HR Meets Marketing Part 8: Revamping your outdated Careers Website
Key Website Design Trends to consider when creating the ultimate company careers page
People ignore design that ignores people. -Frank Chimero, co-founder Abstract
We don’t pick talent. Talent picks us.
When you ask most users about the best software or technology tools they’ve used in the workplace, HR Tech rarely comes top of mind. For decades, the world designed enterprise software in a way that was clunky and unappealing to the customers on the other end ie employees and Managers. It’s no wonder HR Tech adoption even in this day is still a problem for many companies. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic pushing HR Teams to forcibly quickly learn & adopt new workplace tech, there’s still much to be done to get us closer to being innovators and not just consumers. As SHRM explained well here, one of the biggest reasons for poor adoption of HR Tech is access and usability i.e. how easy is it to learn, use, and access.
‘Emotional footprint’ is about the passion people bring to using the technology they’re given,”. “It gauges how loyal end-users and organizations are to software products.”
In that regard, when was the last time you visited a Careers page or company website that made you excited for more? How many candidates drop off job application sites because of poor user experience like furiously trying to re-enter your resume info into a clunky application form with hundreds of text boxes and error messages? How long does it take to submit one application? How are your new jobs displayed and on which navigation point? What about your Team section? What emotional feeling does your visitor when going through your information? How does the flow of the site tell a story?
Ps To get the most out of this article, read the first piece on communicating culture here where I provide a background on the job application process, brand audit, and statistics on career websites.
89% of job seekers agree that an employer’s career website is important for finding key information.
67% of candidates visit the company website before they apply for a job.
The other hindrance to new HR Tech according to a PwC survey was a disconnect between how the C-suite and line managers view the value of new technologies.
The finding suggests that executives are not putting enough emphasis on outcomes of transformation — the processes and the ways of work, according to the survey authors. The survey found that, too often, leaders evaluate these implementations as they would any IT project: whether they’re delivered on time and on budget. Whether the tools deliver the intended business benefits and culture change are considered only secondary benefits.
This is the premise of most of the articles I’ve shared on Employer Branding so far and top of Global HR Trends reports. It is the difference between Recruiting and Strategic Talent Acquisition. So if you have a strategic hiring strategy whose main component is EB, here’s how you can get started on revamping your career website to attract better candidates and hence increase the number & quality of applications received. Step One- Define your goal.
Goal-What is your one main goal with this website? If you had a space and text limit, what is the most important message you’d want to relay? Less is more. Remember to keep everything short and make your customer the main character. Your website body should be effective by;
Allay fears and address potential problems your visitors may have
Reinforce the benefits of your offer and provide solutions to above problems
Encourage visitors to click your call to action
The Employer Brand Strategy
However, what informs your website goals? Your employer brand strategy does. And this entails the following key components;
- Clarity- Your brand exists to explain your business to your audience. Be clear about what you do, for how, and who so that everything sends this very message.
- Brand Identity- Think about what you want people to think and feel about your brand. The personality of your brand will make sure that people connect to your offers.
- The perfect offer- How do you stand out in the market? You need a message that grabs attention, and an offer that gives the solution your customers dream of.
- Visuals- Once you have your purpose and personality clear, pick the visuals that represent that business. Every little thing has its own message. Make sure to use your own company-generated content as opposed to stock images.
- Customer Experience- Craft the journey you want your customers to take. Make the experience true to your values.
The Careers Page
- Recruiting Collateral- Pictures, Animation, Audio, Videos, Blog, Numbers, Mix- This makes your website and company appear more friendly and approachable. This will also do a better job of minimizing text and having a site that’s too boring to the eye as we’ll show below.
- Introduction- Who you are, what you do, and why you do it. Don’t go with a generic About Us headline or subheading. A good heading includes a benefit-driven value proposition and it’s the first thing your visitors will notice. First impressions matter so go with a title that focuses on how a career with you helps the candidate achieve their goals. If your careers page is separate from the larger company page, you can customize an introduction that highlights you as an employer eg organizational structure, top leadership, department heads, teams, locations, number of staff, types of employment, etc while keeping basic info e.g company products on the primary page and everything else considered fluff. Optimize for Search engine optimization as well so your page pops up first when jobseekers are searching online for information about your company.
- Your Story- Instead of regurgitating publicly available company numbers and info, share your journey with the reader. Include both your struggles and successes too. Your careers page is different from your company page. It should complement it by specifically shedding inlight on ABC as an employer of choice. Your culture is one of the key things your candidates are looking to find out about and this can be your chance to tell that story. You ask candidates Why You? Well, this is your Why You section.
- Trust elements- As I shared here about the concept of social proof, use success indicators such as positive reviews, important statistics, awards & recognitions, featured on any big news sites or TV interviews, etc to self-promote. I’ve seen others highlight “As featured on Forbes's top 10 tech firms to watch out for, Top 50 employer in Europe in 2020, As rated №1 by 500 reviews on Glassdoor, Average tenure of 15 years, etc.’ It builds authority and trust. It also creates FOMO or the Fear of Missing Out. Dropping some big names or numbers reinforces your brand’s credibility and sends another trust signal. This includes having a strong Leadership section. Lastly, this is the perfect section to let your employees shine. The power of testimonials cannot be understated. Let visitors hear your employment story directly from current or past employees as opposed to your talent team. For more on Emotional Branding, check out our last article.
