By Katelyn Hunter, Senior Manager – Consulting
Labor economists predict talent shortages will persist into 2030 and beyond, despite signs of greater market stability. While pandemic-related jobs have slowed, industries that over-hired in recent years are now facing staff reductions. Turnover rates also remain high. All of this has led to millions of unfilled job openings and low productivity rates. Now is the time to future-proof your talent acquisition strategy – starting with the employer brand and career website.
The top priority for your employer brand is ensuring job seekers have the content needed to make an informed decision about applying to your company. A properly executed career website is your organization’s strongest tool for doing this. No other HR technology platform offers the same depth of content, customization capabilities and traffic growth potential.
Here are five ways to craft a career website that’ll showcase your brand and attract top talent:
1. Consider the active and passive candidate journey
It’s important to think about your career website audience: the job seeker, both active and passive – and their different content needs. This audience is vastly different from your corporate audience, with distinct drivers behind their decision making.
Active job seeker:
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- Makes up 25% of the workforce – actively looking for work
- Skips the in-depth content on mission, vision and values
- Goes straight to job postings for a position that fits them
Passive job seeker:
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- Makes up 75% of the workforce – not looking for a new role
- Driven to site by recruitment marketing/sourcing, social media, or employee referral
- Impressed by targeted storytelling
2. Bring your mission to the forefront
It sounds simple, but your company mission is an essential part of activating employer brand solutions. Your career website is the best place to tell that vision story – 77% of job seekers consider a company’s culture before applying. And 73% wouldn’t even apply to a company unless it aligns with their values.
Having a robust “about us” or “why join us” page is critical for highlighting what makes your company unique. This is the first place passive candidates go to see if a company is a good fit and the second place an active seeker goes after confirming an open role is available. Unlike the audience of your corporate “about us” page, job seekers are looking to discover how their time and knowledge will be reciprocated through your mission, vision and values.
3. Feature impactful content
Employee stories remain a valuable addition to your career website, demonstrating what a typical day on the job might be like. You can also feature employee insight on resource groups, growth potential and more. This content gives the candidate an opportunity to align with your company culture in an authentic way.
Make sure job-related content is easy to find. Insightful information about the unique offerings of your company and employer brand is important for both passive and active job seekers. This goes beyond a page of job requirements – it’s diving into the storytelling of how each job category brings your employer brand to life for each talent segment.
4. Personalize the experience
As the job seeker navigates your career website, ensure their experience becomes increasingly more personalized based on the content and jobs viewed. Almost three-quarters of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions – and 76% get frustrated when it doesn’t happen. Apply that same concept to your candidate audience, especially for repeat career website traffic.
When an active job seeker visits a career page, they want content on the department, mission, vision, growth opportunities and more. A recommended jobs section on the homepage, featuring roles viewed, facilitates easy return. The passive job seeker wants a different homepage experience: based on the content they view and click, populate suggested blogs, job categories and requisition-specific information.
5. Optimize technical specifications
Great content needs seamless presentation – and it starts with your sitemap. Think through how a job seeker, regardless of their entry point, will discover content relevant to them and their journey. Consider the goal of each page and whether it’s telling a story or presenting a call to action. Visually engaging pages and impactful content encourage candidates to further explore the site.
Ensure your site is SEO optimized. Google is one of the most popular job search sites – and search rankings are an often-overlooked piece of the candidate experience. Knowing your job seeker well helps ensure your career website and job listings rank high on Google.
Make content mobile friendly: 89% of job seekers consider their mobile devices essential for job searching, with 45% using them at least once per day. Just because the content fits a mobile screen doesn’t mean it’s mobile friendly – the entire candidate experience needs to be compatible with mobile devices. That includes shifting treatments, tailoring content to screen size, rethinking specific layouts, and more.
A career website that delivers a best-in-class consumer experience is an immense asset for winning scarce talent. Working with an external partner can provide the solutions needed to sharpen your employer branding and overall talent acquisition strategies. With job seeker needs in mind and a bold approach to storytelling, you’ll create an impactful tool for connecting with candidates – both now and in the future.
