Your career website is your opening to a world of potential candidates. As one of your company’s primary sourcing tools, it provides visitors with a complete picture of your company. If done in an interesting and user friendly format, your website can act as a branding magnet.

A successfully built and committed career site will appeal to more visitors, broadening the possibility for more applicants from a wider group of browsers. Your dedicated careers site should maximise a potential candidate’s browsing time. It can provide them with a way to directly engage and interact with you.  Most importantly it can present to candidate your company’s merits and the benefits it can provide for their professional careers.

An effective career site needs to accomplish two main tasks. It should maintain a high volume of visitors and then aim to increase the conversion ratio between the number of visitors and actual applicants.

Online Resourcing have identified key elements that your career website must have.

1.       Updated Job List

It is massively important to update your job listings as soon as a position is filled.  So many companies leave old positions posted on their websites for months without bothering to remove them.  This only confuses potential applicants, because they do not know which the relevant positions are, and even puts them off for the future.  All applicants are valuable. If you get in the habit of not updating the list then you are devaluing the function of your careers site. There is then less of a chance that you will receive applications for other positions. If a particular job is taking a long time to fill, update the post date so that applicants understand that it is still available.

2.       Simple Search Engine

The internal search engine by which visitors browse vacancies on your website should be easy to use.  Enabling visitors to search by location, job category or a simple keyword increases the possibility of attracting more applicants.  If you are in a rush to fill certain positions, consider posting them on your company website homepage next to the search engine box in a news or announcement style notification. This will attract immediate attention, both to the critical openings and to the search box.

3.       Easy Application Process

In order to appeal to more top talent, the applicant procedure needs to be a simple, uncomplicated affair.  No one wants to have to wade through multiple webpages just to submit their CV, especially candidates who are not in a rush for a new job and are less motivated to jump through hoops just to apply!  Providing applicants with an easy and quick process means that you will receive more CVs which should result in a greater applicant pool for you to examine.

4.       Employer Branding

Your career website might well be a visitor’s first encounter with your company.  It is important that the website represents your company branding content.  See this as a chance to emphasise your key values and make it clear how your company can advance employees’ professional careers.

The most effective way to utilise employer branding is by using your employees as positive representations of your workforce. Try posting interesting videos of employees explaining the professional achievements they are able to reach at your company, use quotes and testimonials, success stories or an employee blog.

The overall aim is to give any visitors a precise understanding of what your company is all about and why they should want to work for you.  Apart from descriptions of the employer benefits, you also want to ensure that you make it clear to potential candidates that you want them.  Every webpage, every link and every video clip should personify your genuine desire to guide your audience through the recruiting process. Make sure that potential candidates can easily interact with representatives from your company. 

5.       Visual Presentation

It’s important that your website has a visual layout that is inviting, catchy and edgy as content is not always enough. While you don’t need to decorate your homepage in bright colours, you do want to be sure to emphasise the most important sections of the site.  

A boring black and white website that reads like a manual will not draw in a huge audience.  Understanding what makes people naturally pull towards something is key.

These elements can help your career website increase visitor traffic, represent your company’s key messages and inspire more top talent to submit their CVs.  A careers website needs to be engaging and unique so think of it as an opportunity to directly connect with potential candidates.