Top tips for a Recruitment Website that gets you applications

by in Recruitment, Web Development

At Wave we pride ourselves on being expert recruitment website builders. Recruitment is in our core and we apply all the experience of years of doing recruitment advertising and building websites that attracts and converts candidates.

So, what are the key aspects we focus on when building a recruitment website? How do we get a candidate to go from opening your homepage to applying to one of your job offers, or two, or even three?

1. Clear Objectives

This is where your website work starts. What is the main purpose of the website? Are you recruiting for one single job type or do you have a wide range of job offers?

If you are a direct employer your objectives will be different from a recruitment agency. You probably want to raise the brand awareness of your company, show yourselves as a safe, stable work environment (with career progression for example) before talking about the role you have on offer.

As a recruitment agency you might want to show expertise in your area or the ability to successfully place candidates in new roles. This then reassures any visitors on your website that this would be the right place to find the next step in their careers.

For both of these, your main objective will be to get candidates to quickly and effectively apply for a job on your website.

2. User Journey Planning

From the moment a candidate lands on your website you have to lead them on a journey that ultimately gets them to apply for a job.

You might want to consider more than that one user journey. Take a look at your user personas; who are your users?

The Active and Decided Job Seeker

This job seeker has heard about your job offering and is visiting your website to apply straight away to your job – you want to take this type of user as quickly as possible to your application page.

The Undecided Job Seeker

This job seeker is typically browsing around for jobs, not sure on what and if to apply. Here your approach changes depending on your type of business.

As a direct employer you want to take the user on a journey that talks about your company, your values and success stories, followed by the role you are recruiting for, the profile required and then reinforce this with real testimonials. If you’ve done your job right, this user is now applying for your job.

As a recruitment agency you are playing the numbers game. Having a wide range of jobs is your first step. You want your website visitors to be able to easily search your database of jobs – these should be properly categorised and you might also want to pay attention to your job copy; this increases the chances of the job seeker applying to one or more of your offers. At the same time you want to establish your agency as approachable and industry leading. Take users to your ‘About’ page, let them put some faces to the names, talk about your services and your approach to placing candidates (case studies are a great way to do this), and then direct them to your perfectly organised jobs page. You’ll see the applications flowing.

The Passive Job Seeker

You’re definitely going to have to work harder for this one. This user probably stumbled on your website by coincidence; they’re not actively looking for a job but since they landed on your website they might as well take a look. This is your moment to shine, just talk about your company, your achievements, your industry knowledge and establish yourself as an industry leader (running an active blog section is a great way to do this). You might not get this user on the first try but now your name is in their head, and it’s almost certain they will come back to find out more and eventually apply for your jobs.

3. Retargeting

If you’re thinking that your website has done its job when it got that one job seeker to apply to the one job offer, then you’re wrong. You know not everyone gets a job on the first attempt so you need to make sure your website visitors are applying to more of your jobs. This is particularly important when you have a recruitment agency. The secret here is to get users to find various job offers that will suit their preferences and make them apply to them.

Related Jobs

We mentioned above that it’s important to have a well organised and categorised jobs page. This will make sure your website visitor doesn’t find just the specific job they typed on the search bar but all of the other jobs that are related to it. This can be the same job but in a different location, or a job higher up on the career ladder that the user hadn’t previously considered. And when they finally apply to the job, present them with a list of other job offers the visitor might be interested in; the longer they stay on your website, the higher the chances of them applying to more jobs.

Convert Visitors to Users

Your website shouldn’t be a one stop shop for the job seeker. You want them to be returning to it weekly, daily, to apply for more and more jobs. Consider making these visitors active users on your website. Create the ability for them to register an account where they can manage their CVs, track their job applications and setup email alerts; users can receive a regular email into their inbox with job offers related to specific keywords which is a great way to get job seekers to return to your website with regularity.

4. Have a Fall-Back Plan

The final secret to any recruitment website is to plan for when all else fails. Perhaps currently you don’t have any job offers that suit the visitors’ preferences. You don’t want them to think you’re not the solution for their job needs. Consider accepting ad-hoc CV submissions. This is where your hard work establishing your industry expertise pays off. By gaining the job seekers trust they will entrust you with finding them a job that suits them by leaving their CV with you.