DESIGNING YOUR CAREERS WEBSITE

DESIGNING YOUR CAREERS WEBSITE

Contents Introduction... 2 1 Your corporate website homepage... 3 2 SEO and your links to Social Media... 5 3 Branding your careers home page... 7 4 Job descriptions... 9 5 Application form... 11 6 Emails... 13 7 Candidate experience... 15 8 Site Accessibility... 16 9 Tools to use... 17 10 Dos and Don ts... 19 About Advorto... 21 Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 1 of 21

Introduction The world is online and it is constantly developing are you keeping up with it? With the rising influence of social media and online recruitment, it is understandable that candidates prefer to apply online. However, one observation made time and again, is that an important factor in whether they apply for a job or not, is the quality of the company s careers website. The careers section is generally the most visited part of your company website Your best candidates come through this way so it s critical to make sure your careers section is up to standard, both design-wise and functionality-wise. The careers section is generally the most visited part of your company website, and so deserves the time and effort you will need to spend on it. It needs to look great in order to attract candidates and keep them, it needs to be informative so applicants can get all the information they need from it, but above all, it has to work. This guide was created by Advorto, a leading provider of corporate recruitment management systems. It gives practical advice and tips and things to consider when either designing or indeed, re-designing your careers website and is based on the experience that Advorto have gained from working closely over a number of years, with the companies that design career websites. Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 2 of 21

1 Your corporate website homepage Give your Careers page the attention it deserves by making it prominent on your homepage. When searching on Google for a company, there is now a tool that shows which of the pages are most visited on that searched for website. The most common ones to come up in this selection will be About Us, Contact Us, What We Do etc but one of the most important one is Careers. This shows that the company s Careers page is one of the most visited pages on their entire site and therefore must be a popular place to apply to. The quality of the way that your jobs are advertised is reflective of the general health of your business. Your goal is for your Careers page to come up in this search. If people are important to your business, careers should rank highly. Your careers site is not only for candidates but also for your clients. The quality of the way that your jobs are advertised is reflective of the general health of your business. On your homepage, the link to your Careers tab should be very clear and easy to find. You shouldn t make your applicant work to be able to get to your Careers page make it simple for them to get there and you will gain a larger candidate pool. Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 3 of 21

Nice clear careers tab on homepage If it s not one of your main navigation tabs, then ensure it s still somewhere prominent always provide a call to action for your candidates. In doing this, you will increase traffic to your careers page and therefore ensure your careers page appears with your company on Google/Bing/Yahoo etc. Your position on these search engines is determined by how popular your website is i.e. how many visits you get. Although you cannot choose where you are placed, you can definitely influence it by focusing some effort on your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 4 of 21

2 SEO and your links to Social Media Don t underestimate the importance of Social Media and the influence it can have... Your ranking on a search engine is measured by the amount of links to your website. SEO is the process of improving your visibility by increasing the number of these links. Obviously, the higher up in the search page you are the more visits you are going to get and the larger your candidate pool will be to choose from. There are several ways of increasing your SEO. Write a company blog an interesting blog will attract links from other pages. It will also provide something for your candidates to have a read through on your page to give them a feel for the things that you, as a company, blog about Pay attention to key words think like a candidate and imagine what words they would be likely to search for and use them in the wording on your site Get lots of links try and get as many links as possible to your websites. This could be from press releases, Facebook pages or employees LinkedIn accounts Another important area that ties in with your SEO is Social Media. There are more than 800 million active users on Facebook, there are an average of 460,000 new Twitter accounts opening every day and there are 101 million LinkedIn members across the globe. These figures speak for themselves. Any company not having a presence on one of, or all three of these mainstream social media platforms is missing out on a large portion of untapped candidates. If you re not on there, people will wonder why not. Set up a Facebook page post new jobs and news items onto it, invite members to join and comment on your page, use a like button across your website and have links to your Facebook page. Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 5 of 21

Have a company Twitter account tweet about any news or new jobs available, retweet relevant or interesting articles and tweet about your blog posts. Keep it professional and keep it coming there s nothing more off putting than an inactive timeline. Have a LinkedIn company account make sure your LinkedIn company account is kept up to date, try and get lots of followers, make sure all your employees have links to the company website on their accounts and encourage your employees to connect with lots of people. Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 6 of 21

