In a recruitment market as competitive as right now, it’s important that you do everything you can to engage potential candidates. If a candidate clicks into your job advert, visits your “work for us” page or drops onto your Instagram page then you need to capture their attention quickly, sometimes in as little as 60 seconds. If the content they find isn’t relevant, if the usability of the website is poor and if you fail to sell your employer brand then you could miss out on great people applying to your roles! Luckily, we are here to offer some advice, with 8 ideas to engage candidates and drive applications to your brand.
8 ways to engage candidates more online:
Mobile friendly sites with great UX
According to statistics, 89% of candidates prefer to job search on a mobile, with 45% of active job seekers searching for jobs daily on their mobile. That means if your “work for us” page isn’t mobile friendly then you run the risk of candidates dropping off the site before they buy into your employer brand or submit an application! Put yourself in the mind of the candidate, conduct thorough UX research and testing and make sure you test from a mobile first perspective.
Content tailored to candidates, not customers
When we audit a client’s careers presence we are always disappointed when we see a client hitting the copy and paste from their “About Us” page to their careers page, because what information is important to a potential customer often isn’t the most important or relevant thing to mention to a candidate. Of course you need to provide an insight to who you are and a brief background about your history, but the important thing is to communicate what the experience is as an employee at your organisation. You want to highlight your purpose, your culture, and sell your employer brand rather than your products / services.
Use lots of images and videos
It is statistically proven that visual marketing increases engagement, conversions, and brand recognition, so if you aren’t using images and videos on your careers pages then now is the time to get the camera out! You probably already have a library of content that you could be using, such as images of your offices, snaps from a team social or employee pictures. Visual content doesn’t have to be professional standard when it comes to your work for us page, so the limits are endless to what you can do here. Get creative, get snapping and start showing off your employer brand through visual content!
Content tailored to job functions
For many organisations, especially larger ones with a variety of job functions, the content on the careers page is often tailored to speak to a broad audience. The problem with this is that the information a candidate sees when they first drop onto your careers page doesn’t necessarily speak to them. For example, if you are looking to attract software engineers to your retail brand, but 90% of the imagery and content is talking around working in your stores then it’s hardly going to excite a technical candidate. You could lose a great candidate by simply not having a dedicated section of your site that speaks to them! Ideally you will want to create content hubs that are department focused, such as a “Jobs in IT” page where all the images are relevant to tech and you can focus on the culture and environment specific to the tech team. We can also help by building out dedicated Tech Careers Hubs via JobHoller – so if you’d like to know more about that then please get in touch!
Live job vacancies with relevant detail
If you are trying to fill a job vacancy then please list it on your website! So many times we see companies failing to do this and it’s one of the simplest things to do to engage candidates! When you post your vacancies you should do this in the style of a job advert, selling the proposition, as opposed to just pasting a lengthy job specification that might not be the most exciting read to prick their interest at the first touchpoint! Make sure you communicate the key details here, including salary – because failing to post this can be a big put off for some candidates.
Highlight your perks
Just as we want you to include salary on your job vacancies you should also highlight all of your best employee perks on your website and in your job posts too. Present this in a nice visual format to make it easy to digest and if possible bring it to life with real life examples too. You could create a video using employee generated content that showcases your people using perks and use this as a marketing tool next time you need to make a hire.
Clear and visible CTA
If you manage to attract a candidate to your website / job adverts then you want to make it as obvious as possible what the call to action is to apply for a role or get in touch, so make sure you have clearly visible buttons that won’t be missed by your candidates. Make it as easy as possible to accept an application because time really is of the essence.
Show your location
Finally one thing that we wanted to mention is the importance of highlighting your office location (unless you are hiring for a remote employee of course). Add a Google maps link to highlight exactly where candidates can find you (it can make a big difference especially to those using public transport), show images of your environment and make sure you add the location to your job adverts too!So there you have it, 8 ways you can increase candidate engagement within the first 60 seconds of them landing on your website, adverts or social posts. If you’d like a free desktop audit of your careers presence then please get in touch at [email protected].
