How To Create A Proper Careers Page

Businesses with a proper careers page can better find ideal candidates than those with a cluttered, unclear careers page. A business website is often the entry point for new customers and prospective employees alike, which makes its role in posting job opportunities very important.

An easy-to-find, detailed job listing can bring in a more respectable pool of candidates, especially compared to one with minimal detail that’s hidden away on an obscure corner of the site. Here are six efficient ways to create job listings.

Use the Strength of a Homepage

Your site’s homepage is often the place people come to first when googling your business. With that in mind, it's also the first place many prospective job-seekers will end up. As a result, posting an eye-catching image or banner with the words "We're Hiring!" that links to your Careers page is a great way to boost visibility.

A widget on the homepage sidebar with a list of open positions is another option. Either way, use your homepage or top-visited landing page as lucrative placement for an image or banner redirecting to your business' Careers page.

Emphasize Your Culture

There are many businesses out there with open positions. To stand out, it's a good idea to emphasize the best aspects of your business' culture. As such, bragging about it on your Careers page is a good idea to get potential employees excited about applying. Provide details on the type of people they'll work with, by listing attributes such as “driven,” “hungry for success” and “full of creativity.” Also, include the various perks you may offer, ranging from health benefits to nifty workplace features like a pool table.

Generally, providing a snapshot of your workplace's most enjoyable attributes is a great way to catch a prospective employee's interest. Additionally, chronicling fun workplace field trips or events on a company blog can be a useful way to encourage more job applications. If applicants see those in the workplace having fun, they will be more encouraged to apply. If your business has high ratings on an employee-review site like Glassdoor, feel free to list that as well.

Advanced Cooling Technologies’ job page does all these things well by including their business model on the same page and emphasizing innovation, teamwork and customer care. It shows a transparent company that values professionalism and accomplishment, as they also list awards they’ve been given (one of Pennsylvania’s Best Places to Work).

Elaborate Comprehensively on the Position

A job listing that’s vague about job duties will just result in more time spent down the line, as interviewers will have to explain in detail whatever the ad listing didn’t cover. If you provide all the aspects of the open position, such as responsibilities and qualifications, the applicant pool is likely to be more appropriate. A vague job listing could result in under-qualified and overqualified job seekers coming in, with everyone’s time being wasted if they’re an unrealistic candidate.

Vague listings will cause your current employees to devote time to answering calls and replying to emails about questions pertaining to the position, when they could be doing their own work instead.

Make a Call to Action

As a prospective employee excitedly finishes reading the job listing, they’ll likely ask “What’s next?” A quality call to action can concisely and effectively answer this question. In the job listing, be sure to clearly include how and where to apply, in addition to anything the candidates may need to bring in or submit. This includes a hard-copy of the resume, references, application forms or any other needed documents. In addition, businesses should relegate the task of handling these documents and responding to inquiries to specific employees.

Having a clear call to action and list of needed materials will save present employees headache and allow prospective employees to feel more organized and focus on selling themselves, rather than fretting about not bringing a particular form.

Drive Traffic to the Page

A beautiful job listing won’t have any value if nobody sees it. Consequently, driving traffic to your business site and its Careers page is a good idea. The aforementioned tips — like building an elaborate position description and company culture emphasis — will help naturally with SEO keywords that are relevant to the job search. Beyond that, it can be worthwhile to develop content on your site’s blog to drive in industry-relevant readers that may be interested in the positions.

It can also be a good idea to pay for premium placement on job listing sites to increase visibility. Similarly, posting the job listings on your company’s Facebook and Twitter accounts while using their own advertising schemes is another way to increase visibility. For just $10 to $20 on Facebook, you can serve a post to thousands more readers. Posting this on social media can be especially effective, since those following you are already interested in your business to some degree.

Divide Listings by Expertise or Department

A huge list of various job listings can overwhelm applicants. As a result, separating job listings by expertise or department on the Careers page can help them find their best fit more easily. For example, Brit + Co divides their jobs into the following categories: Creative, Editorial, Engineering, Operations, Other, Sales & Partnerships and Video. These exact job subheadings will vary depending on a business' occupation, though in general they will look similar to this. Keeping a categorical list of job openings demonstrates organization and makes the application process easier.

These six tips can help any type of business craft an engaging jobs page while ensuring it reaches the most ideal candidates.