3 Branding your careers home page Consistency is the key to keeping your candidates on the page. You ve done all the hard work of attracting candidates from your home page to your careers page. Don t undermine this focus by completely losing your employment brand at this stage. Consistency is so important to maintain a good candidate experience. Even if your careers page is outsourced/designed and hosted by another company, simply making sure the company employment brand is still prominent on a careers site can really make the difference. The bounce rate (which measures how long you spend navigating the site links before leaving) on a poorly branded careers site can be significantly reduced merely by making sure that little things like layout and font colours and styles are consistent with your homepage. However, don t get so lost with packing your careers home page so full of lovely branded videos and flash adverts for promotions that you lose functionality. Bear..the bounce rate on a poorly branded page can be significantly reduced merely by making sure that little things like layout and font colours/styles are consistent with your homepage. in mind that not everybody visiting will have a computer that can handle everything that Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 7 of 21

you could put on the site. Make it look nice, by all means do put in bells and whistles but don t compromise ease of use or functionality for them. Keep your homepage easy to navigate don t make your candidates work to find where the jobs are listed or let them get lost when looking to apply. If your site is well laid out, then they will find everything they need easily and you will get more applicants as a result. So, keep the following in mind: Make sure your company brand is prominent Ensure font, style and colour are in keeping with your homepage Make sure your page is clear, concise and easy to navigate Don t sacrifice functionality for flashy videos and adverts Have a clear, concise layout don t make candidates work to find where to apply Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 8 of 21

4 Job descriptions Keep it clear and tell your applicants exactly they need to know. Your job description page needs to do exactly what it says. Describe what the job is, what skills you wish your candidate to have and what qualifications are essential for the role. If you are clear in what you want, then you won t have applicants who are not qualified for the role applying and causing extra administration for no reason. You need to put the most important information for the candidate nice and clearly at the top of the page. This could be something like: If you are clear in what you want, then you won t have applicant who are not qualified for the role applying Job title Closing date Salary Location Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 9 of 21

Try not to use huge amounts of text in the description keep it brief and outline the main areas of the role. Make key points or essential qualifications very clear so applicants really can t fail to see them and above all, make that apply button nice and big! You want applicants to press it so don t make them work to find it! Make sure there is a clear way back from the job description page to the vacancy search. You always want your candidates to find the site easy to navigate and that they can find their way around and get to where they want to go in just a few clicks...it s a job advert, not a job spec. Remember, it s a job advert, not a job spec. One of the most important things on this page, (apart from your nice big apply button!) is the Refer a Friend tool. If a candidate has had a good experience on your site, they will be happy to tell their friends about a vacancy as well. Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 10 of 21

5 Application form You ve attracted your candidates this far make sure they keep going, you don t want to lose them now. When a candidate applies for a job, the main part of the experience is the application form itself. You ve kept the applicant this far, you won t want to lose them now. If your form is in an unusual font or a bright or faded colour similar to the background then you are making it unnecessarily difficult for your candidate to read the questions. Having something as simple as a white background isn t distracting and is clear whilst still looking professional. If your questions aren t in a logical order or if you have your form set out in an unusual way, you are making more work for your candidate again. Taking the extra time to ensure certain things are user-friendly will improve the candidate s experience Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 11 of 21

Another main issue is collecting too much unnecessary data too early in the process. If you re asking your candidate for their National Insurance number or next of kin on the first page, you are wasting their time and yours you don t even know if they re eligible yet! It will clutter your system with data you don t need. After a simple registration, to stop any candidates re-applying with different answers, use GNDs (gross negative disqualifiers) to make sure the candidate is at least suitable for the role before you start collecting data from them...use GNDs to make sure the candidate is at least suitable for the role before you start collecting data from them. Taking the extra time to ensure certain things are user friendly will improve the candidate s experience and allow you to identify the best applicants. Use well branded but clear style and colours for your application form text and background Try and use drop down lists instead of scroll bars they shorten the form length, are more user friendly and won t conflict with the page scroll Have a navigation guide at the top or side of the page so the candidate can see where they are in the form and how much they ve left to do. Use GNDs to make sure you only collect data from the suitable applicants Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 12 of 21

6 Emails Don t forget about the little things. There is nothing more frustrating for a candidate than taking the time to fill out an application form, submitting and then hearing nothing. How long do they wait before assuming they haven t been successful and then have to start the application process all over again somewhere else? We understand that when you do not have a system such as an Applicant Tracking System in place, that sending out emails to all unsuccessful candidates would be extremely time consuming. But you assume that if there is not a system in place, then the volume of applicants is not high enough to warrant one. For this situation, there are simple ways to set up an automatic..setting up something as simple as a regret email should not be too difficult.. email to the unsuccessful candidates, to let them know they haven t made it through without too much grief or stress on the automatic email application. However, most companies with a high volume of applicants do tend to have an ATS or something similar in place to ease the unnecessary sifting through CVs workload on HR departments. In which case, setting up something as simple as a regret email should not be difficult, no matter how high the volume of applicants. Some companies use a screen that pops up informing the applicant that only successful candidates will be contacted, is a way around this. Unfortunately, this method will also damage candidate experience. It s a respectful courtesy to let them know the outcome of their submission as an applicant, you would want the same! Even with an automatic regret email in place however, some companies forget that this correspondence should still be well represented by employment brand. Although you are regretting the candidate and the response is automatic from the system, you are still communicating with a potential customer or a candidate who might reapply to another job within the company. Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 13 of 21

The email layout should be well set out, there should at least be a company logo and even simple things such as font type should be thought of, to make it look more professional and stay in keeping with your company s high standards. Remember to check that the plain text version still looks good, just in case the candidate s email won t support an html version. Remember to check that the plain text version still looks good, just in case the candidate s email won t support an html version. Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 14 of 21

