The most revealing career site analytics

March 8, 2024

 

Anna Ruby

5 min read

When a job seeker navigates to your career site, what will she experience? Will she feel intrigued as she watches current employees explain why they like their jobs? Will she delve further into the site to explore current roles? Or will she abandon the page after a mere scroll, unimpressed by what she sees?

Career site analytics tell the story of candidates’ end-to-end experience on your career site. They reveal the answers to these questions, explaining not only where candidates’ journeys begin and where they end, but also why.

Why career site analytics are important

Before we jump into the specifics of how analytics work and how you can use them to improve your career site, we want to explain why they’re important. Analytics give you the information you need to make your career site shine. When your career site is optimized to convert curious job seekers into invested applicants, you gain more than candidates. You create a positive first impression on your future employees and take the first step in building a successful employer brand.

You also avoid the pitfalls of a lackluster career site. According to the iCIMS 2023 Talent Experience Report, candidates count on career sites as one of the most reliable sources of information about an employer. So, when a career site fails to inform and impress, it downgrades the entire candidate experience, an oversight that comes with serious consequences. According to iCIMS’ 2023 Talent Experience Report, 56% of people would be less likely to be a consumer of a brand if they had a subpar candidate experience. What’s more, job seekers may also tell their friends and family about a disappointing candidate interaction. Suddenly, a bad first impression is a bad reputation.

Analytics root out the weak spots responsible for subpar career sites. They show you where job seekers end their exploration. Analytics may reveal, for instance, that job seekers spend several minutes on your career site’s home page, but they end their journey quickly once they navigate to open roles. This may prompt you to elevate that page, organizing open roles into categories and outfitting job posts with more engaging content like employee testimonials.

Analytics may also show you that candidates abandon their applications after just a few minutes. This information may tell you that your application process is simply too long. It may also point to an application process that’s overly challenging and clunky.

No matter what information analytics reveal, they equip you with hard data you can use to show the value of strategic improvements to your career site. When you can explain the specific effects of a lackluster candidate experience, you can pinpoint the issues you need to change. And when you’ve made those improvements, you can use analytics to illustrate the importance of the transformation.

This ability to create a detailed argument on behalf of your career site will help you find support and establish C-suite buy-in. Excellent career sites require expert resources — a case you can make with the strong evidence analytics provide. With the right tools, your career site will kick off a winning candidate experience that will provide more candidates and better hires.

How to measure career site performance

You now understand what kind of information career site analytics provide. But which analytics, specifically, help you measure the overall performance of your career site?

There are three categories of analytics that measure the end-to-end experience job seekers encounter when they come to your career site.

1. Entrance: How do candidates get to your career site? They may find it through a search engine. It could be your customer-facing site that leads them to it. Or they may access it via social media or job board posts. When you examine how job seekers enter your career sites, the most valuable information you find is how they don’t get to your career site. If you find that the vast majority of job seekers enter your career site through the customer page, that may prompt you to invest more in your social media channels to increase the number of applicants who are prompted to explore your pages as they scroll their newsfeed.
2. Activity: When job seekers get to your career site, what do they do? How long do they explore? Which pages drive the most traffic and activity? By analyzing candidates’ activity on your career page, you gain incredible insight into how they use the site. Again, the most useful information may come from what candidates don’t do. If you find that candidates don’t explore your main page, you may decide to outfit the page with more interesting and informative content.
3. Exit: Where do candidates get stuck? Where do they end their journeys? This data will help you understand why job seekers abandon your career site. It could point you to a clunky application experience or a disappointing open roles page.

The most revealing metrics for career site success

Now let’s look at the specific metrics that will give you the most information about your career site.

• Sources and campaigns: Analyze how job seekers get to your career site. How many browsers find your website through your text message campaigns? How many access it through the QR code you post on physical job ads? Compare that to the number of people who find your site through your talent newsletter. Identify the top influences — and the lowest performers, too.
• Career site traffic: Career site traffic tells you how many people have accessed your site. In addition to page views, this metric reveals how long visitors spend on your site, indicating how well your content holds their attention.
• Landing page analytics: Determine which landing pages are the most visited. By discovering your 10 most popular pages, you gain a better understanding of the kind of information and content job seekers want. You can also examine landing page traffic over time, top clicks on landing pages, and top search queries driven from landing pages.
• Most popular links and click activity: Similarly, an examination of the most popular links will help you determine the career site content that’s performing best, and which elements need some work. Your home page may include popular links driving job seekers to more information about jobs, benefits and workplace culture. Some links may go unnoticed, signaling that they need more conspicuous presentation.
• Application insights: Look into your application data to compare how many job seekers start applications to how many finish them. Examine how many job seekers have completed applications over time, how long each application step takes, how long the process takes from start to finish, and how job seekers upload supporting documents. Each of these metrics will help paint a picture of your job application process and will indicate how you can streamline the process to increase applicant rates.

Why is it important to understand the experience your career site offers?

When your organization crafts a career site that draws high traffic, captures applicants’ attention and converts their interest into action, it cultivates better candidates. A winning career site gives you the edge you need to compete for the best talent on the market.

Ready to revamp your career site? Follow these steps to create a winning business case for your career site redesign.