Creating a business careers page

As part of your recruitment policy, it’s good business practice to set up a careers page on your website. This job page can provide many benefits to your hiring strategy, such as the opportunity to gain applications from candidates in a cost-effective and time-saving manner. So, it’s important for you to have a digital shop window for your latest vacancies. And in this guide, we explain how you can create one to secure new talent.

The benefits

There are many advantages of a career page in your website. It can provide significant return on investment, should you undertake the project with the best web practices in mind. Your page should no longer offer a static list of job specs. Instead, use the section as an online recruitment hub to showcase what makes your business a great place to work. And there are many other benefits when you take the right approach to career page design for websites. You can:

• Reduce the cost of hiring: Posting jobs online isn’t always cheap, especially on high-quality job sites. If you use recruiters, you’ll have to pay them as well. Whereas if your careers page has job descriptions optimised for search engines, and you place the page clearly within your website’s navigation menu, the talent can come directly to you.
• Build your talent pool: As your careers page draws in applications, you can maintain a database of talent. Although it’s important you keep data protection laws and GDPR in mind for this—you can keep information for as long as you need it, but can’t keep applications data forever.
• Reduce the time spent on recruitment: Take control of your hiring procedure. You can use an employee to act as a middleman and recommend candidates from the CVs you receive. It saves time on hiring recruiters and managing job specs across various job sites.
• Improve your branding: Candidates drive the job market. Your website is a unique way to show potential employees why they should work for you, and your careers page can play an integral part in appealing to them.

Optimising with web design

After your job descriptions are up and running, and candidates start applying, there are many other techniques you can use to make your site a more effective recruitment tool. Career page design for your website benefits from innovation and ease of use. So you can consider channelling the unique qualities of your business into an appealing design. And sit this alongside an accessible user experience so candidates have no problem applying for roles. There are many approaches you can take to achieve your recruitment goals. Here are a few suggestions:

• Add employee reviews to show the positive experiences employees have had at your business. You can link to your Glassdoor page to show the strong reviews you receive.
• Include your business mission statement—candidates will see this and recognise if this connects with their career plans.
• List perks, such as an early finish on Fridays or bonuses. These incentives are popular with employees (for obvious reasons).
• Setup an email-to-a-friend feature. Candidates can forward on your job specs to their friends, increasing your business’ reach for across the likes of social media.
• Liven up your job descriptions with videos and images of your workplace—show to candidates where they’ll spend their time and why they should apply.
• Include an FAQs section. This will save time as candidates find answers to common questions about your business.
• Add blog posts about your current vacancies to explain what’s involved and why your business is a great place to work. This will further strengthen your company culture and brand image.
• Finally, take an honest approach. There’s no point lying about issues (such as a difficult location), as candidates will find out soon enough. So, tell the truth and then they won’t have any disappointments.

You should also regularly update your job listings. If applicants are applying to old descriptions, this can waste their time. It could affect their decision to apply at a later date. They can also leave negative feedback on Glassdoor about this experience, which can damage your chances with other roles.

Get responsive

Another key aspect of your careers page (and website) is responsiveness to modern devices. Mobile-friendliness is essential, but keep in mind the various other gadgets candidates may use to arrive at your site. These can range from tablets to video games consoles. Responsive websites are important if you want to attract younger candidates. Millennials are famous for using smartphones—when they arrive at your jobs page, they’ll expect it to respond to the device they’re using. If it doesn’t, there’s a chance they’ll lose interest and look for other opportunities. It shows you’re behind the times with technology, which some candidates can consider a negative business trait. To avoid a high bounce rate (where users leave your landing page shortly after arriving), you can complement your responsive website by optimising your content. Tips for this include:

• Shortening paragraphs for better readability. This is useful on smaller screens, such as smartphones.
• Write in short, sharp sentences that explain your point.
• Condense image sizes to keep page loading speeds high.
• Include videos to make your content more interesting.

Issues checklist

Finally, here’s an overview of common business job page problems you should avoid. Keep these in mind so candidates can find your page and apply without any trouble. Don’t:

• Hide it from view so candidates can’t access your listings.
• Leave outdated vacancies online.
• Write dull job descriptions that put potential employees off.
• Ignore HTML issues that hinder the user experience.
• Leave applications unopened in your email inbox.

Need the ideal company career page?

For help on how to optimise your job listings so you can add new talent to your business, get in touch today on 0800 028 2420.