In a day and age where practically everyone uses the internet for research, ideas and job offers, your online image is an essential part of any business. It makes sense: once upon a time, the products we bought or the companies we worked for were local, so we were more likely to know where they were from. Now a days, we rely on brands and online information to determine whether or not we can trust a company. If a jobseeker stumbles onto one of your job offers and wants to know more about the company, will your website accurately reflex what it’s like to work for you? Here are some things to keep in mind when updating your career page.
A company with a strong brand
In many countries, jobseekers prefer to work for big companies because they are more likely to know the brand. Like most of us, they associate the brand to a number of different values and guarantees. Not only that, it looks good on a CV to say you worked for a company that people just know means quality. However, that doesn’t mean smaller businesses can’t attract new jobseekers with their brand as well. Everyone needs to start somewhere, so when it comes to creating a strong brand, it’s important to state what matters to the company. When designing your career page, ask yourself, “why would I want to work here?” A brief history of how the company started and how it developed into what it is today should be one of the first things potential candidates see on the career page. That way, they can get a clearer idea of what makes the company different to – what makes it better than – the competition. Furthermore, you don’t want jobseekers who don’t understand your brand applying to job offers which ultimately won’t be right for them. By promoting your values and your brand correctly, you and the jobseekers visiting your website will all waste less of each other’s time.
A clear idea of what’s on offer
As obvious as it might seem, your job offers need to be clear. Research shows that women are deterred from applying to certain job offers because of the word choice. Everyone is talking about it – from Forbes to Glassdoor – and there’s even an app to help calculate the gender-friendliness of the language in your job adverts. Next time you describe the openings in your company, give the app a go (you might just be surprised by the results!).
Word choice is one thing, but I think we can all agree that job offers that go on forever can put off even the most motivated candidates. By making the job description too long and the list of required skills too specific, you might be scaring away some worthy candidates. It’s a good idea to keep in mind that most jobseekers aren’t just applying to your company: they have probably been reading different offers all day. If they find they have a lot of reading to do for a job that sounds too complicated anyway, chances are they will apply elsewhere.
Recommendations from the inside
It’s all very well promoting a job that sounds amazing… on paper. But people want to know what it’s actually like working for the company. Websites like Glassdoor are great because they give jobseekers an insight into what to expect when working for a company, but not everyone goes to the trouble of doing that much research for each company. In fact, studies show that only 12% use Glassdoor to gather information about a company, which is the same percentage as those using social media like Facebook. On the other hand, a whopping 53% gather information from the company website directly. That being said, encouraging your employees to review your company on Glassdoor is still going to be handy because they can give honest feedback which can help improve your business. Remember though, good feedback is just as important as bad feedback so, as much as possible, answer everyone that have taken the time out to write about your business to show that you care about their experience. To read more about Glassdoor, check out our article: INDEED AND GLASSDOOR: THE JAPANESE GROUP EXPANDS. As for the career page, it can make a huge difference to how jobseekers view your company to see testimonials from past and current employees. Studies show that people consider employee to be the most trustworthy source of information regarding a business. And the experts agree that having your brand promoted by those that work behind the scene is the best publicity for a company.
We hope this article has been helpful! If you need more advice on creating the perfect career page, check out: Kioskemploi: recruiter career site, where our computer experts can do all the hard work for you. On top of that, The Aktor group realease a new product to create some career websites under the brand Myjobcommunity.com, you can it check out here. Keep up to date on the world of recruiting with our new articles and get them directly in your inbox by subscribing to our newsletter. If there is a particular topic that you would like to see featured on our blog please let us know!
Author: Ali Neill
As the job board tester and blog editor for the Jobboard Finder, Ali works on job boards from all around the world and keeps a close eye on the recruitment trends thanks to a number of sources, including the website’s social media pages.
« A Review of the Craigslist Job board
I agreed ! But so weird about 12% with their facebook ! Aha