Design Your Careers Page to Connect With Candidates

Whether you’re a small business or a large corporation, the careers page on your website is a candidate’s first look at your company’s values and culture. This first impression will influence whether or not they want to work for you. As you gear up to hire for new openings, it’s essential for your business to take a step back and evaluate your careers page. A good careers page will be consistent with your overall employer brand, tell a valuable company story, and present enough authentic, useful information to attract the right type of talent to apply for your open jobs.

It is no longer enough to just include plain text job descriptions on your career page and hope that people apply. Your careers page is your company’s recruitment center, where all potential candidates discover more about working for you, for the first time. The best employers invest in their career sites with relevant and impactful content.

Here are some tips to create a careers page design that spurs prospective employees to engage more deeply with your organization.

1. Know your goals.

What story do you want your careers page to tell? Map out actionable, practical goals for your careers page; that way you have a clear measure for success. If you want to increase applications, showcase your company culture, or build better branding, use your key goals to prioritize what belongs on the page.

Think about your values and mission statements when considering your goals for your careers page. What message do you want to communicate to people who visit your site?

2. Ensure your careers page is easy to find.

If potential candidates have to dig through three or more pages of your website to find your careers page, you could be losing out on tons of great talent. Position your careers page on your website so it can be easily located by potential applicants.

Keep the URL for your careers page simple, such as domain.com/careers or domain.com/jobs. This not only helps applicants to easily remember the URL, but it will also help you with search engine optimization.

3. Showcase what makes your company unique.

Think about what makes your company different from others in your industry or city. Identify these traits and make them part of your brand story. Your authenticity as a brand will shine through if you showcase real, unique stories and perspectives from the people who make up your company. Cut through the corporate jargon and include real bios that show off your employees’ personalities and help applicants get a sense of who they may be working alongside.

Put your values and mission statements on your careers page. This can give you the chance to inspire like-minded individuals to join your team.

4. Think about your application process from a candidate’s point of view.

Put yourself in the shoes of a potential candidate while reviewing your website and careers page. If you were a first-time visitor to your website, would your experience be positive or negative? Can you find the information you need and apply for positions easily? Does your website tell a story that gives candidates motivation and persuades them to apply for a job?

An overly lengthy or complex application process can lead to frustration, high drop-off rates, and ultimately brand damage. A simple way to test your application is to run through the process yourself and anonymously apply to one of your own roles. This will let you know whether you need to make any changes to avoid losing top talent.

5. Include dynamic content that captures the audience’s attention.

Short videos and photos from company outings or your annual holiday party can increase engagement from potential applicants and give employees a better sense of your work environment and company culture.

Include employee interviews, testimonials, and profiles that show real employees telling their real stories in their real voices. Connecting prospective candidates with your current employees can build excitement around the possibility of a new job – especially if your real-life employees explain how your company has invested in them, helped launch their careers, taught them new skills, and helped them give back to your community.  

6. Optimize your careers page for mobile.

90% of job seekers use a mobile device as part of their job search! So it’s critical to optimize your career site for that kind of experience. For an applicant, having the ability to attach a resume from Dropbox or Google Drive will make the application much easier to complete on a mobile device.

Think beyond the mobile responsive platform. True mobile-friendly design should include short paragraphs, lots of white space, light images, shorter videos, and a short application process that doesn’t require typing a lot of text.

7. Create a relationship with future applicants.

Your careers page should have a way for people to start a relationship with your company. Whether you want to create a formal talent network or just send out job alerts, try to capture leads for passive talent that may not be ready to apply just yet or doesn’t see a match with a particular open position.

Maintain an active social media presence. Frequent activity on social media will create more ways to interact with and direct candidates to your careers page (and into your hiring funnel).

A company blog is a great means to educate potential applicants on what it’s like working for your company and for sharing your employee stories. It also lets you publish regular updates on the direction your company is heading.