These 4 career site hacks will forever change how you hire

October 26, 2020

 

iCIMS Staff

5 min read

We’ve gotten used to distance. Virtual career fairs, video interviews, and remote onboarding have become part of our new hiring practices. This challenged us to think more holistically about virtual recruitment and how it plays into recruitment marketing and dedicated talent acquisition software. Through this evolution, the need for branded, purpose-built career sites has emerged as one of the best ways to attract and engage job seekers.

Why? Career sites lead to more hires than job boards, provide more detail than LinkedIn, and give you more control than review sites like Glassdoor.

Here are four easy career site upgrades that will take your virtual hiring to the next level.

Key upgrades:

• Feature current employees prominently on your career sites and let them promote the business in their own words
• List perks and benefits on your career sites and use them as ways to discuss your culture and values
• Boost your search ranking by including a commute search option to your career sites, even if your team is working remotely for the time being
• Make the job search easier and improve the quality and quantity of your applicants by using talent acquisition software with job matching capabilities

Upgrade #1: Say it louder with employee testimonials

You can sing your own praises all day long – having someone else to sing them for you remains one of the most effective ways to persuade job seekers.

First, look to your most engaged employees. Often these are your top performers, but strong performance on paper doesn’t always equate to a positive culture fit. You can be great at your job and disconnected from the culture. Too many negatives can outweigh positives. Look for well-rounded people who work well with others and contribute to the environment you’re trying to build and maintain.

Second, look for variety. Diversity and inclusion efforts are a top priority right now. Seek out people from around the business who come from different backgrounds and have a variety of experiences. Diversity comes in many forms – use current employees to promote an inclusive, welcoming environment.

Third, let employees do the talking for you. Your career site is your domain. You have full editorial powers that don’t exist on anonymous platforms like Glassdoor. Job seekers know this. Naturally, they’ll be skeptical if what your employees say sounds too rehearsed or polished.

Be authentic by giving suggestions to get the conversation started, but after that sit back, be quiet, and listen. I promise what you hear will be far better and more genuine than any talking points you could have provided.

Upgrade #2: Highlight culture through benefits and perks

People work to make money, but it’s the extra perks people really get excited about – we’re talking free lunches, discounted movie tickets, coffee bars, and company socials.

Benefits like retirement plan contributions and healthcare coverage are big factors in job seekers’ minds. It’s far easier to picture yourself somewhere long term when you feel bought in and invested in by your employer.

Benefits also pick up the slack when salary is an unknown. For many jobs, applicants know more or less what they can expect in compensation before they apply. Elsewhere, ranges are discussed up front, but details aren’t brought up again until the very end of the process.

Perks and benefits are known variables and reveal meaningful clues to your culture and values. Job seekers look at these as a way of gauging potential employers at least as much as they do for tangible personal benefit.

Upgrade #3: Include locations and commute times

Commute times are still on peoples’ minds, even if your business is currently working remotely. Most people expect to go back to working in person at some point. Candidates are much more open to uncertainty if they know what comes next.

You can avoid unhappy surprises down the road by talking about location now and making it clear what expectations for in-office vs. remote work will be once things return to normal. You can do this by including a commute search option on your career site.

This gives candidates an idea how far their commute will be and how long it will take them without cross-referencing with Google Maps. If you’re a business with multiple locations, candidates get the added benefit of filtering out those that are outside their preferred commuting distance.

Speaking of Google, make sure each of your open requisitions has a location attached or is clearly labelled as a remote position. This information, along with other criteria including experience required and salary range, greatly improves your job’s ranking in Google search results.

Upgrade #4: Match candidates to open jobs

Job descriptions don’t always provide the clearest picture of what a job actually is. They’re helpful, yes, but unless an applicant is very familiar with your business, industry jargon, and the role they’re applying to, well, it’s easy to end up more confused than when you started.

Job matching technology makes the job search easier and can greatly improve the quality and quantity of applicants. All job seekers have to do is upload their resume and put in their location (you can choose to ask additional preference questions as well). That’s it – smart matching technology takes care of the rest.

Results are provided based on criteria such as experience and skills. Best of all, the job matching algorithm looks for quality fits that might not have been obvious to recruiters or the applicants themselves.

(Editor’s note: for more on the woman behind recruiting’s most talked about AI solution, click here.)

Follow these simple guidelines and your career sites are going to look great! But don’t stop there: check out our Definitive Guide to Recruitment Marketing ROI.