If you’re still unfamiliar with the benefits of having a career site, check out this article I wrote about why you need to get one.
For the rest of this article, I’ll assume that you’ve spent some time piecing together a career site, and that you’re ready to win over some great candidates.
To help you fine tune and get the best possible hiring results, I want to take a look at a few pillars of truly successful career sites together with you. Let’s dive right in.
Personalize it
Think of your perfect candidate. Who are they? What do they do? At the stage of making a first impression, I want you to envision who you’re meeting. Almost as though you have a guest coming over for dinner.
You need to make your site personal and relevant to whoever walks through that proverbial door. If you don’t, they’ll leave in a matter of seconds. You need to hook their attention and think about what they want out of a job.
Think about the kind of work your company does, and who you’re trying to hire. Is your ideal candidate creative? Is he analytical? Strategic? Quick on his feet? It’s all about pinpointing those core qualities and making your text and imagery relevant!
I think Dale Carnegie summed it up quite eloquently back in 1936:
“Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn’t think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn't bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm or grasshopper in front of the fish and said: "Wouldn't you like to have that?"
Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
Bait the hook to suit the fish. Of course, thinking of your candidates as fish can come off a little sociopathic and maybe a bit creepy, but I digress. It’s just a metaphor… take it easy.
Go beyond jobs
One of the key principles of writing advertising copy is to focus on benefits vs features. We’re emotional creatures, and the arguments that resonate best are the ones targeting particular emotions, desires, outcomes, or benefits.
The same principle applies to jobs. The job title, or the open position itself sparks no interest. It might be the best job in the world, but if you don’t embellish it with some appealing reasons to join, it’s going to fall flat.
You want to be very clear about the reasons why people would come work for you by giving the benefits of working for you the front and center real estate on your career page.
This is even more important if you happen to be in a niche where you’re not looking for skilled professionals. For instance, if you’re a cafe, bar, restaurant, or otherwise.
It’s up to you to inject some meaning into the positions, whether that’s in the form of focusing on:
- Your amazing team
- Your great company culture
- Your values
- Your opportunities for growth
And so on, and so forth. Really think about the “why” of working for you, and try to get that “why” across to whoever is visiting your page.
Be Authentic
Authenticity is being talked about just about everywhere, and for good reason. Hopefully you’re not a serial blog reader* (but you probably are if you’re reading this)*, and can get something new and valuable out of this.
Authenticity. Good grief! It’s important. How do you be authentic? Like most business-related challenges you’re going to have to overcome, it’s a strictly intellectual effort. You’re going to have to think long and hard to establish a few core pillars about what your company is all about, and why it’s about it. Consider these questions:
Does your career site reflect your company culture? Does your career site communicate your values? Do you uphold the values listed on your career site? Are you overpromising? Are you being dishonest in any section of your career site?
This brings me to the next point… How do you build credibility? How do you add weight and cultivate trust with the words and images on your career site. Well, there are a few different ways.
Focus on your employees
Real testimonials are a great way to show what you’re about. Beyond testimonials, feel free to feature photographs from the office. Highlight that time you all went for a hike as part of a team building exercise. Tell a story of something funny that happened, or an event that made you think and act like a team. As long as you build on real stories and real people, the limit is your imagination.
Engage, Simplify
The importance of a first impression goes beyond that initial handshake moment. Every interaction craves a certain social dynamic, and it’s important to remember where you stand as the employer.
Part of your role as an employer is to be a good host to the people visiting your website. That means taking charge and leading the interaction in a way that’s firm but fair.
In this case the “conversation” is entirely one sided. All you can do is make sure you keep the candidate’s interest as they pay your site a visit.
How do we keep their attention? Engage right away. Lock their attention and guide them through an application process that’s smooth, simple, and easy.
Did you know that 60% of candidates drop off before completing an application This is in part due to complex, time consuming and unintuitive applications. If you’ve been in a jobseeker’s shoes recently, you’ll know what I mean. Many companies simply don’t keep the comfort of their applicants in mind when creating their applications.
Try to make everything you do outwardly into an experience. From the moment they click on your career site to the moment they finish applying to one of your jobs, candidates need to remain engaged and impressed. It’s your responsibility to cover all the bases when you’re trying to maintain the reputation of your brand.
To sum it up
Hopefully this article has provided you with some inspiration on how to optimize and get the best performance out of your career site.
Like all things worth doing, optimizing your site and finding your voice is a trial and error process. It’s all about trying different things, seeing what sticks, and coming back and trying again at a later date. We hope YouCruit will be an instrumental tool in your journey towards building something great.