The Power Of Social Media In Recruiting
- Hubspot – Email Open Rates By Industry (& Other Top Email Benchmarks), By Sam Cahoon
- By Hassan Ali, wyzowl – Video SEO: The Ultimate Guide
- By Monique Verduyn, AIHR – What Is Mobile Recruiting? 5 Top Strategies for 2024
- Nike Careers – The Future Is in the Air: Learn about Nike Air Manufacturing Innovation in Missouri
- By Emily Tanner, Recruitment Marketing – Importance of Recruitment Videos
