Career Site Bits
By: Nicole Guenther, Interactive Project Specialist
This is the third article in a series of three.
Great! You have made adjustments to your career site and have added multiple layers of information as highlighted in our previous articles. This new information provides engaging content that prompts candidates to linger and learn more about your organization. In addition, you’ve included relevant advanced content in the form of video and other interactive components.
Your next big question is: Does your career site work?
Better yet – Does your career site work for the candidates visiting it?
As an experienced Web designer and developer, I always design and develop with one thought in mind – Content drives design.
Design and functionality go hand in hand. The first two articles in this series covered basic and advanced content. In this third article, I will focus on the functionality and design of your career site with the candidate’s experience being top of mind.
To begin…the basics.
The design of your site should incorporate your employer brand or corporate brand on all levels. This will unify it with the recruitment advertising and/or corporate advertising that the candidate is experiencing through other media channels and other areas online.
Make sure that each page of your site loads quickly and is compatible with the most common browsers and download methods. This includes all interactive components and video. Each component should load quickly and be offered in multiple file formats, if applicable.
Can the candidate find your career site?
Candidates should need to click only once to find your career site. There should be a prominent link, easily located in about ten seconds or less, to the career site on the home page of your corporate site. Do not bury the career link within layers of sub-directories on the site. Other sections, such as products or customer service, can also contain links to your career section. Additionally, your career site can benefit from an easily remembered URL. Two options include a catchy domain name, such as www.yourcompanycareers.com, or a sub-directory of the corporate site, www.yourcompany.com/careers, or even the .jobs domain name extension as www.yourcompany.jobs.
Is the career site content well-organized and easy to navigate?
If the layers of content in your career site are well-organized, each candidate will be able to locate the information he/she is seeking with just a few clicks of the mouse. The faster and easier it is for a candidate to locate the information he/she is interested in, the better the chances are that he/she will become engaged and continue to browse additional information. The longer candidates are on your career site, the more opportunities you have to sell your organization. Prioritize your content and put the most important content in the most prominent/most clicked section of your page. For example, if you find that testimonials are the most important content, it may be worth placing a larger billboard-type graphic on the home page of your career site leading candidates to read more.
Is the link to search and apply prominent on every page of the site?
The main purpose of your career site is to capture the candidates’ information and drive them to apply. Make it as easy as possible anyone visiting the site to locate and apply for a position. The most efficient way to accomplish this is to make the link(s) to searching, viewing, and applying for positions as obvious as possible. This link should appear near the top of the consistent career site navigation on every page. Additionally, links to the application process should be placed on every job description, making the application process never more than one click away.
Is it easy to search for open positions?
Unless your career site lists very few open positions, the search functionality should offer the candidate easy and flexible options to search open positions. These options can include a job category, location, keyword, and job requisition number.
Can career site pages and position descriptions be printed and/or emailed?
Many visitors to your career site may be there passively or looking for a friend or family member. By providing links to print and email content pages and position descriptions, you receive what might be considered free advertising. The printed page or email may be just the push that a passive or pre-qualified jobseeker needs to link him/her directly to your career site.
Can candidates create and save an online profile?
In allowing candidates to register and create an online profile, you recognize that the search and application process is not always a quick process. A candidate profile will capture the information that can be used in future communications. Each time the candidate logs in, the site can be personalized with his/her name and a welcome message as well as updates about new open positions that match his/her profile, and the steps that still need to be completed in the application process. A saved profile can also allow a candidate to work through a long online application at his/her own pace, saving and returning as often as necessary.
Can candidates receive email notifications when new positions are posted?
Instead of building a profile, create a short, three- to five-question form that would allow the candidate to opt-in to email notifications of new open positions matching his/her criteria and e-newsletters filled with your organization’s career information and updates.
How easy is it to apply online?
Depending on your organization’s application, there are many ways to improve what might be a long and tedious process.
- Provide multiple ways to submit a resume: copy and paste into a text box, upload and attach a file, or build a resume online.
- Job requisition numbers should be tied directly to the application.
- A status bar can visually show a candidate how much of the process has been completed and how much is left.
- Utilize the candidate’s saved profile by pre-populating information on the application to make the process more efficient.
- Allow anonymous applications.
- Pre-screening questions should be directly related to the position.
- FAQs or Help content for the candidate to use as he/she works through the application.
It is important to track candidates through your site and online application process. This allows you to streamline your site based on real information and not just intuition. There may be a point at which candidates are dropping off and not completing the application for identifiable reasons, and adjustments can be made.
Please stay tuned: Future articles will focus on testing of career sites, understanding Web analytics, and additional site features that can help improve your company’s initiatives. If you would like to learn more about Shaker’s online capabilities, please contact Nicole Guenther at nicole.guenther@shaker.com.
Previous articles in this series:
