You probably pay to post job ads to every corner of the Internet, but do you realize how many people you can get from your own website? Are you overlooking one of your most valuable hiring sources? You might be, without even realizing it.

At Recruitee, we found that nearly one in four job applicants can be sourced from your company website.

We recently talked about ways to improve your careers site on your company website, but we did a little more research into the reasons why this is such a successful channel to use.

Talent Sourcing from Company Website

Amsterdam-based startup CrowdyHouse has been quite successful using our software, so we looked at the sources that their candidates were coming from. Even though they’re posting on multiple sites and job boards, we could see that over 23% of job applicants were coming directly from their website.

They have an attractive career site, and it’s directly attached to their homepage. Some of their customers decide to apply for a job, and some of their job seekers end up buying something. Everyone gets the feeling of a happy, healthy, growing brand.

Three Tips to Encourage Applicants

Okay, it’s a cool statistic, but you might be wondering what you can do to turn your website into a successful sourcing platform. Check out the following three tips to get more job applicants submitting from inside your site:

1 — “Now Hiring” Widget

You can put a convenient little widget on your site that will scream to your customers that you’re hiring. It won’t block their view or disrupt their experience in any way, but it will be noticeable enough that they may realize you’re a company who wants to hire.

This can turn customers (people who already like your brand) into employees.

Just be cautious about being too aggressive with this tactic. If it’s too flashy or disruptive, it might scare away some of your customers. Classy and minimal can still be noticeable.

2 — Have a Career Site

A career site is a corner of your website that gives you the opportunity to inform about working for your company, and lets potential applicants view open positions. Check out our other article for 8 tips to build or improve your site!

This is a great (and simple) way to show potential employees how much you care about the people who work for you.

3 — Link to Your Site

Once you have a career site (mentioned above), make sure you have help people find it. Whenever you post your jobs on LinkedIn, CareerBuilder, or any other job sites, make sure to give a link back to your career page. Simply leaving contact information for that position may discourage people from applying when they aren’t a perfect match, but you might also have an opening for their dream job.

You can still advertise the openings on your own site without sacrificing diversity. You can spread links across job boards, internet ads, and social media, but make sure they have the opportunity to get back to your site!

Do you ever get applicants because of your website? Do you have any more tips that we didn’t think of? What about other questions you’re wondering about? Comment, Email us or send a tweet, and we can help research ways to make sure that your hiring headaches start to become a thing of the past.

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This post originally appeared on Recruitee Blog (newsletter: eepurl.com/bMHiZD) 

Hagi Trinh is an avid recruitment writer at Recruitee. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at recruitee.com to try it out and follow us on Twitter @recruiteeHR.