As we recover from recession, there are many people 
currently out of work. These people vary from fresh new graduates, to laid off experienced professionals, to potential go getters from school. However, having more potential future employees around doesn’t change the fact that companies still want the best candidates.
With the rising influence of social media and online recruitment, it is understandable that candidates prefer to apply online. However, one observation made time and again, is that an important factor in whether they apply for a job or not, is the quality of the company’s careers website.
Your best candidates come through this way so it’s critical to make sure your careers section is up to standard, both design-wise and functionality-wise. The careers section is generally the most visited part of your company website, and so deserves the time and effort you will need to spend on it. Give it the attention it deserves by making it prominent on your homepage. It needs to look great in order to attract candidates and keep them, it needs to be informative so applicants can get all the information they need from it, but above all, it has to work.
Within items returned after a given search, Google now displays a set of links to each website’s most visited pages. For a corporate site, typical links to appear in this selection will be ‘About Us’, ‘Contact Us’, ‘What We Do’ etc but among the most important pages should be ‘Careers’. This demonstrates to potential candidates that that the company is a popular place to apply to.
You should aim for your Careers page to be among these links.
If people are important to your business, careers should rank highly. Your careers site is not only for candidates but also for your clients. The quality of the way your jobs are advertised is reflective of the general quality of your business.
On your homepage, the link to your Careers tab should be very clear and easy to find. You shouldn’t make your applicants work to be able to get to your Careers page – make it simple for them to get there and you will gain a larger candidate pool. If it’s not one of your main navigation tabs, then ensure it’s still somewhere prominent – always provide a call to action for your candidates. In doing this, you will increase traffic to your careers page and therefore ensure your careers page appears with your company on Google/Bing/Yahoo etc.
Your position on these search engines is determined by how popular your website is i.e how many visits you get. Although you cannot choose where you are placed, you can definitely influence it by focusing some effort on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
This post is an excerpt from the white paper “15 Minute Guide to Designing Your Careers Website”. If you would like to read more, you can download it here.
-Emily
