Talent War - Are career landing pages still an effective recruitment driver?

Ashley Regan
By Ashley Regan | 26 September 2022
 
Source: Hamza NOUASRIA via Unsplash

As workforce movement remains high with employees seeking out better workplace cultures, an attractive career landing page is another strategy to bring in potential job changers who may be window shopping for the next best thing.

Only 39% of marketing and digital employees intend to remain with their current employer beyond this financial year, according to Hays 2022-2023 Salary Guide. And across industries, Australian staff turnover has increased by 58%, with 35% of employers saying turnover will continue to accelerate.

According to McKinsey & Company workers across six countries showed a consistently high conviction that they can find better jobs elsewhere.

And while competitive pay is a top driving factor for those employees, they are more motivated by workplace culture including a company’s flexible work environments, opportunities to learn, and alignment between personal and organisation purposes.

But how do career landing pages fit into this equation? It creates a job funnel that allows applicants to own more of the hiring process, saving businesses recruiting dollars.

Simon McSorley, talent acquisition leader & founder/owner at Crew Talent Advisory, told AdNews: “In the same way that your website is the front door to your business, think of your careers page as the front door to your values, culture and team. 

“Most companies are experiencing low application volumes to their job ads and when they do find people who are interested in joining them, they are having to pay more than they expected to. Those candidates are also looking at plenty of other job opportunities. 

“In response to this market, we see a lot of companies moving quickly to appeal to the extrinsic motivations of potential job candidates. They offer higher salaries, more benefits, sign-on bonuses and promotions to secure the talent they need. 

“Now, whilst these things are important, they fly in the face of every survey and opinion about what motivates employees.

“For the most part, knowledgeable workers are intrinsically motivated by challenging work, the opportunity to collaborate with other highly skilled people, the ability to choose their preferred work options, participation in decision making, feeling valued for the work they do, feeling connected to the mission of the business, working with the latest versions of the technology, the ability to develop their skills and in turn take on more responsibility – these are all factors that rank higher than pure salary level to most workers.

“A well-considered careers page should aim to communicate these elements of a company's culture, values and day-to-day life. This in turn attracts workers to whom these things appeal, leading to better values alignment and therefore better hires. 

“The benefits of this thinking are less reactive hiring, the ability to build candidate pipelines, better quality hires and ultimately longer-term hiring success.”

Nadine O’Regan, general manager at TQSolutions, said: "Now is the time to double down on communication that highlights your unique culture and a careers website is a great way to do this. 

“A careers page is often your company's first point of contact with potential candidates, so it’s a place to tell your story, showcase your employer brand and inspire others to be part of your company mission. 

“The proof of this is in the figures: a strong employer brand can reduce the cost per hire by as much as 50%, and a negative reputation can cost a company as much as 10% more per hire.

“A great careers website is full of great material customised to the personas you want to attract, with user-generated content from existing employees, location-specific information, a smooth experience on every page, and an authentic representation of your culture. It needs to be current and authentic with a simple and quick way of applying for jobs at your company. 

“Another benefit of a careers page is that the careers page is 100% owned and controlled by the organisation so it can be the very best representation of your organisation. 

“With current talent shortages, making the careers section of your website more compelling and competitive is an achievable strategy that will engage and draw in some great candidates."

However, while there are tons of advantages to having a careers page, like any other recruitment drive it requires resources, which in the current climate of empty desks is the hassle worth it?

Simon Hadfield, DMCG global managing partner, said: “A careers page really serves as a more cost effective and (in theory) faster way to secure talent. 

“However, agencies are generally under-resourced, we all know that. 

“The constant balancing act of being remunerated appropriately by clients while also trying to retain agency culture (ie: not having the team work 10 + hour days) simply means the website and therefore Careers Page falls down the priority list. 

“You also need to ensure everybody that applies is responded to and managed well. If you’re only choosing 1 person out of 50 applications, it is still important to manage those 49 as it reflects positively or negatively on the business.”

Case studies: What success have agencies and brands found?

Bek Agius, senior brand and marketing manager at independent digital marketing agency Alpha Digital, told AdNews how the careers page allows applicants to feel more in control of the hiring process.

“We created the careers landing page to allow us to provide general information about working life at Alpha Digital to potential new team members.

“We find that many applicants, whether via our agency partner (Affix) or via a job ad or Alpha Foundations intake campaign, view the careers landing page before or as they are applying for a role.”

Like all website owner’s can, Alpha tracks the user’s who visit the careers landing page, gathering data like where visitors are coming from, what they are visiting and how long they are spending on the site. This data then allows Alpha to improve the user experience and better customise content. 

“Our data tells us that the cultural impression and information we provide about working life at Alpha Digital improves the conversion rate of applicants.

“We also find that applicants who have viewed our careers page and make it to the interview ask better questions. 

“They engage in more robust conversations about culture, enabling our internal hiring managers and the candidate themselves to make a more informed decision as to whether or not the role they are going for is the right fit for them.”

Paul Sigaloff, vice president and head of APAC at Yahoo, said the Yahoo career page is a market learning tool.

“We’ve had a career landing page for what seems like an eternity. We’ve always believed there should be a central place for people to find out more about the company. 

“In terms of the landing page’s success as a recruitment tool, I’d say that depends on which market you’re looking at. 

“In India, for example, we receive a lot of applications through it, but here in Australia, we’re more dependent on a reactive and proactive approach. By reactive I mean people responding to job ads and by proactive I mean the headhunting process. 

“There are so many avenues to communicate your value as an employer that goes beyond a careers landing page though. At Yahoo, we strongly believe this is reflected in how we show up internally and externally. 

“Whether that be empowering our people to feel proud about where they work, or the pride our partners have in working with us.” 

What are the best tips for designing a career landing page?

McSorley said: “Just making a start on this stuff can be daunting and the majority of businesses don't really know where to start. 

“There's not really a standard or best practice to this, and a lot of hiring is still driven by opinion or "the way we've always done it" but I think it's clear to see that the businesses that invest time and resources in this are absolutely reaping the rewards.

“The basic elements, to begin with, might be;

  1. Company History (gives context to who you are),

  2. What you stand for as a business (a flag in the sand moment),

  3. Imagery of your actual people (please no more Unsplash),

  4. A message from the founder or leader (Take the opportunity to back up your "Why" message),

  5. List your values & benefits (if you don't have any benefits yet, describe your roadmap for them, it'll show prospective employees that you're at least thinking of these things),

  6. Optimised for mobile (duh),

  7. Make applying easy via LinkedIn or socials, (don't make people fill out 23 fields of data that's already in their resume),

  8. 8) have a general applications job listing (even if you're not actively hiring right now, give people the chance to connect with you),

  9. I could go on but this is probably a good start. 

“One of the biggest challenges we see is where a leader or leadership group dictates the company's employer brand and brand message. Authenticity is the key, as is staying away from cliche buzzwords like ‘dynamic’, is a great place to start. Or, if you're going to use them, be able to qualify them.

“Most companies are reactive in their hiring and only ever respond to what's in front of them. Most also think of careers pages as static content, when they should really be evolving.” 

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