Your Career Site Doesn’t Exist.

Back in 2013, at the Marathon of the North (which totally sounds like a Game of Thrones episode), 5,000 people were disqualified because they had been given the wrong directions which, brought them to the finish line 264m short of the distance of the marathon (and half marathon).

Imagine running a marathon and getting to the end just to find out that you missed out on 264m of the marathon and were disqualified.

The Marathon of the North isn’t an isolated case either. Google tells me this is a pretty common thing. How is this possible? There’s a route. There are marshals. There are markers. There are random people handing out refreshments along the course and sometimes there are even dogs handing out high fives.

It’s possible because humans are humans. They take wrong turns. They look too far ahead or they look down for too long. They get distracted. And sometimes, they’re lead there by mis-marked trails or misinformed marshals.

The point is, they don’t always take the path that’s been designed for them to take.

We spend quite a bit of our time looking at what companies are doing when it comes to employer branding in the application process. More specifically, we look at how companies are telling their brand story through the pre-apply portion of the process.

And companies are doing some incredible things.

I mean, take a look at the career pages of your favorite brands. They’re amazing! Beautiful images and videos. Culture pages filled with smiling faces of real employees sharing their stories. Laundry lists of wonderful benefits and values.

And from there, once a candidate has learned more about the company, they can click into the job descriptions they’re interested in and move along in the application process, eventually ending up at the finish line and submitting their application.

This is the marked course.

The trouble is, this isn’t the course that candidates always take.

The truth is, there are no rules to how candidates discover your job descriptions.

Your data will tell your story but I’ll wager a bet that a significant number of candidates are not flowing through your careers page. In fact, I’m guessing your data says that the majority of your candidates don’t flow through your branded career page. Instead, they’re landing on a job description from a LinkedIn update, an email or a job board posting.

And those candidates are missing out on all of that goodness that you’re likely pouring into your careers page. They’re missing those smiling faces, those value statements, those videos, the list of benefits and the testimonials of other employees. They’re missing out on your employer brand and your employer value proposition altogether.

Imagine your careers page doesn’t exist. Imagine that the only thing a candidate sees is an update on LinkedIn and then an actual job description. What story are you telling? What impression are you giving?

If you’ve read our past posts, you’re probably sick of hearing us talk about the importance of job descriptions. But the fact of the matter is this: the job description is the base unit of measurement of your talent acquisition strategy. And right now, most companies are coming up 264m short.

Here’s a challenge for you: take a quick inventory of the brands you’re wearing today. Choose one of those brands and navigate to their careers page. Take an inventory of what you see and experience there. Take inventory of the emotions and feelings the page evokes.

Then, I want you to click into an actual job description. Did something happen? Did that brand story disappear? Did those stories melt away? Did the video of Janessa talking about why she loves working as a developer for that company vanish in a job description for a developer role? Is there some way for you to experience those same things from the career site in the job description? Or do you have to click away from the job description to have that experience?

You can’t control the way that candidates land in job descriptions but you can definitely make sure they have a great experience when they arrive.

Candidates crave experience in job descriptions. They crave clarity about the role and they crave transparency about the company and most companies fail to offer any of the above, beyond a standard job description.

I’ve written about it before and I’ve even spoke about it on various stages but there are things you can be doing immediately to improve the experience candidates have in your job descriptions. There are things you can be doing immediately to tell your brand story and sharing with candidates all of the reasons they might fall in love with your brand.

By excluding your employer brand from your descriptions, you’re missing the chance to truly impress your candidates and you’re actually making it more difficult for them to finish the race.

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