Career sites are pages in your website dedicated to displaying your employer brand and a list of open positions that you’re hiring for. It’s what anyone who wants to work for you looks for as soon as they land on your website. But the thing is, it’s not enough for you to just slap a list of open positions on a web page and call it a day.
69% of candidates are likely to apply to a job if the employer actively manages its employer brand (e.g., responds to reviews, updates their profile, shares updates on the culture and work environment). Source: Glassdoor
Career sites are vital to the candidate experience and your brand as a company so you need to make sure you’re doing all the right things to showcase your brand to your applicants. We took a look at a list of the top 10 global tech companies that candidates want to work for (9 of them are headquartered in North America), and compiled a list of tips that might prove useful in your quest to build the perfect career site that candidates will fall in love with, at first look.
1) A clear mission
Number 1 on the top 10 global tech companies that candidates want to work for is SpaceX.
It does not surprise us even in the least that SpaceX is on top of this list. Between its CEO Elon “The plot twist is that I’m an alien” Musk and its mission of putting humans on Mars, SpaceX could put up a “Wanted” sign on their lawn and still be on this list. But they went the extra mile to make their site a little special.
The first fold is dedicated to their mission where it’s stated not just in words but also through stunning visuals.
“SpaceX is like Special Forces… we do the missions that others think are impossible. We have goals that are absurdly ambitious by any reasonable standard, but we’re going to make them happen.” – Elon Musk
It’s awesome that instead of a list of what they’re looking for, they choose to state a clear, understandable goal that people can relate to. This goes a long way in getting you the right kind of candidates.
This is something that some other contenders on the list state immediately as well.
2) State your values clearly
Everyone’s favorite streaming service, Netflix, doesn’t build its career site around its mission – instead, it focuses on explaining the Netflix culture and the values they prize. If you’re confused about the difference between values and culture, here’s a quick primer: culture is what a business brings to the table and values are what employees expected to bring.
Netflix has always been well known for their focus on culture – in 2009, they famously released their 128 slide deck on culture to the world, but it’s lovely that they’ve taken the time to explain every value in great detail. This is a fantastic way of setting the right expectations for candidates.
Atlassian kicks things up a notch by not just stating their values but also including a value-fit quiz.
There are about 10 situational questions in the value-fit quiz – questions that are probably a part of HR’s value-fit question bank for the HR round. It’s also a pretty innovative way of building up a candidate database. When I finished taking the quiz, Atlassian asked for my email to send me this report and provided an opt-in for a newsletter about Atlassian-related info. Neatly done.
3) Use photos to show, not tell
You can keep shouting about how great your workplace is or you can show prospective candidates how great it is through videos and photographs.
Tesla loops a short video in their first fold to quickly showcase different teams. A little more detail would have been great but the video works as well.
4) Put your employees in the forefront
Show prospective applicants the brilliant people they’ll get the chance to work with, if they apply to your company. Google does a great job of this – the first fold of their career site is dedicated to a bright tile set that links to different articles about the people behind Google and some of the work they do. Sold hook, line and sinker.
Atlassian wanders off the beaten path by showcasing their employees’ interests, beyond work. They also have dedicated pages for different teams and offices with details about perks and work culture.
Shopify uses the straightforward approach and just displays employee testimonials, like you would display customer testimonials to hook prospects.
5) Have a catch-all email address
Sometimes, you might not be hiring at the moment for a position that the candidate is interested in. Do a Tesla and have a catch-all email address to make sure you get the candidate’s information. This way, you can look them up when you are hiring for the position they’re interested in.
6) If you’ve won awards, flaunt it
If you’ve won awards for being a great place to work at, tell your future employees that. Awards add authenticity to your message even if it’s not an award that is instantly recognizable.
Shopify went the extra mile and put up a video about it.
7) Be fun
Recruitment is a competitive field and you should take every opportunity to be memorable and quirky. Take Slack’s career site – they use emojis to describe their values, thus driving home the point that they’re a little bit more informal than your normal 9-5.
Lyft keeps it loose through fun descriptions for their team members. It’s two birds with one stone – they describe the stripes the people you’ll be working with have and you learn a few fun facts as well.
Take risks, be fun, be sticky.
8) If you have multiple offices, dedicate different pages to them
Different cultures work differently. If you’ve got offices in different locations, allocate every office some space to describe their style briefly.
Facebook uses videos to illustrate life in different teams and locations. Atlassian has a global perks section and a office-specific perks section.
9) Link to your social handles
Most applicants who come to your career site will probably not apply right away. They’re going to hem and they’re going to haw until they get the push to either apply or discard the possibility forever. Encourage applicants to follow your company’s handles on social media so you can subtly draw attention to your great brand even as they scroll down their timeline, looking for something new and interesting.
Speaking of social…
10) Dedicate a social tab to your hiring agenda
With the right application tracking software, you can create a custom tab on Facebook to display a list of open positions for interested fans to check.
This way, potentials applicants don’t have to come to your career site, you can take your career site to them.
All of these elements will look pretty great on your career site but it’ll fall flat if you don’t put a link to your open positions in a position of prominence. Make sure to also include an easy way to reach out to you, in case they have questions.
That’s all, folks! If you have any questions, insights or comments, the comment box is right below.