Your Job Postings Will Be Your New Career Website - Only If You Want Great Hires
Companies spend tons of money on their career websites in the hopes that out of the millions of companies in the nation, a qualified candidate will find the career site and fall in love with their company. The reality is that most of the candidates that find career sites usually come directly from job boards. The other way is for already well-known companies, like Facebook or Google, that get overloaded with applications.
Today, I want to get you thinking about the job posting. Even when someone comes to your company’s career website directly, 85% of the time they go straight to your job listings. It’s not that they don’t care about all the volunteer work your company does in the community, they are looking for a job that matches their skill set first and foremost. This presents some outstanding opportunities to sell your employment brand directly on the job posting and get this job seeker to apply!
Desperate job seekers will apply for any job they feel they could get. I still see two-sentence job descriptions with forty applications. However, qualified job seekers who are currently working at your competitor that are fantastic candidates will never apply for a job if it doesn’t stand out. Your career brand has to paint a picture so that high caliber candidates can see themselves working for your company.
How is this done?
Here are my suggestions:
- Treat each job posting like a mini career website.
No matter where you post your jobs you will have the opportunity with some sites to use a job template. This template is the key to bring your employment brand to life as well as give them information about the job opening. Here is an example of how Travelers does this with their job postings. The picture at the top is powerful. The lady in this picture is happy to be working with Travelers, and the red umbrella is very powerful to draw a job seekers eye to this vision. Travelers also include their career “live” twitter feed that features more happy people. Each posting is having its own URL and is a mini-career website. (This example is from GreatInsuranceJobs.com)
- Job postings can be used to connect to potential candidates not just through applications.
For AmTrust Financial, they use their job postings to brand their employment as well as ask everyone to follow them on LinkedIn. This is a fantastic way to build a potential talent pipeline that you can connect with for a very long period of time. It also gives your internal recruiters a heads up to who is following you and allows them to reach out directly. Yes, humans calling humans is still the number one-way companies hire great candidates. You can ask people to follow you on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. It really works well!
- The strategy doesn’t work on job aggregator sites like Indeed.
Indeed posts millions of jobs, and they all look the same. While job aggregators can get you a lot of applications, each job posting (whether it is a CFO or cashier) seem identical and, according to our clients, is why they are getting so many unqualified candidates. I would not suggest for you not to use aggregator sites in your job marketing mix, but just know that many highly qualified candidates want to be treated better and sold to the position. If you post to aggregators, make sure you include direct links to your career website pages. If not, your application rate will be abysmal.
- Mobile is king.
People look at your jobs via mobile 50% of the time in 2017 and trending up in 2018. Make sure your career site and job posting partners have the technology that showcases your employment brand beautifully on all mobile devices. Less is more, but it is so important that your career brand message shouts “apply because we are awesome” no matter where the job seeker finds your posting.