The career page –your best foot forward, your first impression, your handshake with the candidate. How’s it looking? You may post to it quite frequently, but that’s doesn’t mean that the page itself has been updated since dial-up times. Here is some food for thought when it comes to your career page.
The One Click Rule
The biggest problem with most career pages is that they are in a hidden website labyrinth of click-throughs. If candidates have to get up and make themselves a snack while trying to locate your careers page, they aren’t coming back. In fact, the new standard is just one click; candidates should be able to find jobs with-in one click of the homepage.
Just Text Isn’t Hacking It
Why-oh-why, with all that we know about the attraction and click-catching powers of visual, do so many of us insist on just plain old text? There’s absolutely no reason not to throw in a video, pictures, a quiz…anything! We’ll just take Facebook as an example :·
- Videos are shared 12X more than links and text posts combined.
- Photos are liked 2X more than text updates.
Boil Down Job Descriptions
A survey by job-search firm, The Ladders, discovered that 44% of job seekers claim that they spend anywhere from one to five minutes examining a job description. 19% said that they would spend up to ten minutes reading a job listing. The study put those claims to the test and found that the average job seeker will spend 77 seconds on a job ad that matches their interests and skills.
Much in the same way that candidates will craft a resume for the infamous 6-second recruiter read , recruiters should learn to craft job descriptions for the average candidate read. Cut the fluff, get to the chase and leave out common sense jargon. If “great communication skills” is in your job description, get out the red pen.
Get Social Shares
Get those little social share icons, it’s so simple and they can do so much for your listing reach. Just having those share icons present encourages site visitors to share your listings. Furthermore, optimized social share buttons can really target that reach. They will automatically generate a message with customized information that visitors can easily share.
Simple tools like Click to Tweet will generate customized messages, but Social Media Examiner has broken down the whole process for us in this post .
Go Through Your Own ATS
Applicant tracking systems were definitely, absolutely, positively not all created equal. Take it from us, we’ve seen them all. Go through your own ATS. If you surprisingly find that creating a username and password involves the eye of a newt, dancing counter clockwise and chanting, you might want to reconsider your software. We aren’t telling you this to sell you new software, we’re telling you this because it is losing you candidates by the droves.
Do you know your applicant abandon rate? –How many candidates started the process but never completed it. It might be higher than you think, and Forbes contributor Liz Ryan tells us why:
“Most employers, sad to say, do a better job of driving talented people away than reeling them in, both during the selection process and after the talented person comes on board as a new employee. They don’t do it intentionally, of course. They can’t see how their systems, policies and attitudes frustrate and repel great people .”
Isn’t that what this is all about? Looking at things from the perspective of the candidate to improve processes and invite talent. A company’s career site is one of their first points of contact with candidates; it should be welcoming, easy to navigate and easy to share.
For more information on career site management <<click here. Or, we would love to get a tweet from you with any questions or comments!
photo credit: josef.stuefer via photopin cc