In this candidate-driven job market, understanding job seekers’ motivation is key. If you want to attract top talent, boost applications and be ahead of the competition, the design and content of your career page must be as UX-optimized as possible.
With unlimited customization options, your career page enables you to attract candidates and showcase your company culture in an authentic and personalized way. It’s also a great way to lure passive candidates into your application process, as they might end up clicking on your job openings while initially searching for your products or services.
Basically, a career page is like your own fully personalized job board. It gives visibility to your job openings it is often your first point of contact with potential candidates. Since we all know how important first impressions are, let’s make sure your career page is aligned with what candidates expect from you.
In 2021, candidates want to:
Keep reading to discover how to adapt your career page to candidates’ expectations.
My career page complies with data collection regulations
First things first, let’s verify that everything is legally authorized. Before collecting any personal data from your website’s users, make sure to visit the website of your region’s official statute of online user protection, whether that be the GDPR, CCPA, EEO or a foreign equivalent. Reading, understanding and implementing their guidelines can save you a lot of trouble and prevent costly fines from stressing your business.
My career page is easy to spot on my website
Have you heard of the 3-click rule? Based on user experience research, it states that if users can't find what they're looking for within three clicks, they're likely to become frustrated and leave the website. If receiving high volumes of applications is what you’re aiming for, you should make your career page extremely easy to access from your corporate homepage. Don’t hesitate to greet visitors with a “We’re hiring” banner and link right when they enter your site. The more visible, the better.
My career page accurately & positively showcases my company culture
If you’re a fun laid-back company, show it! You can feature testimonials of current employees from different departments. You can also use custom photos and videos of your team and your office or decide to go with stock images. If that’s the case, make sure the people in the photos have an appearance and clothing style which resembles that of actual employees, as these elements can give potential candidates a good feel of what it’s like to work for you.
My career page has job search features & filtering options
This is especially important for high-volume recruitment. If you have a lot of open positions, group them in a clear and accessible way, with location and department filters for ultimate user-friendliness. Among other possibly relevant filters to include, we find education, salary, keywords, job types and job titles for large-scale hiring. All of these allow users to sort through job results and easily find the ones that match their skills and interest.
My career page enables users to apply in a few clicks
Once they have found the job they want to apply for, users don’t want to waste time taking unnecessary tests or re-giving answers which can be found on the resume they have already uploaded. Submitting a job application, albeit a possibly stressful task, should not be a tedious one. To help expedite the process for the applicant, you can integrate Google’s automatic fill-out option into your form. This will take a user’s saved information and safely input it into your database without additional effort from neither side.
My career page is mobile-optimized
Did you know that a large portion of applications are submitted via smartphones? This is true. In fact, for the first quarter of 2021, over 70% of Talent.com’s traffic came from mobile devices. Given the projected increase in global mobile usage, having a fully functioning mobile website or an app is a necessity for recruiters. Without it, you might be missing out on candidates who, had it not been for your career site’s lack of mobile friendliness, might have shown a bigger interest in your organization.
My career page is up to date
One of the most frequently recurring frustrations among job seekers is realizing that a position they have just applied for is no longer available. To counter this, you must remove obsolete job postings from your list of vacancies, ideally immediately after the chosen candidate has accepted your job offer. Depending on the size of your organization, you can do this manually or automatically. This will optimize applicants’ time by making sure the position they apply for is indeed available.
To be UX-optimized, your career page must:
Your career page is where people go when they are curious about your organization and want to learn more. It’s your time to shine. Following the abovementioned 7 tips will enable you to create a compelling career site and put your brand & jobs under the spotlight in a personalized way.
Leveraging your career page with complementary tools such as an ATS & a powerful partner network will propel your recruitment strategy to new heights. In fact, many ATS offer career page design, development and maintenance, which can be useful in you don’t have the in-house resources.
If you are wondering why this article didn’t give more detailed tips on how to enhance the job descriptions featured on your career site, that’s because we’ve compiled all our best job branding insights into an ebook, which you can download for free by clicking here.