Are you reaching all the clients and candidates you can? Are you making as many placements as you could? We’ve spent a great amount of space throughout our various articles discussing best practices to give your website the best look and feel. We’ve also made more than our fair share of suggestions as to the technologies you should be integrating with your recruiting website to maximize its true potential. But today we want to start off this 3-part series on Reaching Your Audience by asking you to take a step back and consider a question we ask every one of our clients. We find that an honest assessment of this question can help us ensure that the recruiting website layout for our client is properly focused and targets the correct demographic.

The question is really a double-header of a query:

1. Who is your primary audience, the client or the candidate?
2. What ratio would you apply to your audience?

The first question is seemingly simple but powerful in its ability to begin an honest assessment of how we should structure a client’s digital ecosystem. Another way we might pose this question is as follows:  Who do you want calling you? The answer often boils down to where the client is most deficient. If you’re thinking, “I really need more clients,” then your primary audience should be client companies. If you’re thinking, “I really need more candidates,” then, of course, your primary audience is candidates. But how does this information inform the way we structure your recruiting website layout? That is where the second question comes into play.

Determining the ratio requires a good deal of business sense and a great deal of awareness regarding your business. There is no tried and true metric to determine this number, but rather it requires you to honestly and accurately gauge your needs and your operation. Do you need/want to reach clients just as much as you do candidates? Then your recruiting website layout should probably reflect a 50/50 ratio. Do you want a ratio that favors clients three times as much as candidates? Then you are looking at a 75/25 ratio that favors clients. Whatever the number is, it should reflect your recruiting website layout and how it is focused to the respective audiences.

Next week in the 2nd part of our Reaching Your Audience series, we will discuss what a client-focused website should consider. We will make suggestions as to the ideal recruiting website layout and the best way to optimize a client-focused digital presence so that you are truly capitalizing on the vital technologies that can help you succeed and make more placements.