Best Practice

A best practice guide to careers sites

Employee Experience

Is your careers site working hard enough?

The Covid-19 pandemic may well be behind us – but that doesn’t mean recruitment will get any easier in 2022. It will still be tough. In fact, it’s never been tougher. Candidates now demand more. They want flexible, hybrid employment and a greater work-life balance. And rightly so. And with every new societal shift to come, there’ll be changes in job seekers’ behaviour that you’ll need to stay on top of to be competitive.

So, it’s not enough just to have a careers site. It has to work for you. And work hard. It has to seamlessly guide the candidate through the content and show them exactly what they’re looking for – not just what you want to tell them. And it has to make people feel good about engaging with your organisation, from their very first click. Your careers site also has to withstand the rigours of ever-changing algorithms and be a living, evolving, relevant asset that appears in job seekers’ search results.

Why you need this guide and what’s in it…

Candidate attraction is the first touchpoint in your employee lifecycle, so to help you get that right, we’ve created this useful guide. Use it to review your careers site and assess whether it’s up to tackling today’s tough recruitment market. The guide outlines the core features of an outstanding careers site and explains why you should have them. You’ll also find tips on the kind of content candidates really value and when they want to experience it.

1. Building a core structure

It might be seen as a marketing asset by your organisation, but your careers site is a tool for the candidate. It should be designed around their journey and what they want to know, not what your organisation wants to tell them.

Candidates visit a careers site with intentions, whether it’s to look for a job to apply for, or to research the company before an interview. Use these motivations to serve up your content in a meaningful way. You’ll need to get the following core features right to ensure you have a fit-for-purpose careers site.

Navigation

Is your site logically mapped out and is it easy to find your way around? People need to have a great experience when they use it. So it’s critical to ensure candidates find the information they want as quickly as possible. The journey should be seamless and easy, every step of the way.

When a site is easy to use and fulfils people’s needs, they are more likely to stay longer, have a positive experience and gain a good impression of you as an employer. Inadequate signposting, missing links and unfathomable menus – and they’ll click off.

 

These are our tips to help you create a great user experience:

  • Use simple navigation that’s designed around the user’s wants.
  • Make it natural and easy to get back to where they were if they take a wrong turn.
  • Ensure the user interface (UI) is designed for the user’s journey and motivations.
  • Intuitive navigation will give the user a positive experience.

Searchability

Does your site come up in Google searches? People need to be able to find your site, either when they’re looking for you or the jobs you have. Unless you have bottomless pockets, you shouldn’t rely on advertising every time you need to attract candidates.

Use well written code, keywords, page descriptions and search-related content so your site is optimised for Google. Research to get this right is undervalued and often overlooked. By understanding what terms people are using to search for jobs, to find your careers site – and your competitors’ – can have a staggering impact on the number of relevant visitors you can drive to your site.

Responsive on all devices

Can your site be used on desktops, laptops, phones, tablets and watches? It needs to function properly no matter what device people are using. When links don’t work or pages aren’t displayed properly, users will get frustrated and leave. By ignoring certain devices, you’re excluding certain demographics.

Ensuring your site works brilliantly on all devices may mean creating subtly different experiences for mobile, tablet and desktop. Yes, this does mean more time and effort, but it will improve diversity in your talent pool, so it’s almost non-negotiable.

Accessibility

Does your site meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)? People with additional needs or neuro-diverse characteristics should have equal access to your content – and have the same great experience. If they can’t read it, navigate it or cope with the sensory stimulation, they’ll get frustrated and leave your site. To ensure your site is accessible, you’ll need:

  • Clear graphics
  • Easy-to-read and easy-to-understand text
  • Proper typography settings
  • Optimal contrast
  • Optimal readability level
  • No flashy animations
  • No radiant colour palettes
  • Assigned aria areas and alts

Speed

Does your site load quickly? It’s what people expect. They won’t want to wait for images or video to load. And when navigating their way around, every slow loading page will lead to increasing frustration, resulting in users leaving the site. Here are some ways to ensure this doesn’t happen:

  • Reduce the file sizes of videos and images
  • Minify code files
  • Use lazy page loading to only download the content being viewed on the screen
  • Use third party services to reduce server load or improve your server technologies