A recent study showed that in general, over 90% of candidates who reach a career site do not apply (source: Dr. John Sullivan & Associates). This is a pretty staggering statistic. Companies are investing a tremendous amount of time, energy and resources to attract talent to their career sites. However, many of them are neglecting to implement simple and easy tools to capture and engage those candidates while providing a positive experience while they are there.
Your career site is the number one external touch point in the overall candidate experience. Why? Because every candidate will undoubtedly visit your career site. Even if they had a positive initial experience at a job fair, visiting your social career sites, a conference or in a conversation with a recruiter, if they surf back to your career site and there is a disconnect between what they learned earlier and what is on your site, you stand a good chance of losing them. This is what is referred to it as your “second” first impression.
Your career site must be central to your talent acquisition strategy. When you look at your site and how it affects the candidate experience, there are really two things you need to ask yourself:
- Is Your Career Site A Communications Vehicle?
Does your career site communicate what the candidate wants to see? Put yourself in the candidate’s shoes and ask, “Would it engage me?” Does it share what is in it for the candidate (WIFM) to join your organization? A few things you need to include and consider communicating on your site:
Call out your true Employment Value Proposition (EVP) employment brand messaging, awards; community initiatives; commitment to diversity and inclusion, veteran and disability affairs and more.
Do you show and share who will your candidates be working with and what will a typical day in their life look like at your organization?
There are a number of tools to help communicate this information and engage with the candidate:
- Videos and testimonials – a great way to convey your employment and job brands
- Podcasts– provide tips for job seekers and help build your image as a valuable resource in the marketplace
- Employee Blogs– allow them to learn about your organization from the employee’s perspective
- Recruitment Newsletters– allow them to subscribe via RSS feed to a monthly recruitment newsletter
- Sign up for your Career Alerts and Talent Communities
- Live Chat– give them a chance to communicate with your top employees and hiring managers and tailor the experience by job family (e.g., nurses talking with nurses)
- Recruiter Response – allow candidates to ask recruiters specific questions; make sure you respond
- LinkedIn Company Group Creation – enables you to be a Thought Leader to your niche hard-to-find candidates on LinkedIn
All of these ideas are designed to capture and engage top candidates and help improve their overall experience on your career site. The goal is to move more candidates into your apply funnel and fill your hiring platform faster.
- Is Your Career Site Functional?
- In other words, make sure your career site is easy to find and easy to navigate. A “Careers” link on your company’s home page is essential. Place the link at the right top of the home page or at least above the fold. It should be prominently displayed on the home page, not hidden under “Company Information” or “About Us.”
- From the home page, it shouldn’t take more than three clicks to reach a job positing.
- Using a JOBS domain name (jobs.companyname.com) is one way to streamline this process. This custom URL will send candidates directly to your career site, minimizing the number of clicks and, in turn, frustration levels. But make sure it links to your home page and is searchable by all the search engines.
- Make sure your Career Site is mobile responsive
SourceMob can provide a turnkey outsourced career site solution for your talent acquisition business. You can simply learn more by sending me an email atjeff@sourcemob.com or calling 952-417-6955.
Check out our latest Webinar Education schedule go to SourceMob.com and look for the Events link off the navigational bar http://sourcemob.com/events/
July 29th SourceMob Webinar – 12 PM CDT:
Master Class – HR Marketing for your Talent Pipeline – Presented by Jeffery Giesener
It’s Free!
ABOUT SOURCEMOB: SourceMob integrates Internet, social, talent community and mobile recruiting solutions to help talent acquisition professionals recruit the very best candidates for tough-to-fill positions. SourceMob’s IT, Analytics and HR Media Services distributes job content and conversations providing a job posting springboard to over 3.5 million candidate profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and all of the major search engines. We help you engage with your candidates and capture niche Passive candidates. Our solutions also enable Mobile Quick Apply and candidate application management services to create efficiencies and lower recruiting costs.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Jeffery
Jeffery Giesener
CEO/Founder
SourceMob.com
jeff@sourcemob.com
952-417-6955
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jefferyjeffgiesener
Source: NAS Recruitment/Appended for HR by Jeffery Giesener