Did you know that today’s candidate uses an average of 16 different resources to search for jobs? And 4 in 5 of those candidates will visit a company’s career site during their job search process.
Did you know that today’s candidate uses an average of 16 different resources to search for jobs? And 4 in 5 of those candidates will visit a company’s career site during their job search process.
Not only do you have to understand how candidate experience expectations have changed, but you also need to know why candidates visit your career site and what they’re looking for. The key is to capture candidates early and then re-engage and convert them over time.
Start by asking these three fundamental questions of your career site. Does it:
- make it easier for candidates to apply for jobs?
- meet new consumer expectations?
- provide a great candidate experience?
The answers will give you some insight on where your career site might need some work. And it’s critical that your career site goes to work for you.
What Are They Looking For?
The vast majority of candidates (88 percent) say a career site is at least somewhat important when evaluating a company, according to CareerBuilder’s 2017 Candidate Experience Study. So what do candidates value when searching for jobs on your career site?
The top three things candidates are looking for on your career site are:
1) Your location
2) What it’s like to work there
3) What their salary would be
Make sure your career site caters to these common questions that candidates have. Nearly 9 in 10 candidates say a career site is important for getting key information. They are also looking to understand what it would be like to work at your company — in fact, nearly half of them (45 percent) agree that they can typically tell what it would be like to work for a company based on their career site.
In terms of how they’re searching for jobs, CareerBuilder research shows 44 percent of visitors searching on a career site enter and search by job category, while a whopping 86 percent of visitors enter and search by location.
How You Can Adapt Your Career Site to the Way Candidates Apply
As you pay closer attention to how candidates prefer to apply today, you can start to make some of the following adjustments to your career site.
Create a way to join a talent network. The vast majority of visitors presented with the option of joining a talent network will choose to join before they would search for or apply to jobs, and as many as 82 percent of those who join will attach their resumes.
Offer a shorter application process. Instead of requiring that candidates fill out seemingly endless pages of information, consider reducing questions to the minimum. Why? Our research has shown that additional questions added cause up to an additional 35 percent drop off rate per question.
Try to get return visits to your career site. Returning candidates are important given that they account for 35 percent of all career site traffic; they convert from visits to apply 7 percent better than new users; and 62 percent of users who return do so three or more times. One way to keep these leads “warm” is to re-engage with email. Consider that as many as 45 percent of our client’s applications to jobs come from our automated email engagement, and 43 percent of traffic is from a mobile device.
Use this handy checklist to make the most of your career site.
- Search: Do you make it easy to search? It should take only one click to find job openings on your career site.
- Lead capture: Does it offer an option to capture leads who are not yet ready to apply? Your career site should function to collect a candidate’s contact information briefly and efficiently, even on mobile devices.
- Mobile: Is it mobile optimized? Your mobile career site should feature scaled and intuitive navigation, similar to any mobile app. Today 43 percent of traffic and 45 percent of applications on career sites comes from mobile devices.
- Re-engagement: Does it automatically and continually re‚Äêengage candidates who aren’t ready to apply with relevant positions and content?
- Design: Is the design easy to navigate and developed with candidate research to ensure engagement?
