What are the Essentials of a Careers Page?
February 14, 2012 by admin
Filed under Career Planning
Pat Sharp, the Talent Architect writes that “The three Es to create a great candidate experience on a careers page are: easy navigation, engage the visitor, and educate.” in “Career Page EEEssentials” on the SmartRecruiting Blog.
Each E (easy navigation, engage the visitor, and educate) may sound simple, but their are so many details to refine, like any decent web page.
So, what are the Essentials of a Careers Page?
Considering that 90% of all online job seekers stated that the online presence of a company closely linked to their overall perception of the company, your employment brand is only as a strong as your candidate experience. The core of an employment brand is answering why a candidate should come and stay. Most importantly, you must always remember candidates are possible current or future customers.
Often the first point of contact, and the way in which you will attract your candidates is through your corporate website. Regardless of your chosen sourcing methods, your website should act as a centralised platform to deliver a uniformed and consistent approach to every applicant. With this in mind, you need to focus your efforts on making sure that the whole process is branded to reflect your organisation’s culture. Doing so will not only mean you attract the right kind of staff, but also engage your audience in a manner that will encourage them to apply for your positions.
All too often however, the career section on a company website can appear disjointed from the main area of your site. Not surprising if each element is run by a different department i.e. HR and Marketing.
If it is not possible to stream your vacancies into a fully branded page which reflects the look and feel of your website then it may be more beneficial to consider a dedicated micro site. The latter sometimes offering much more scope to provide candidates with the information they require.
In relation to the specific criteria, research has found that the following basic information is expected on careers sites (in order of importance):
• Job descriptions
• Apply now button
• Recruiter names and contact info
• FAQs
• Overview of training and development
• Overview of career path
• Written testimonials in general
• Video testimonials on the specific jobs
Good examples of this include: Argos and Maplin
In order to encourage a greater number of applications it is vital that you look at your website through the eyes of a candidate and ask yourself a number of questions including: Are all vacancies on your website live? Keeping vacancy lists up to date can be an issue without the right technology.
How easy is it to navigate through your website?
How many clicks does it take to reach the critical content i.e. the vacancy advert and/or job description?
In an ideal world the information you require should be never no more than 4 clicks away. More than this and you’re making the process long-winded for the potential candidate and customer.
Let’s consider what other functionality do you offer to your candidates? Can they search for vacancies by discipline or location? Can they set up job alerts to be notified of suitable vacancies which may arise? Or can candidates access information or track the progress on their applications via your website?
With advances in Mobile phone technology, a more recent consideration would be how accessible is your website via smartphones. In order to deliver the ultimate candidate experience your corporate career website needs to blend the latest available technology with a candidate friendly interface.
Source: linkedin