I’ve said it before: Recruiters Are Marketers, and those who embrace their inner-agency souls will reap the benefits… and in this case, the candidates.
Gone are the days where you can slap a paragraph of company boilerplate and a job board widget on a page and call it a day. For the recruiting team, it’s not a sub-page, it’s the home page. For your candidates, it’s not a resource, it’s the welcome mat. And for your company, it’s not an “open positions” page, it’s The Careers Page.
Sure you need to include your open positions, but many of the best careers pages only link to them rather than feature them as the primary content – but more on that later. A careers page is the first stop for your candidates to learn more about your team, company, and culture. This first impression is your opportunity to tell them about your people, perks, projects, and why THEY need to work with YOU – so make it count!
Employees Are The Story
Employer branding is all about employees, not employers, right? Well, you’d be surprised how many careers pages don’t feature a single smiling face, quote, or, well, soul, and instead opt to talk only about the company. The line between a company brand and employer brand can get blurry, and this is a good thing – customers want to work with real people, and candidates do to! Tell their stories, play their videos, share their tweets… focus on them.
Hubspot absolutely crushes it with all things marketing, and that includes their employee-centric careers page. It has it all: Employee photos, videos from across the organization, pics of their culture, and even features their H.E.A.R.T. right at the top… my favorite part. Other organizations feature how their employees use their products, like Twitter and Spotify. Identify the value your employees have through a career at your company, and let them tell their story.
Core Values Are The Bullseye
At the heart of every company lies its core values, those unchanging principles that guide all decisions, behaviors, and actions throughout the organization. When it comes to attracting talent that will hit the ground running, perform at high levels, and build your company along with their careers, getting alignment with core values is key. Feature them on your careers page prominently, and let candidates and customers alike know exactly what you stand for.
Airbnb weaves its core values and mission throughout its entire careers page. In fact, that’s the entire focus of the story it tells: That their team is in this “Together,” with each other and their customers. Both Snagajob and BigCommerce feature core values at the top of the page, right where every candidate will see them. Either way, including core values on your careers page is key to attracting talent that fits your organization.
Perks Are The Closer
In today’s competitive workplace, battles are often fought not just with salaries and benefits, but perks and culture – these often seal the deal for candidates. Your careers page should include all the things a candidate would expect, like healthcare options, 401k info, stock options, etc, but also all those extras that make your workplace THE workplace. Dogs in the office? Woof! Beer on tap? Gulp! Foosball tournaments on Fridays? Gooooaaaallll! Make them drool by sharing what’s cool.
It doesn’t have to be a big production… you can just tell it like it is like Survey Monkey. They include a simple paragraph on their careers page that lays it all out there in their words, their language, their brand. Local Charleston software company Boomtown displays their perks in clean, impossible to miss icons spelling out why they are a great place to work. Perks sell themselves, and your company, so be sure they make it onto your careers page.
Calls-to-Action Are The Conversion
As I mentioned early, the list of open positions is where the careers page should drive candidates, and not be the only content on the page. Your call-to-action is what gets them to that list, whether it’s located at the bottom of your page or separately on Workable. Maybe it’s the marketer in me, but when a prospect finds a job on your careers page and takes the time to apply, that’s a conversion – so treat it like one. Ditch the “Apply” terminology and make the button’s language more enticing with language like: “Join Our Team”, “Take the Plunge”, or “Let’s Talk”.
I like the approach of Pinterest, who encourages candidates to “Find a Role”… I love the encouragement! Try something like that suits your brand, your tone, and your core values. Then get nerdy, check your Google Analytics to see how visitors are interacting, do some A/B testing, and meet your new BFFs!
Including all of this content isn’t a silver bullet, but it will give your careers page, and recruiting team, a better chance of landing a great candidate. Understand your EVP, tell its story through your team, and make your careers page count!
What are some of your favorite careers pages? Let me know in the comments!
