Companies tend to focus heavily on creating fantastic experience across web and mobile for their customers and partners but not so much on prospective candidates. Why is that? A shoddily designed careers page can give the impression that you probably don’t care about candidates and employees much. To deliver a path-breaking candidate experience, it often starts with designing a beautiful careers page. 

What does it take to design amazing careers page?

Of course, there is no standard formula to do this. But, there are a few things that will help you think creatively about your communication strategy. Let’s discuss a few must have and look at companies who absolutely nailed it.

Who are you? – The Company Introduction

Imagine you had just three seconds to tell a prospective candidate about your organisation, What would you do to get them interested? As the old adage goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.  The purpose of this section is to create a great first impression and display your identity.  Uber does it beautifully.

It has all the essential elements which push the candidate to scroll further and move to next section. The first image of a happy diverse group of people standing in front of a map of all cities where Uber operates. As you move down the slider, you can see more images of people walking their dogs in the office or having fun at work. Each image has been carefully chosen to subtly communicate that we are an open diverse and fun place to work. 

What do we want to achieve? – The Vision Statement

Each company has a unique vision and the entire team is vested in that vision. Putting it right out there enables you to get the candidate invested in the vision right from the beginning. It is also a great filter to find people with the right cultural fit. 

The entire world probably knows about SpaceX! For an organization like SpaceX or even for yours, it’s highly important that candidates know the vision of company before they apply and decide whether they want to contribute to that vision or not. SpaceX nails the vision statement on their careers page.

Ideally, vision shouldn’t be more than 2-3 lines and should drive interested candidates to the culture of the company and the people they would be working with.

What is it like to work here? – The culture

A company is defined by its culture.  Candidates are reserved about the new work environment. This is especially true for really great passive candidates.  They don’t just want to work for the company but they want to be part of the culture driven towards a vision.  You want to clearly define what kind of people will make a perfect team-fit for your company. 
Hubspot, the leading marketing automation, and CRM tool defines its culture by HEART ( Humble, Effective, Adaptable, Remarkable, Transparent) and they want people who possess these characteristics to join their team. It is not the values but the way they deliver the message takes the prize.

People

Your people are the soul of your organization. A prospective candidate wants to know the people she will be spending the majority of her time with. For them, it’s their future colleagues and friends.  This is a major opportunity build a familiarity and ease the candidate into considering working at your organization or at least take that call next time someone from your organization reaches out to them. 
Music streaming company Spotify understands this and has a separate section for people who work at Spotify. The profile not only shows what their role is but also gives a small glimpse of what they are like. What better way to do this than music and trust Spotify to get it right! They attach a song the person identifies with in their introduction. Imagine you and your colleagues sharing the latest bands you found and playlists right across the desk! 

Spotify goes one step further here and also has a section dedicated to various teams at Spotify. To top it off, they brilliantly use videos to give a better feel of the team and work environment. 

Is there something for you?  – Openings

The prospective candidate is now invested in your vision, relates to your culture and loves your team so half of the job is done. However in order to successfully convert a visitors to a candidate (much like sales) you need to have an optimized opening section/page where they can scroll through openings, read job descriptions and apply. Create filters of location, team and commitment level so that candidate can quickly sift through openings and find the relevant ones for them. Application via social platforms like LinkedIn, Github, Angellist drastically reduce the friction to apply and dramatically increase conversions.

Facebook has multiple departments present across various locations. For them, it’s essential that the candidate can easily navigate to the relevant department and location. Candidates can easily navigate between various teams and locations on their career site. It’s just a click away!

Candidates can browse through location

Browsing through various departments is also a click away! 

Bonus Tips:

• Create a mobile friendly careers site. More than half the visitors visit your careers page on a handheld device and will leave immediately if the experience is not seamless.
• You can also add videos in various sections. 
• There will be times when a great candidate won’t find any relevant opening. You should have an option to subscribe to your career updates so that you don’t miss out on these candidates.
• Enable social sharing on your job page allowing visitors to refer their friends who they think can be a great fit for your role.
• Keep your application form short and simple. Once the candidate is in the pool, you can always have conversations and get more information about them later. 

This post was originally posted on Recruiterflow Blog. It has been brewed again with some special ingredients for Recruiting Blogs community.

Amri is the Co-founder of Recruiterflow, a recruitment CRM and applicant tracking system built for proactive sourcers and recruiters. Earlier he headed various business and people functions at Inshorts ($24M+ in funding). He co-founded a mobile analytics company which was later acquired by Inshorts.

Connect via Twitter @amri_anand