10 ways to keep your candidates on your career site and away from your competitors

Candidates are looking for more than boilerplate job descriptions on a career site. They’ve already seen it on the job board and besides, it’s generally a banal list of all the things the employer needs from them but little about the opportunity on offer for the individual.
On the basis that job pages account for around 80 percent of all career site traffic and are the first point of entry for many people getting to know your organisation as a potential employer, it is amazing how under-utilised these pages are when it comes to candidate attraction.
Companies who spend a fortune on employer branding and fail to include it on jobs are missing the big picture and leaving so much hiring success on the table.
Or to put it differently, imagine Amazon only used a block of text and and a button to sell books?
Here’s a checklist of the content you should be using to keep candidates on your jobs or career site, and away from the back button and your competitors.
We’ve ordered these based on the preference of candidates when asked what information would they most like to know about a company (based on research by the CandE Awards) before they make an application.
1 — Company Values — What are the values of the organisation? You probably have an employer branding page that talks about this, summarise and link to it from the job page.
2 — Company Culture — Just like the point above, you have a great culture, so talk about it on the job page. Discerning candidates want to know if you are a fit for them before they apply.
3 — Employee Testimonials — You have employees, let them tell the story of why they work and choose to remain working for your company. Videos, personal blog posts and interview snippets are a great way to showcase the people your potential candidates will be working with.
4 — Product information — Yes, if you are a product company people want to know about the products they are going to be building, selling or supporting.
5 — Company performance — Been around for 50 years, still growing strong? Tell me that story if it will help de-risk my decision to move on from my existing role.
6 — Career FAQ’s — How does the application process work, how long will it take to hear from someone? The more questions you answer on the job page the less time a recruiter will spend answering the same questions over and over when they are screening candidates.
7 — Diversity — Talk about your diversity culture from the moment a candidate arrives to a job, don’t make them hunt out the well hidden page on the career site. Use your people stories to showcase the wide range of talent you value.
8 — A picture of their desk — Yes, that’s right, it’s amazing how much this can tell a candidate about where they will be working.
9 — A map of the office location — Let’s be honest, no-one is going to commute more than an hour or so. Why not make that easy to figure out up front and save a ton of wasted applications and screening effort.
10 — Similar jobs — Make it easy for me to search again or at least browse similar jobs. The addition of a Google powered search bar will reduce bounce rate by 50 percent giving you more time to engage candidates before they leave.
If you put in place just some of these elements you will see a reduction in bounce rate and improved conversion to completed applications very quickly.
I’ve seen clients improve from the industry average conversion rate of 12.5 percent to 50 percent (a fourfold increase) in a matter of weeks.
And the good news is the increased flow includes more well informed, committed candidates that go further in the rest of the hiring process and make your recruitment teams life a little bit easier.
Cover image: Shutterstock

This article first appeared on LinkedIn on 4 January 2019.

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