When was the last time you updated your career page? Don’t know? I’d guess it was anywhere between 6 and 12 months ago – maybe longer. Don’t believe me? I know of a hot tech company that recently went public. The S1 filing counted 534 employees back in September 2014. Today, its career page says the company has 400 employees.
For most companies, a corporate career page is a checkbox deliverable that HR or
recruiting needs to check off every now and then. Career pages give executives the sense all is well and the faux comfort of believing perfect candidates are miraculously coming to their website to apply to a slew of awesome jobs. But guess what? Your career page may actually suck.
To dig a little deeper, take these questions into consideration as you begin to evaluate the success of your career page:
- Do you know how many people visited your career in the past 30 days?
- Was your career page updated in the past 30 days?
- Is your career page SEO, social and mobile optimized?
- Does your career page have a comprehensive list of your employee benefits?
- Is your careers video compelling to your target audience?
If the answer to any of the above is “I don’t know” or “No,” your career page may very well suck. Now, let me explain why the above things really matter for any company looking to recruit talent.
Who are you attracting and influencing?
Some of you may have spent quite a bit of money on your career page. But how do you know if it’s working? Consider these factors:
- Do you know how many people visit your career page each month?
- How many visitors convert to job applications or hires?
- What are the demographics of the people visiting your page? Are they the people you want to attract?
Wouldn’t it be a shame if you invested a lot of time and money into your career page and didn’t have awesome results to share with your executive team?
Interesting fact: Your Glassdoor Employer Profile may have more traffic than your corporate career page.
Job seekers want to know what’s going on right now
Job seekers don’t
really care about what happened last month, last year or for the last decade, because companies change – sometimes quite rapidly. What is happening right now in your company that’s makes it an exciting place to work? If you’re trying to
recruit agile software engineers and your company hasn’t updated its career page for 12 months, it doesn’t really paint a great picture.
Interesting Fact: You can update your Glassdoor employer profile in just minutes every day of the year.
SEO, social and mobile matters
How are job seekers finding you? Not every company has brand awareness like Google or Facebook, so if no one is visiting your company career page, you might want to get proactive with viral content or social media campaigns to drive job seekers to your career page. Once they arrive, think about how they access your content. You don’t want to put a lot of effort and money into attracting job seekers if your user experience sucks on a mobile device. Confused? Try viewing your corporate career page on your cell phone and see what it’s like to apply for a job.
Interesting fact: Approximately forty five percent of your corporate career page traffic is accessed via a mobile device.
Benefits are your competitive differentiator
Job seekers care about benefits. The benefits your organization offers says a lot about you and how well you take care of your employees. Fifty-nine percent of employees are likely to accept a lower salary in exchange for better benefits. It takes more than just free food and flexible work hours to attract the best talent. What benefits does your company offer that are tempting to job seekers? And, more importantly, is this information available on your career page?
Interesting Fact: You can publish all of your benefits on your Glassdoor employer profile for
free.
Less cheese, more authenticity
You know what I’m talking about. We’ve all watched career videos where a diverse group of people smile, write on whiteboards and pretend they’ve discovered the next big thing. Except this isn’t really what happens in real life, is it? Keep it real. Get your best company evangelists on camera to tell the honest story of why you’re awesome. If possible, split your career videos up by department. Job seekers want to hear from the people they might actually work with – and engineering is very different from PR. Lastly, do you know how many people are watching your career video? If people view your career page but don’t watch your careers video, something might be wrong.
Interesting Fact: The average cost of a career video is $35,000. Just kidding, it’s actually about $5,000.
How Glassdoor can help
At Glassdoor, we make it really easy for employers to do all of the above through our
Free Employer Account and Enhanced Profile. You can literally influence millions of job seekers in seconds, just by signing up.
You might also be surprised at how many job seekers are researching your company on Glassdoor vs. your corporate career page or other channels like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Don’t believe me? Check out what AT&T’s candidate influence looked like in 2014 as shown below. I’ve actually seen several companies have more traffic on their Glassdoor employer profile vs. their corporate career page, so if you don’t know how much traffic and influence these pages are generating for you, it’s probably time to find out!
