The past few years have seen a drastic change in the way companies are attracting, finding, and hiring new employees. Employers are finding it difficult to fill open positions, and are making internal changes to their benefits, role descriptions, and overall culture. However, they often overlook a very important channel for communicating with potential applicants, their website. Here, we provide a few tips on what you can do to help make your site attractive as an employer.
The Staffing Challenge
One of the biggest challenges businesses face is filling open positions with a quality workforce, and keeping them filled. In recent times, we have encountered what has been deemed as “The Great Resignation” in spite of all that has happened with previous pandemic-related layoffs and volatility. According to an article published by the Pew Research Center, “The nation’s “quit rate” reached a 20-year high last November.” While layoff numbers came in at record lows.
Employees are becoming more demanding in terms of flexibility of the location and hours of their work, as well as expectant of higher pay rates due to unprecedented economic inflation. To attract top candidates, companies are doing everything from raising salaries, offering signing bonuses, allowing flex hours, remote work, and presenting attractive benefits packages.
If you are one of the employers who offers this new standard, you may be wondering how to drive that home to quality employees. As we mentioned earlier, your website is the first step.
Making a Great First Impression
Just like with attracting new leads, your website serves as the face of your company, and is often the first interaction applicants will have with your business or organization. Therefore you should make sure to view your entire website, not just the careers section, through the eyes of your future employees. Think about it, they come across the open position on an external source such as Indeed or LinkedIn and decide to do some investigating to see if you are a company they would want to work for. What is the first thing they do? They click on the link to your website and start navigating through.
It’s important to make sure they are able to find the information they are looking for. Who you are, what you do, your core values, who might they be working with, etc. Keep this in mind when creating your About Us, Team, Services/Solutions, and Portfolio pages. Your content strategy for these sections should take future applicants into consideration. Not sure where to start? Ask your fellow coworkers about what they were looking for and what they like about working for your company.
Is Your Corporate Culture Attractive?
Company culture is critical for attracting the younger workforce who won’t just tolerate “the grind”. Paint a great picture for your candidates. Make sure you promote how valued employees are to you and what the company does to create a great working environment. This corporate culture picture can have a multi-layer effectiveness in attracting the right types of employees – while allowing those who may not ‘fit’ decide for themselves before choosing to apply.
Personal stories (testimonial videos can be a great selling point!) from current employees are also an incredibly effective inclusion because they give real-life examples of the company culture, and can help candidates picture themselves working with your team. Note, if you choose to post employee testimonials in the form of a video, make sure you are following the appropriate image and likeness release guidelines for consent to appear publicly as a company employee.
Your Careers Section Speaks for Itself
The Careers section of your website is tasked with the big job of being more attractive and compelling than your competitors. Posting mere job descriptions is a thing of the past, and we encourage you to work with your marketing team to write descriptions in a sales promotion style. Make sure your descriptions are compelling and really highlight the benefits and points your applicants actually care about.
If you are a company with a large Careers section, you may wish to provide filtering capabilities or, at the very least, a way to search for various open positions. This way candidates can navigate your positions quickly and get on to applying.
Some filters you might want to consider using include:
- Location
- Department
- Education Level required
- Position level
- Ability to Work From Home
The Application Process From Your Website to HR
The application process through your website should be as frictionless and seamless as possible. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when planning out your workflows and configuring your site.
- Keep your application forms simple; don’t make applicants copy and paste their entire resume into various fields
- Allow applicants to upload their resume and a cover letter if they choose
- Once form is submitted direct user to a Thank You page and send an email confirmation letting them know their application was received
- Send a notification to the appropriate internal team, making sure to include the uploaded files and field information
- Store the applicant information in a CRM and tag them appropriately so that they are easy to find within the system.
A simple integrated application on the page may be all you need, but integrating your careers section via web portal is something to keep in mind. An employee portal, similar to the one we built for SNHS, will provide additional insight into the process, both for applicants as well as your internal team. HR and department heads will be able to easily share relevant information regarding various applicants, while future employees will be able to view the status of their application and know what the next steps of the process are.
Are You Ready to Attract the Best of the Best Applicants?
Now you know that your careers section should always provide candidates a full picture of your company – from culture, to employee value, to a day in the life, community resources, and beyond. Always remember, it’s a competitive hiring world out there so you will want to work to attract the BEST.
Whether you think you’re just about there, or have no idea where to begin, give CommonPlaces a call today and we can work with you to plan a recruitment marketing strategy that will help you attract and retain top talent.
