Is Your Website Stopping You from Landing New Candidates?

Recruiters specializing in almost any industry will say the same thing: it’s a candidate’s market. The demand for top talent is at a fever-pitch and what many staffing firms may not realize is that one of the biggest reasons they’re not sourcing candidates of quality is because their website is not optimized to do so.

A lot of recruiters simply rely on the phone and email to find and place candidates, which is fine and will never go away, but why not invest in a website that will deliver candidates straight to your inbox each morning without having to do anything at all? It’s possible! And if done right, can be a game-changer for you and your business. I’ve compiled a list of things to consider when planning to redo your recruitment website.

Here are the top 5 things to be aware of when building your new site:

1. Your job ads are the star of the show!
   The most common mistake I see most staffing sites make is that they focus too much on themselves and their personal message, and put almost no emphasis on making their job ads accessible. Don’t get me wrong, having a strong brand and message is important, but it won’t matter if people don’t know what you offer. Back in the day, the staffing industry was more geared towards working with people and consulting on a career search, while now people on the job search view multiple job sites per day and are only interested in what’s available in terms of open opportunities. Because of that, it’s important to make your job ads readily available. That means don’t have them hidden under a “Job Seeker” tab, and don’t only post 3-5 jobs on the homepage and call them “Hot Jobs.” Every job you’re working on is a hot job and should get as much visibility as possible.
2. The structure of your job ad is more important than you think:
   In order for Google to index your site, its “spiders” must crawl Web pages and rank them based on keyword and page structure. Some of the things these spiders look for are title tags, the number of times keywords are used on a page, and link destinations. Knowing this now, it’s important to make sure your job title is given an H1 title tag, your job description is keyword-rich, and that you link to other jobs that are similar in location and speciality (i.e. Java jobs in Boston).
3. Don’t make it difficult to apply:
   Looking at the online job application process for other staffing sites, I noticed that companies were sacrificing user experience for data. While having as much data as possible is important, it should not trump overall process. After all, you won’t have any data if people don’t complete the application! This means avoiding account prompts, multiple pages of forms to fill out, and even worse, the resume upload with bad parsing. People will literally quit, and not take the time to apply which means you’re missing out on potentially thousands of dollars in business. Think about what you absolutely need from a candidate data standpoint and only require that.
4. Keep your site simple and clean:
   Think of some of the more popular sites where job seekers go to apply. Favorites like Indeed, Simply Hired, and Craigslist offer a clean, no-frills design that forces the user to go right to the product they came for and apply for jobs. Don’t invest too much in sharp design and moving images; they slow your site down and distract people from what you really want them to do.
5. Make sure you’re posting every job to your website:
   You want to make sure that you’re giving the user every opportunity to apply for the jobs that best fit their skillset, but more importantly you want to make sure that all of your jobs are online for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes. This is especially important if you have a regular job feed being published to sites like Indeed, Simply Hired, or any other online job aggregator. The more traffic you can bring into your site, the better your chances of sourcing candidates for your clients, and more candidates means more money!

This Bullhorn Blog guest post was written by Justin Miller. Justin Miller is an experienced marketing professional in the staffing world and is available for consulting at StaffingReach.com. Follow him on Twitter at @TweetsByJMiller.