7 Candidate experience A positive candidate experience can make the difference between a fantastic candidate applying or giving up and going elsewhere. All the work you do on your career site is to attain the biggest candidate pool you can, in order to have a higher chance of finding the perfect candidate for your role. Your candidates are obviously the pinnacle part of this process. If you remember to treat them well and give them a good experience, they will come back, reapply for different jobs, tell their friends and, if hired, bring in other high quality candidates. From your website, they should know the kind of company you are, what you value both in your staff and in the business and how everything fits together. The consequences of a candidate having a bad experience are clear. Bad news spreads faster than good news so whether it s a badly branded page or a messy application form, you ve automatically lost potential good candidates, Even a poor automated response from a system to an unsuccessful candidate is still a communication to a potential customer or consumer of your company and brand which you may lose as a result of this. With candidates, you are not selling the job role to them but you are also selling your brand. From your website, they should know the kind of company you are, what you value both in your staff and in the business and how everything fits together. The more information you give and the clearer and more professional you are to your candidates, will ensure a good candidate experience. Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 15 of 21

8 Site Accessibility There are levels of accessibility you can choose, each with their own sacrifices. Web accessibility encompasses all disabilities that affect people s access to the web, which includes auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical, speech and visual disabilities. It s advisable that should you make the commitment to make your website fully accessible to encompass all these areas, to plan in advance for the implementation of the necessary changes and prepare for further costs that this implementation may incur...how much functionality of your site are you willing to sacrifice.. It s also important to note that should you decide to make certain accessibility changes to your website, you may lose some of your functionality as a result. It all depends on who your target audience are and how much of a balance you are able to maintain between accessibility and functionality. If you want to read more about the web design standards for accessibility, this site is a great place to start: http://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 16 of 21

9 Tools to use Useful tools on the page can save you a lot of work Finally, having extra features on your careers page can not only enhance the candidate experience but can also ensure you get the right applicants applying if you detail what you as a company value or have a good Day in the Life of available, a candidate could decide not to fill out an application form and therefore save themselves and you from wasted time. Some tools which are great on a careers site: Candidate Charter which might tell candidates the timeframes they should expect the company to keep during the application Company Culture detailing the values and ethos of the company Promote jobs or sometimes known as hot jobs or featured jobs, where you display the latest jobs or perhaps jobs that are closing soon Message from the Top a welcoming message from somebody high up in the company How the process works what the candidate should expect and when, and maybe a few links to some practice tests they can take if this is part of the application process Learning and Development where candidates can go and what support and training they can expect to be provided Company Structure detailing different divisions and areas, perhaps highlighting where future opportunities may be gained Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 17 of 21

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) any examples of charity work or projects the company supports A Day in the Life of... insight from current employees, perhaps how they have developed and risen through the company from their original role Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 18 of 21

10 Dos and Don ts A quick checklist to round up nicely... To finish off, here s a quick list of extra Dos and Don ts to consider, when designing your careers page: DO make your application form functional for all popular Internet browsers and all major versions, from Google Chrome back to Internet Explorer v6! DON T have too many flash ads on the page you will completely slow down your site for people who may not have as high speed connection as you do If you would like further information on candidate experience, please visit our blog, Recruitment 2.0 and have a look at our series of posts on DO lay out your job description page well have key points such as Job Title and Closing Date clear and make sure your apply button is obvious. Make people want to press it! DON T have system where your candidates can re-apply for the same job after failing killer questions, as they will now know the answers that will cause them to not get through to the next round! DO have tools such as Email to a friend, Hot Jobs and Job Alerts if you have good candidates applying, even if they aren t suitable for a particular role, you may want to hold on them for future opportunities. DON T forget to make sure you test everything out as if you were a candidate. If you can t take a step back to do this, ask someone else to it s important to try and see everything from the candidate s perspective. DO generate reports it s very useful to see where your candidates are coming from/going to. If you don t have a good Applicant Tracking System provider, who will provide these for you, try Google Analytics -it s efficient, easy to use and it s free! Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 19 of 21

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About Advorto Advorto is one of Europe s leading providers of on-demand, Recruitment Management Solutions in the talent management market. Founded in 1998, Advorto uses a forwardthinking, consultative approach to assist organisations, such as Center Parcs, Lloyds Banking Group, Microsoft and TFL, to gain control over their recruitment process, allowing them to reduce time-to-hire and cost-per-hire. Advorto helps HR departments to automate the full requisition-to-hire process for graduates and experienced hires, including vacancy planning, talent attraction, candidate selection, on-boarding and management information. Unlike others systems, Advorto is a functionally-rich solution that can be deployed quickly and offers a fully customisable candidate experience. Advorto 1st Floor, Holborn Gate, 330 High Holborn, London WC1V 7QT +44 (0)20 7101 0330 Advorto 15 minute guide series Page 21 of 21