.JPG)
Do you want to build a careers site but are worried about the challenges of costs, maintenance, and skills? Don’t be! It’s actually pretty straightforward to do; there are plenty of content management tools that can help you start building today –– in NO time and with NO coding.
By building a careers site yourself (I promise, even you can do it), you can unleash your creativity and have complete ownership of the page. No support from design or development teams and full control over one of the most effective tools available to HR teams.
This article will explain how you can get started. It also has a few handy tips to maximize the power of your careers site.
But what is a careers site?
A careers site is an area dedicated exclusively to job vacancies. It can be a micro or hybrid site connected with external job boards, but more often than not, it's a single page on your company's website dedicated to your open vacancies.
Typically, companies add a direct link to their careers page in the footer of their homepage. Potential candidates can then quickly see if you’re currently hiring for a role suitable for them. We recommend doing the same to ensure potential candidates can easily find your career site.
Candidates will also be looking at your careers site to find out a little more about your company and culture. A careers site should always reflect your company and branding. It would be surprising for a visitor to be directed to a page with a different look and feel –– they’d like to ask themselves, "Is this still the same company?" The appearance of a careers site does, of course, depend entirely on your company.
Great, but what are the benefits of having a careers site and how do I achieve them?
A careers site is arguably the most powerful tool in an HR toolkit –– yet often the most overlooked. Fundamentally, a careers site (also known as a careers page) is just a landing page on a company’s website where job vacancies and employee-related information can be found. Doesn’t sound too exciting, right?
But consider what this means: free creativity and an opportunity to showcase what it’s like to work for your company.
The primary advantage of having a careers site is to improve candidate conversion rates and hire better talent. This is number one. However, getting there requires focus and work on two areas –– two areas that also bring added benefits.
Employer branding
A careers site is a playground for employer branding. It’s one of the only places where you can sing about your teams, your culture, and the employee experience at your company. It’s where you can make your employer branding shine.
A careers site is the go-to page for potential employees curious about who you are as a company; so get creative! Before a potential candidate hits send on their application, they’ll be investigating whether your company culture matches their values. They’ll want to know what your mission is, who’s on your team, what you stand for, and what perks and benefits you offer.
Quick tip: Add employer testimonials and a company video to your careers site!
Employer branding is important; employer branding on your careers site is critical. According to data from companies that use our Recruitee (by Tellent) ATS and can track the full recruitment pipeline, more than 60% of their applicants applied via their company site –– that’s more than one in two potential candidates not only applying but evaluating a company from their careers site.
And if you consider that a staggering 74% of job seekers are more likely to apply for a job when a company manages its employer branding — it’s something that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Looking for some help to optimise your employer branding? Discover our free employer branding checklist!
Google ranking and SEO
If done correctly –– and it’s important to do it correctly! –– a careers site can work wonders for your company’s SEO. If you know and understand SEO, the same tricks and standards should be applied to your company's site.
You want to make sure the careers site has all the necessary keywords, your images and meta tags are SEO friendly and your meta description is optimized, to ensure search engines can easily index the page. This is important as the better indexed your careers site the higher you’ll rank on search engines, improving your reach for potential candidates.
Dive deeper into SEO to understand it better and learn more about built-in analytics as an effective way to track key metrics and website traffic.
What is a careers site builder and how can I start building?
Especially when using an advanced ATS, you can expect to find plenty of standard and customizable features, which help organizations present their open job vacancies, company culture, and employee benefits. The even more advanced ones also come with data analytics and a back-end portal, which allows you to analyze the full candidate pipeline and communicate with the hiring team directly within the platform.
Some of the core features you want to look out for:
- Job listings: you want a builder that allows you to easily manage them!
- Branding: to create a site in keeping with your colors, fonts, and logos.
- Culture content: you’ll want a builder that can integrate multimedia content so you can easily share all of your great videos and testimonials!
Quick tip: Unsure what type of videos you should publish on your career site? Here are some great examples by PlayPlay.
ATS vs. a traditional website builder
An advanced ATS with an integrated careers site builder differs from a traditional website builder in several ways. You’ll have all the necessary tools and features to create a careers site. Using the Recruitee by Tellent CareersHub as an example, our software allows organizations to fully customize and brand their careers site –– so no value loss here.
The Recruitee by Tellent Careers Hub also allows you to add all job openings directly from the in-built ATS, and easily promote them with almost 3,000 job boards such as Indeed and LinkedIn.
Where an ATS integration comes into its own though, is in analytics (also useful for SEO, as mentioned earlier). You’ll have a clear overview of where your candidates are in the hiring pipeline, and be able to easily communicate with the hiring team and make better-informed decisions. Xylos, a Belgium-based IT company, highlights how beneficial direct communications have been for their hiring processes.
How can I create a careers site with an ATS?
If you’re ready to get started, the place to start is finding an ATS that works for your company. Perhaps you’re already using one? Then this should be your starting point. Investigate whether the ATS that you’re using offers a careers site builder. If not, there are a number on the market that do.
Once you’ve selected an ATS that matches your needs and features a careers builder, the actual building will be relatively straightforward. Each ATS provider should have an easy-to-follow step-by-step guide for creating a branded careers site.
