According to the global employer branding research firm Potentialpark, your career site needs to score high across the following 6 areas to score high amongst your candidates:
- Usability
- Employer Branding
- Talent Relationship Building
- Application Management
- Recruitment Process
- Assessment & Individual Feedback
Are you getting it right? We’re going to breakdown these 6 steps and make sure your career site is doing it’s job properly.
Usability:
It’s essential that your career site is easy to spot and use.
First off it shouldn’t take more than a couple of clicks from your homepage for potential candidates to find and access your latest vacancies i.e. don’t hide your careers section in the footnotes!
From hereon ensure a straightforward route to your latest vacancies. Have your most recent roles clearly visible, provide a user friendly search tool, organise vacancies into categories for an easier search, provide an interactive job map etcetera.
In a world where online attention span wanes by the second, you want to make sure that there are no obstacles between candidates and your jobs. Lay it out in black and white, and make it easy to apply in under 20 minutes.
On that note, if you’re using an ATS make sure it’s user friendly i.e. No lengthy registration forms. Offer candidates the option of applying with a full or partial upload of professional profile such as LinkedIn, it helps if your career site is mobile-friendly too.
Employer branding:
Your career site is the prime opportunity to sing your own praises, after all people are visiting it because they want to know more about joining you. Give them what they want!
Apart from a professionally branded career site you want to advertise your personality, what sets you apart from the rest. Make sure you feature at least one if not all of the following:
- An employer video
- Staff testimonials
- Office photographs
- Company benefits
- Social media links
- Direct contact information
Remember your employer brand is the dangling carrot for most candidates, make sure it’s a nice big fat juicy one and organic to boot.
Talent relationship building:
If your company has the capacity for internships or summer placements consider advertising this on your career site. Ideally you want to drive traffic via social media, seminars, university open days and the like. It’s an great opportunity to begin cultivating ties with future talent, in this case university students or graduates seeking experience.
Alternatively use your career site as a base to invite candidates to your talent community with links to your social channels, online forums and the like. For those who have a keen interest in joining the company it’ll be an ideal opportunity to jump straight into your online network.
Application management:
Whether you’re using an ATS or not the procedure should be the same: When you advertise a job any subsequent applications must be dealt with as quickly and effectively as possible.
This process starts on the career site, where the application itself shouldn’t take more than about 10-20 minutes. It needs to be a straightforward journey from A to B to avoid dropouts, plus it’s advisable to set up an automatic reply. Studies show that 90% of candidates prefer an automatic response over nothing.
The simplest way to do this without an ATS is to set up a standalone email account for job applications with an auto reply. If you know it’ll take a while for you to process applications be sure to mention it in order to save any disgruntled applicants.
On a side note, if you don’t have any open vacancies offer your candidates the option to send in unsolicited applications on your career site. It’ll boost your employer brand and ultimately contribute to a growing talent pool.
The recruitment process, assessment and individual feedback:
Stemming from the career site is of course, the hiring process itself. As with application management the companies who generally score highly with candidates are those who deal with applications with speed, efficiency and last but not least, communication.
Statistically candidates are happy to wait 1-2 weeks for a definitive reply or further instructions such as assessments. Similar to the application itself, it pays to whittle down the assessment process to the bare essentials to save any subsequent drop out.
Ideally you also want to communicate any rejections asap, so whether this is following application or assessment make sure it’s not left to the back burner. Last but not least, consider adding feedback for those who don’t make it through.
Your career site – are you getting it right?
Remember your career site isn’t just somewhere to post job ads. Maximise it’s full potential with great employer branding and a flawless candidate experience. Are you ticking all the boxes, or do you think there’s more to add? Let us know your thoughts below.
