Global talent shortages are at an all-time high, with 77% of employers reporting difficulty in filling roles. With the competition so intense for the best candidates, companies need to seize every opportunity to make themselves stand out as an employer of choice. 89% of jobseekers think that an employer’s careers site is important for finding out key information. But, many companies are simply not making the most of this channel.
We’ve put together five key criteria that you can use to determine how your careers site is performing —and what you can do if it’s missing the mark.
1. High candidate bounce rate
‘Bounce rate’ refers to the percentage of visitors that leave a webpage without taking any further action. They ‘bounce’ without visiting another page, clicking on a link or filling out a form.
If your careers site has a high bounce rate, this means visitors are leaving your site quickly without engaging with your job postings or other content. There are a range of triggers for this: visitors may not find the content engaging, your site could be loading slowly, be confusing to navigate or have long, drawn-out forms without strong CTAs. Whatever the driver, a high bounce rate needs to be addressed. Unchecked, it can lead to excess resource spending, as you need to drive more traffic to the careers site to make up for it.
You can improve your bounce rate by conducting useability testing of your careers site and finding ways to clearly signpost content and streamline your application process. You can also add more engaging content, such as videos, live chat pop-ups or dynamic content, to keep visitors interested and encourage repeat visits. Tools such as heatmaps can help you determine which areas of an individual page are attracting attention and which are underperforming. You can also use A/B testing to determine which pieces of content perform better than others.
Key takeaways
- Measure your bounce rate regularly: a good bounce rate target for your careers site should be under 35%
- Use ‘sticky’ content that engages visitors and stops them leaving immediately
- Analyse and test content ongoing to keep track of what performs best —this may change over time
2. Lack of data and insight on candidate behaviour
If you don’t have access to data on how candidates interact with your careers site, you may miss out on valuable insights that could help you improve your recruitment strategy.
Implementing tools like Google Analytics can help you gather data on the number of visits, visitor sources, time spent on site, and which pages or calls to action are the most popular. This information can help you make data-driven decisions about improving your careers site and better target your recruitment efforts.
Candidate journeys can be complex and may involve multiple visits over long periods of time and different forms of engagement. Analytics for a standalone webpage can only give you basic information about visitors and their behaviour. Linking your careers site to a recruitment marketing CRM will allow you to track these candidates throughout their journey and over multiple visits, from their original source through to application. You can even integrate your ATS with the CRM to continue tracking right through to hire. This will help to give you an accurate conversion rate by source and help you improve your ROI through more efficient spending.
Key takeaways
- Use a tool like Google Analytics to create a dashboard of metrics that you can use to track your website’s performance
- Consider using recruitment marketing software to help you track the whole of a candidate’s journey and more accurately measure careers site ROI
3. No way to build an effective talent pool
Many internal recruitment teams wait until they have a specific vacancy to fill or campaign to run before building up a list of potential candidates. This means starting from zero every time you need to recruit and can be very expensive.
A great careers site should allow you to build up a talent pool, or bank of potential candidates with the right skills and experience. That way, you can draw this pool of talent when a vacancy arises.
To start to build your talent pools, it’s important to create tailored experiences for site visitors, and make it easy for them to find relevant content. Build custom landing pages or microsites to target specific talent groups, and test targeted CTAs (calls to action) to capture interest and drive more visitors into your talent pools. Example CTAs could include “Join our talent pool” boxes or “Register for job alerts” pop-ups.
To keep these candidates interested in your company and eager to apply, you’ll need to keep them engaged with regular targeted content and alert them when suitable vacancies arise. Feeding talent from your careers site into automated workflows reduces manual effort and can help to drive conversion.
Key takeaways
- Build custom landing pages or microsites to target specific talent groups
- Add multiple CTAs throughout the site to capture visitors details and build talent pools
- Use automated communications to keep candidates engaged and encourage them to apply
4. Inauthentic content
All too often, the content on a company’s careers site simply consists of its corporate values, benefits and a list of current vacancies. But, for today’s discerning jobseekers, this isn’t enough —they need an authentic picture of your employer brand, and what it’s really like to work there.
75% of jobseekers consider the employer brand before even applying for a role, and 52% visit the company website and social media sites to find out more information. And when they do, what’s more important to them? What the company says, or what actual employees have to say? Who are they more likely to trust?
Real content from real employees performs consistently better than marketing-scripted corporate copy, and simple ‘home-style’ videos on job pages convert better than slick highly-produced ones. Finding ways to incorporate employee-generated content into your careers site can really help boost your conversion rates, improve trust and showcase your employer brand.
Key takeaways
- Use employee-generated content to give an authentic picture of your employer brand
- Blogs, testimonials and videos from your employees can all boost trust
- Don’t forget to also share these on social media
5. Poor candidate experience
Finally, an underperforming careers site can lead to a poor candidate experience, damaging your employer brand and deterring candidates from applying to your open positions. Static, outdated content will not engage candidates who prefer two-way discussions and interactive insights. Poor navigation can make it difficult for candidates to find the information they are looking for, while too much content up front can be overwhelming for visitors.
Signs that your careers site is offering a poor experience for candidates include low conversion rates, negative feedback / NPS and low repeat traffic.
To offer the best possible candidate experience, you’ll need to:
- Ensure your careers site is optimized for mobile: over 50% of internet traffic is now from mobile devices
- Include content that is relevant and interesting to candidates. Use dynamic content to tailor each visitor’s experience to them
- Offer opportunities for visitors to engage directly with you and ask questions
- Ensure your navigation and job search functionality is user-friendly
- Make it easy for candidates to apply – allow visitors to apply with their LinkedIn profile or use multi-stage applications to ask for information gradually
Key takeaways
- Find ways to collect UX feedback from your candidates, eg surveys, NPS, chat boxes
- Use the checklist above to ensure you are making the candidate experience as positive as possible
Ready to start fixing your careers site?
If your company is finding it harder than ever to attract great people, you need a careers site designed to convince top talent to click ‘Apply’.
Request a free Clinch career site audit today to see how your site compares to industry standards —plus a custom report outlining what’s working, what’s not and your biggest opportunities for growth.