- UNIQUE Employee Value Proposition- Just like other customers, everyone wants to know what’s in it for me. Explain clearly how a career with you can help the candidate achieve their desired goals. As Steve Jobs showed below, always communicate BENEFITS OVER FEATURES. Highlight ‘what’s in it for them’ and what they seek to gain from a career with you. For instance, instead of just saying ‘We have a global presence in 100 countries across the world’, Add ‘which gives our employees multiple avenues to grow their careers across cultures & regions through our robust Talent Mobility program.’ Avoid company or industry jargon and stick to persuasive simple copywriting.
- Call to action- Ask the reader to do one thing and one thing only. Either apply for open jobs or join your talent community to be considered for future roles.
- Contact Info- I’ve come across extremely few career sites that let visitors know they can easily reach back. It increases brand loyalty and can also help grow your own social media channels. A few provide a survey form that can also serve the same agenda. I’d go further and add an NPS score to this section as I explained here. With the rise of fake job scams all over, I’d suggest a reporting or fraud email or form as well. Many INGOs also put a Fraud or Scam alert notification on their website to warn job applicants of fake job ads. Others include an FAQs section to remove all objections that the reader may have. This will save your recruiters time answering DMs on commonly asked questions.
- Resources- Apart from FAQs, some companies provide free job application resources or tools based on their experiences and recruiting methods they use. Microsoft does meetups with recruiters to share how they hire or resume tips, Facebook helps developers discover how to pass coding assessments, and so on.
- Metrics/Data- There are tonnes of free & paid website tracking tools to measure traffic, user behavior, and performance. The key is to figure out the metrics that matter based on your branding goals and optimize for that as you track your numbers periodically.
USER INTERFACE DESIGN
A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it’s not that good- Martin LeBlanc
UI involves determining the look and feel of the website. How monotonous or exciting does it feel to go section to section? It’s also about responsiveness and interactivity eg adaptation to all device screen sizes. If designing for Africa for instance, this will be critical since most users access the internet on mobile devices with limited internet bandwidth. How can you optimize for this? Do you factor in disabilities?
- Photography
- Visual design
- Illustration
- Icon design
- Graphic design
- Color psychology
- Layouts
- Typography
- Wireframing & prototyping
- Responsive design
- Animation & Interactivity
75% of job seekers consider an employer’s brand before even applying for a job (CareerArc).
76% want details on what makes the company an attractive place to work. (Glassdoor survey, October 2014)
Companies with a strong employer brand see 50% more qualified applicants and take 1–2x faster to hire. (LinkedIn)
USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like, design is how it works.-Steve Jobs
Where do you want your users to go first? Then next? How effortless is it to apply for an opening? How many clicks does it take a candidate to find an open job in their category & location? How is the experience on mobile vs desktop? Is your content optimised for mobile? If you use a complex ATS where your candidates have to key in data into multiple text boxes even after uploading their resume, how many applying via mobile will opt out of the journey? Your website goals will define how your website visitors are intentionally directed to your high-converting sections or links. Decide how you want your info site to flow as a way of telling a story and leading someone to a call to action. Remove any distractions as well and stick the main Call to Action.
- Interaction design/ Strategic navigation
- Wireframes & Prototyping
- Information Architecture
- User research & analysis
- Scenarios
- Content strategy
- Usability testing
78% of candidates agree that the experience of the company’s career portal is important while taking the decision to apply.
Job searchers spend up to 37% more time on career sites that include video testimonials, and applications increase by up to 34% when job listings include video testimonials.
Applying for a job takes an average of 6 minutes.
59% of job seekers have abandoned an online application because there were issues or bugs in the job application process.
68% of applicants who have abandoned a job application because the application process was lengthy.- Source
For a great introduction into ux/ui design, check out this article on Medium.
Some Key web design trends to watch out for
- Material design over Overly flat design
- Custom Illustrations over front page sliders
- Cinemagraph over excessive javascript
- Comprehensible fonts over complex javascript
- Minimal color themes over too many colors
Below is a visual examples of these modern designs in action. Images courtesy of Dribble.
As you can tell, these responsive pages are much more interactive and visually appealing than the usual flat text extensive ones. Take some time off this year to assess and upgrade your careers website and give your visitors a brand new web experience on job searching. Work with your IT Team to automate these page updates quarterly so you’re frequently reminded about it. I’ve come across sites that have outdated Leadership info or jobs that are still being highlighted even 2 years after the role was closed. One had a dummy job ad still open and running. Most also don’t include a Data Protection policy statement as required by both local & GDPR standards.
If you do a great job with your careers site, it will considerably improve your Job Ad and complement it well. If you also implement website analytics into your Hiring strategy, you may be surprised at what your new insights will tell you about your recruiting efforts and hence what to optimise for success. All the best!
