What do you think a recruitment website should offer? What are the recruitment websites best practices you should implement?
Twenty years ago that might have just been a list of jobs and some contact information but that is far from the case now. You need to see your recruitment website as a tool to enforce brand identity as well as a way to showcase job postings and make the candidate experience a positive one. A drab site that is difficult to navigate and leaves clients and candidates alike pulling their hair out is likely to result in them leaving your website without progressing past the homepage.
What recruitment websites best practices should you implement?
To help guide you through the best practices for recruitment websites and ensure you convert more of those visits to hires, we’ve compiled a helpful list of what you should include – and what to avoid.
Prioritise the candidate experience
We have said it again and again but the recruitment industry continues to be a candidate-driven market. As such, you need to make sure that potential candidates are enthused and engaged from the moment they click onto your website and that the journey from beginning to end (the end hopefully being a hire!) is a positive one. Reassure them with a professional-looking website and relevant content, help them through the process with clear navigation and logically presented job postings, keep job ad copy interesting and exciting without missing out any essential information, and ensure there are clear calls to action so that the candidate knows where and how to apply.
Design with a clear user journey in mind
We touched upon this above as a clear user journey that aids easy navigation through your website is all part of a positive candidate experience. Think about how you would approach your website from a user’s perspective, what you would want those users to find and when, and work from there. You need to lead the candidate through their journey with little call to action button breadcrumbs. This, along with ensuring you have CTAs on every page, is vital to maximising conversions.
Push brand identity
Ensuring candidates are excited by a company is crucial and this applies to both your brand and that of the employer. Firstly, you want to ensure you’ve got the right candidates on your website so you need to immediately convey to them who you are, what you recruit for, why they should be looking at your jobs.
Clients and candidates alike want to know who they’re working with so ensure you have an ‘About Us’ or ‘Meet the Team’ page. It’s also vital that you enforce the brand identity of your clients – make it very clear why candidates should want to apply for a particular job, emphasising the advantages of working there. Company culture and non-financial benefits should be highlighted. This will not only sell the company to the right candidates, but it should also help avoid hiring those that aren’t the right fit.
Ensure your website is SEO and mobile-friendly
We have talked before about the vital importance of ensuring your website is mobile friendly – not only does Google favour mobile-friendly sites, many users arrive at a website via their mobile phone, especially in the first instance. A survey commissioned by CareerBuilder found that 70% of job seekers are searching for opportunities on mobile. It is, therefore, a crucial best practice that your recruitment website works and is still easily navigable on a mobile device.
Utilise creative media
Clever use of images, video and graphics will not only make your website stand out, it can entice encourage, persuade and engage. Website users increasingly want a visual experience and what better way than with a short video that informs, enthuses and contains clear calls to action. And remember the old adage, a picture can speak a thousand words – this is especially true in an age where attention spans are dwindling and users can navigate off a page away from your site in seconds if they don’t like what they see.
Content is key
From the content of your job adverts to the blog articles and news stories you publish on your website, it is essential to ensure your website copy reflects well on your company and that you update it regularly with new content – vital from an SEO point of view and to keep visitors coming back.
Clutter-free design
Faced with pages full of text and images scattered haphazardly throughout, many visitors might simply click away from a website. Clutter-free design enables a visitor to quickly and easily find what they’re looking for and allow you to show them where to go and what to do. This should reduce bounce rates and increase conversions.
Full security as standard
This is a must-have best practice for recruitment websites design. In an age of GDPR compliance and headline splashes about security breaches, ensuring your website is fully secure is essential. An SSL certificate, which ensures the connection between your site and the user is encrypted and therefore secure, proves to visitors that you take their privacy and internet security very seriously. This is especially important if candidates will be uploading CVs to your site. Google will now display ‘Not Secure’ in the top bar next to the URL if the site does not have an SSL certificate.
Social media integration
With an increasing number of us using one or more social media platform on a daily basis, social recruiting should be a vital part of your recruitment strategy. It allows you access to a pool of passive candidates and a greater reach as a whole. Utilising social media is also a great way to enhance brand awareness and to share your content with wider networks. Building in social media integration tools to your recruitment website will allow you to easily share jobs and for candidates to apply to them. Tip: ensure social icons are highly visible on your website pages.
Analytics integration
Knowing where visitors are coming from and what they do when they get to your website can be incredibly helpful when it comes to working out whether your website is performing the way you want it to. Google Analytics is a fantastic, free tool which allows you to track a number of different user behaviours, including visit numbers, views on job pages, bounce rate, clicks on an ‘apply for job’ button, average session duration, and goal completion and conversion rate.
As a recruiter, you know the vital importance of a strong online presence in order to attract the best talent. A well designed, feature-packed, recruitment website that recognises that a positive candidate journey is essential is key to a successful recruitment strategy.
