5 Things to Keep in Mind for Job Landing Page Optimisation
Attracting candidates is a big part of any recruiter’s job. The latest LinkedIn report on 2015 Global Recruiting Trends shows that the talent war is intensifying as companies are willing to invest more and more on their talent brand.
Another interesting fact is that candidates start to have a bigger voice and choice on what they want to do in life, GEN Y. This means that the old style of companies posting a job and praying for candidates to flow in won’t work any longer.
Everything matters and recruiters will also have to put their “marketing hat” in order to win the war. As a start we can say that first impression matters a lot. You want to attract candidates, they are willing to apply for your company, but then they arrive on a page that probably looks a little something like this:
Most companies’ job postings look like this and probably don’t think that there’s a problem with it. At Talentsquare we can tell you that an estimated 2/3 of the candidates will drop leave this page before even starting their application.
What can you do about this? You can start by thinking of the following:
1. Set clear goals & target audience
It’s important to define who your candidates are. They might be young, tech-savvy, and mobile oriented. They might also be experienced profiles who don’t mind spending hours filling a profile for a job because they understand the importance of it. It’s key to define your target audience and adapt your job posting accordingly.
It’s also just as important to define your goals. How many candidates do you need in average to hire a candidate? What works best with which candidates? Photos of the company? Stories about the culture? Find out what they like to hear about you!
2. A clear visible & call-to-action
Too many calls-to-action can confuse the candidate. When building a job page, avoiding distractions is key. Have a clear, visible call-to-action button that leads candidates to applying for the job.
Then track the views and clicks on the job landing page, so that you can see where your conversion rate stands.
3. Be visual & mobile
A job landing page is more than just a job description. Candidates will read the job description, but visuals also tell a lot about the company.
Have a banner specifically designed for the job, a video about the company culture, articles about the position you’re promoting and, of course, what the job entitles in a short and concise yet empowering way.
A special remark is that nowadays everything has to be mobile. A lot of potential candidates will see your job on a mobile device first, and you will lose them if your page isn’t optimised.
4. Don’t be afraid to engage
One of the most frustrating experiences of candidates is that there’s not a face behind the process. They just see a standard careers@… or jobs@… email address, which is definitely frustrating.
Use your job landing page or careers site to promote your recruiters and let them engage with potential candidates. They might share the opportunity to colleagues so all type of personalised visibility matters. It gives a personal touch an otherwise impersonal process.
5. Make it easy to share
Sure, most candidates won’t share the vacancy to other colleagues if they want the job. But what if they don’t want it?
Having a specific URL and an easy to see call-to-action for visitors to share the job to their social networks and colleagues can be a way of empowering a passive visitor and making them active. You can even go further and offer a reward for visitors who promote the job. Marketing 🙂
Remarks
A job landing page can have several formats and there’s not a single perfect page out there. It is just the start of many actions that recruiters have to take in order to attract and convert visitors into candidates.
When asking Talentsquare’s Head of Business Development & Partnerships, Timoté Geimer, about his perspective on job landing page optimization, he affirmed that:
While sceptical at the beginning, most of my clients were positively impressed with the increase on the conversion rate from visitors to applicants after they optimized their job landing page. An up to 30% increase was witnessed in most cases, which proves the importance of having a strong, well-designed and call-to-action oriented job landing page.
How about you? What do you think about the importance of job landing page optimisation?
